Resources for the Research Community
In my last post, I told the story of how the Washington State Transportation Commission used an online panel of Washington State Ferries riders to collect feedback from citizens and report the results to the state legislature. “The light bulb went off for all of us,” Griffith added, “ Since then, we’ve continued to grow [...]
Government agencies that want to use technology to listen to their citizens would do well to follow the model of the Washington State Transportation Commission. Like all government agencies, WSTC has a lot of responsibilities. One of those is to do the mundane tasks required of any transportation agency, including setting toll rates and ferry [...]
Earlier this week a computer science professor made an unusual promise as he announced a run for political office in Vermont. Jeremy Hansen, an assistant professor at Norwich University, is proposing to give regular citizens a vote – on everything – should he be elected to the State Senate. In his words, he will “provide [...]
I have some exciting news. Our humble blog has been granted an exclusive interview with the U.S. Census Director, Dr. Robert Groves. The videotaped interview will take place this Wednesday, May 23rd, at the headquarters of the Census Bureau in Suitland, Maryland. Conducting this interview is a great way for us to continue the mission [...]
Facebook recently entered a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission admitting all manner of fraud in its privacy policies. The list of violations admitted are shocking enough to make the most hardened among us blush. Here is the list of violations to which Facebook admitted, from the FTC announcement. “Facebook changed its website so certain [...]
Survey Analytics is pleased to report that our recent poll of King County, Washington voters called the outcome of the State of Washington’s liquor privatization initiative with a high degree of precision. Our political poll marks an exciting and innovative, new approach whereby public opinion researchers, public affairs firms, political consultants and political campaigns themselves [...]
Continuing our series of interviews from the Government 2.0 Summit, we spoke with Bev Godwin, Director of New Media and Citizen Engagement for the US General Services Administration (found on Twitter at twitter.com/govnewmedia). Bev sat down to talk with us about ways the GSA is providing new social media-based research and feedback tools to agencies [...]
At this week’s Government 2.0 Summit, we sat down with Andrew Hoppin, CIO of the New York State Senate, to discuss new ways that governments are engaging with the citizenry. Andrew talks with us about how the New York State Senate is adopting open data frameworks and social media tools, the challenges and opportunities that [...]
How Crowdsourcing is used at FEMA
One of the most interesting and seemingly impactful uses of crowdsourcing technology seems to be taking place within governments. (We’ve talked about this before with Bev Godwin of the GSA and Haley VanDyck of the FCC.) Recently, Craig Fugate, Administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) posted to the White House Blog about [...]