Influence - Entries from March 2006

Kudos for Oregonhelps.org - Helping People Get Help

Thursday, March 30. 2006

Kudos to an Oregon web site that helps people learn if they qualify for various social services and gets them started in acquiring the services -- vital services like food stamps, housing assistance, health care and others.

I like the approach of Oregonhelps.org because it is obviously carefully targeted on meeting the needs of its audiences and does that not through pages of information, but through a very functional service that walks the user through the issues and provides answers specific to their situation.

The site has won several awards to date, including the recent Top 50 Government Innovations for 2006 from the Council on Excellence in Government and the Ash Institute at Harvard's Kennedy School.

An article about the site in the Oregon newspaper the Statesman Journal highlights the value of the site:

Two of the greatest disincentives to using social services are the stigma and inconvenience. If you lack a job, taking care of kids and wondering where your next paycheck is coming from, waiting in line at a government office can be a little slice of hell. Especially if you wait in line, only to find out you're not eligible for the benefit you're seeking.

These real disincentives are reduced because the site is available 24/7, can be used in privacy, and all user information it collects is kept anonymous and confidential. I also like that the site is multilingual (English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian), and has a very well-done screen-cast "video" introducing the site.

(Disclaimer - I know some of the people from ECONorthwest who helped develop the service. )

Posted by Chris Wolz at 09:49 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Influence and Online Communities

Tuesday, March 28. 2006

As organizations turn towards online communities and collaboration to further their interests, they confront a problem: it is difficult to learn about these topics except from other practitioners.

To assist organizations with this problem, Forum One is hosting on May 25th in San Francisco the Online Community Camp 2006, a gathering of online community practitioners for a day of networking and information sharing. The Camp will follow the novel "open space" conference format, in which much of the agenda will be finalized the day of the conference based on participant input.

For more information about the Camp, see the Forum One event home page.

Posted by Jim Cashel in Collaboration at 01:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Open-souce is good enough for the Economist, what about the public sector?

Saturday, March 18. 2006

Even the venerable Economist is jumping on the online collaboration bandwagon, saying 'The "open-source" process of creating things is quickly becoming a threat -- and an opportunity -- to businesses of all kinds.' Though expressing worry about how innovative and sustainable these process can be and how to assure quality and handling of intellectual property, the The Economist is clearly taken.

Continue reading "Open-souce is good enough for the Economist, what about the public sector?"

Posted by Dave Witzel in Technology at 17:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Gaining Influence Through Open Access

Wednesday, March 15. 2006

A few days ago, Dan Cohen, the Director of Research Projects at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, lamented the lack of non-commercial API's:

one of my pet peeves as someone trying to develop software tools for scholars, teachers, and students is the lack of application programming interfaces (APIs) for educational resources.

If your policy or issue-focused organization is like most, you have great data locked away in databases, websites, and reports. You are distributing the information through your traditional communication channels - including the web - but consumers of your information have to come to you to get it, and its only available in formats that you provide. Why not set that data free and let users manipulate and consume it in their own innovative ways?

Empowered by freely available application programming interfaces (APIs), innovative developers can now grab data and tools from multiple sources and combine them to create new and innovative views of the information (check out ChicagoCrime.org for a great example). Commercial organizations are embracing the trend in a big way, and it has spawned a new wave of online applications called mashups.

These commercial organizations have realized that opening their data and tools expands the reach of their services and information well beyond the capacity of thier internal resources - and it lets its information assume new and powerful shapes. However, non-commercial organizations have been slow to embrace the trend, and are noticably under-represented in this current list of over 200 freely available data and service APIs.

There are thousands of motivated innovators out there - set your data free and let them innovate for you.

Technorati tags: nptech, mashups, API, policy

Posted by Kurt Voelker in Technology at 11:52 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.