Archive: Year: 2009

Vivek Kundra, the federal government's new Chief Information Officer, has been spotted at his desk, doing his job. We're hearing that Kundra's temporary leave of absence, in the wake of last week's arrest of two individuals running a kickback ring from inside the Washington, DC CTO's office, has been lifted and that he's been reinstated. Obviously, this is very good news for the transparency movement. Stay tuned for more details. UPDATE: The White House is confirming our report. In addition, here's Kit Seelye's post on the New York Times blog, also with White House confirmation. From Nicholas Shapiro, WH assistant press secretary: “Mr. Kundra has been informed that he is neither a subject nor a target of the investigation, and has been reinstated.”...

Politico asks "Are Politicians Spamming YouTube?" Um, Is the Pope Catholic? Federal Computer Week is on Vivek Kundra watch duty. So is InformationWeek, but befitting their name, their information is weak...

The political world is abuzz, wondering whether the first big ask from Organizing for America to its multi-million email list is going to produce a shift in the battle over President Obama's budget proposal. It will take awhile to tell, of course, and the real measure will be in how Members of Congress respond to phone calls from their constituents, and indeed whether OFA can generate a big wave of grassroots pressure. One sign that things may not be gelling quite as nicely as OFA's leaders might hope comes in this look at daily YouTube viewership of OFA director Mitch Stewart's video calling on folks to join the group's "Pledge Project." As you can see, these numbers are pretty low. Could enthusiasm...

Check out this neat experiment in crowdsourcing from congressional watchdog Jerry Brito, the creator of StimulusWatch.org: I have been asked to testify at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday, March 19, 2009. It is entitled "Preventing Stimulus Waste and Fraud: Who Are the Watchdogs?" and it will focus on accountability for stimulus spending. I will talk about how third parties can build interesting tools to help citizens find and sort spending, jobs, and performance information if only government provides the data in a complete, timely, and standardized manner. Below is a draft of my written testimony. As a way to illustrate the concept of crowdsourcing to the Committee (and to make myself seem smarter than...

Slate's John Dickerson is reporting that "In an effort to educate the public on the state of the economy and his plans for improving it, President Obama is considering a series of short televised addresses similar to Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats." According to Dickerson, "Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has told the television networks that the administration may request more time than usual for a president. Gibbs did not provide a schedule but described the addresses as lasting about 10 minutes each." How 20th century of the President. Now, I understand why Obama still needs television to get his message out, especially to low-information voters. But after demonstrating the 2008 campaign that he understood the power of abundance online, posting thousands of...

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed that I spent my lunch hour at the Open Society Institute today for a talk on "The Future of News" by Paul Steiger, the longtime managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, who is the head of ProPublica, an "independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest." It was a mostly gloomy session, framed by the news that 11,000 professional journalists have lost their jobs in the last two years, and all the bad news currently coming out of the newspaper industry. You also probably know, if you follow me on Twitter, that I was gnashing my teeth for much of the time, frustrated by several questions from audience...

Obama hits the send button. Will 13 million hit reply? Did Vivek Kundra's transparent policies as DC CTO help suss out the office crook? Both TechDailyDose and David Stephenson think so. Obama new media hunk Chris Murphy stays close to home base, joins GMMB. Patrick Ruffini does his oppo-research, live-blogging Nate Silver's SXSW keynote and a Markos Moulitsas session on marketing. Obligatory mention of Twitter: who to follow in the Twitter #politics arena....

Don't miss Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson's latest ruminations on the future of journalism and the fate of newspapers; they will clear your head (if it isn't already) about how technology is driving change in this vital arena. Here's a snippet from Shirky: When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They...

In December 2007, the then-Chief Technology Officer of Washington, DC, Vivek Kundra, testified before a committee of the city council on "Theft and Fraud Prevention in District Government Agencies." He focused on steps his office had taken to create "a culture of accountability and innovation." Kundra, as readers of this blog know, is currently on leave from his new post as federal Chief Information Officer, after an FBI investigation resulted in the arrest last Thursday of a mid-level staffer from the DC Office of the CTO (OCTO) on corruption charges. Kundra is, according to all reports, not implicated in the case, and the FBI affidavit outlining the government's evidence makes no mention of him. A spokesman for DC Mayor Adrian Fenty...

Here's my and Andrew Rasiej's latest Politics 2.0 column, which ran in the Politico last Thursday. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s seventh biggest in terms of population. In terms of the amount of attention it draws daily from its 175 million members — roughly 20 to 30 minutes on average spent updating their profiles, reading about their friends, playing games and sharing news — Facebook could easily power a midsize economy. Here in the United States, we already know that Facebook is a meaningful platform for political engagement: from President Barack Obama on down, thousands of politicians, candidates and causes have built presences on the site, accumulating millions of supporters. Given all the social and political activity on...