.
A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program
Social media applications for government are becoming more popular, but significant numbers of federal employees and agencies are not making use of those tools, according to a new Market Connections Inc. research survey of government social media use.
Today, particularly on the Web, openness is supposed to be the watchword when it comes to communication. But, oddly enough, rules that govern much of our information currency are being written by regulatory agencies and lawmakers in closed private meetings, accountable to no one.
The League of Women Voters took up the Knight Commission’s challenge to help meet the information needs of America’s communities during a workshop at its 2010 convention in Atlanta last month. The session, entitled “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy and Citizen Participation in the Digital Age,” provided an opportunity for LWV members to explore what role the national [...]
Since the release of the report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, we’ve seen efforts in communities across the country to take stock of their unique information needs and assets. One of the great things about these case studies is that they are bringing a discussion that has [...]
The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: “Draw the picture.” (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it’s often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can’t draw a picture of what you’re trying to explain, you probably don’t understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems also helps everyone understand where the knowledge gaps are, or where unsolved problems are buried, or where contradictions exist.
We are facing a growing information divide that is leaving more and more people with less and less access to the basic information that helps them make choices about their jobs, families and communities. We have to have a national approach to the challenge of meeting these information needs. But first we have to answer a few core questions: How do we define the information needs of communities, and how do we measure them?
We’ve just published our first two information ecology case studies, which take a close look at the local conditions in Seattle and Scranton. When we started investigating these media ecosystems, we used the Knight Commission Report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” as our guide.
The American public is expressing increased satisfaction with federal government services that are offered online, according to the latest quarterly report of the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Government Satisfaction Index. The e-government satisfaction index is produced by the market research firm ForeSee Results. This survey and previous research conducted by ForeSee show that citizens who are very satisfied with a [...]
The traditional culture and ethics of professional journalism encourage journalists to hold themselves aloof from the communities they cover; to maintain objectivity through distance. Generally this means not voicing personal opinions on politics or controversial issues, and not engaging directly in civic processes. Sometimes even voting, campaign contributions, or speaking up at civic meetings are [...]
April 7 marked a major milestone in the White House’s Open Government Initiative: 120 days since Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag issued the Open Government Directive. The 120 day mark is notable as the deadline for each federal agency to publish its own Open Government Plan describing how the agency will improve [...]
Finally, it’s here – the National Broadband Plan. Released yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission, the National Broadband Plan mandated in last year’s stimulus legislation lays out a broad, aspirational and ultimately attainable vision for achieving universal broadband service across the United States. With the release of the Plan, the national conversation on the information needs of Americans [...]
Every day, the federal government releases vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation and how government works. This public information has a deep impact on almost every aspect of American life. Some of it can be used to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, or have a profound effect on health, economic development and commerce. The problem is, much of this government information is too often hard to find, difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in useful formats, and available in only a few locations. There is a solution to this problem: the Internet.
Shame on us if we don’t take the steps needed to feed knowledge to our democracy. Way back in the age of paper, in 1986, professor James Beniger, then at Harvard, produced a useful chart on the civilian labor force of the United States.
You now have until May 7th to submit comments to the the Federal Communications Commission’s examination of the Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age thanks to a request by a group of public service media. The Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, [...]
The Federal Trade Commission will hold its second two-day workshop on the future of journalism March 9-10, 2010, in Room 432 of the FTC Headquarters at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. The agenda and information about the workshop can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/mar9/agenda.pdf.
The workshop will address proposals to better support and lower the costs of journalism, [...]
