Tag Archives: government technology

Dec 7 2010

Farmers Milking Social Media to Promote Agriculture

Check Me Out on MooooooooooooTube!

I love, love, love hearing about how social media is helping in new ways, and I am not just pulling your udder!

Here is yet another example of how everybody, and I mean everybody, is getting on the social media bandwagon as a way to bypass mass media and directly reach consumers.

A recent article in Government Technology magazine highlighted a growing trend in the agriculture industry to take a message online to directly interact with consumers.  The goal according to the article is to use social media as  ”an effective counter to the mixed marketing messages targeted at consumers about what’s healthy and how food is made”.  The movement stems primarily from  bad press in recent years in which many farmers felt that their side of the story wasn’t told accurately.  So they took it upon themselves to find new ways to reach out to the buying public to set the record straight.

According to Dino Giacomazzi, a dairy farmer and avid social media user,  the farmers’ voice has been lost in the past and “now thousands of farmers have since joined Twitter, Facebook or started a blog to show people what kind of work they are doing.”  Interestingly, but perhaps not surprising, is that this new world of such transparency is taking some getting used to for many of them.   But thanks to Giacomazzi and events like the recent Social Media Conference for Farmers, those in the ag industry will soon learn how to avoid the cowpies of social media and milk it for all it’s worth!

Want to know more?  Check out Giacomazzi’s great twitstream (@dairydino) or his blog – which has a bunch of great links to get you more in the know of life as a dairy farmer.

Mar 5 2010

The 2.0 of GovTech’s Top 25

This week, I was deeply honored to be named as one of the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2010 according to Government Technology magazine. Truly I am very excited to be in a group that has such talent and leadership in government innovation.  According to the associated article, this is a very exclusive list, limited to “people who cut through the public sector’s infamous barriers to innovation — tight budgets, organizational inertia, politics as usual, etc. — to reshape government operations for the better.”  So, yes, I am very proud.  But I am not wasting blog space tootin’ my own horn.  I thought it was very timely to do a post that shows how the criteria of this annual process has incorporated social media.
Below are excerpts from some of the winners profiles.  Yeah, I left my own out, that’d be a little too gratuitous, even for moi:
  • Peter Corbett: CEO, iStrategyLabs – “Recognized in part for creating Apps for Democracy, a Washington, DC citizen collaboration contest and his company, iStrategyLabs “seeks to bridge the digital and physical worlds, using social media and technology to produce content and connect citizens.”
  • Toni Cramer, CIO, Bellevue, Wash. – “The IT infrastructure she manages in Bellevue hosts software shared by 39 other organizations, gov2gov cloud computing at its finest!”
  • David Fletcher, CTO, Utah – “Engaging social networks was a top priority for Fletcher’s portal revision. Utah.gov assembles links to all social network activity by state agencies. And late last year, Utah became one of the first states to release guidelines for appropriate use of social media tools by state employees.”
  • Michele Hovet, IT director, Arvada, Colo. – “She has aggressively advocated for a local government cloud through which Colorado cities and counties could share services.”
  • Randi Levin, CTO, Los Angeles - ”The decision will migrate the e-mail of 30,000-plus city employees to Google’s off-site “government cloud” that debuts this year, and will later bring Google Apps – docs, voice, chat, mobile functionality and Web site support – to city departments. The move, Levin says, will save more than $5 million in hard costs and $20 million more through increased productivity.”
  • Gov. Deval Patrick and CIO Anne Margulies, Massachusetts -”What the are doing and or advocating in their organizations personify the inherent potential of govt2.0 – connecting people, ideas and services in an effort to improve the quality and efficiency of information and customer service. {…} To keep state employees and other stakeholders informed, Margulies and her staff created a detailed interactive wiki and video, which can be accessed from the Information Technology Division (ITD) Web site. Margulies also narrates a YouTube video that explains the project’s concept, development and expected completion date, in addition to the ITD’s weekly news blast and quarterly newsletter.”
  • Beth Noveck, deputy CTO for open government, U.S. government- “Thanks to her efforts, Americans can now collaborate and interact with the policy-making machinery of government.”
  • Steve Ressler, founder and president, GovLoop – “GovLoop bears all the hallmarks of a modern social networking site, with member profiles, discussion groups, forums and blog posts. But GovLoop, Ressler said, is unique in that it’s a platform for public-sector employees to share government-specific experiences.”
  • Selvi Stanislaus, executive officer, California Franchise Tax Board – “A proponent of Web 2.0, Stanislaus helped the FTB get on Facebook. She also has five employees who regularly tweet and blog for the agency. In staying with her theme of transparency, Stanislaus said the blog will help open communication lines between the FTB and taxpayers. She says hearing the negative and positive can help the FTB improve its service to taxpayers.”
  • Dick Thompson, CIO, Maine - ”I think the way we use our portal and tools such as social networking, we’ll go through – I almost call it a rebirth – because I really believe that when we start to marry these tools in effective ways to deliver information and services, the degree of transparency, the degree of involvement of citizens in the way their government operates, will be expanded.”
  • Chris Vein, CIO, San Francisco – “He recently launched DataSF.org, a Web portal that publishes more than 100 public-sector data sets that residents can mash up to create shared applications.”We are opening up a dialog that’s never been there before between the city and citizens,” Vein said. “They’re sharing their experience and expertise to help improve government.”
Quite a trend, eh?  Don’t get me wrong, there were several other very important and consistent themes that ran throughout the profiles of the winners, including topics such as consolidation and public safety communications.  I am not discounting those. But what I do note with great interest is that so many of these influential govies have either a successful 2.0 track record or a strategic eye towards the incorporation of 2.0 into government.  This is a feather in the cap of that exploration.  We’ve moved beyond R&D into the realm of acceptable use and I daresay incorporation into an overall business strategy. That’s all folks –  a simple point this time.  Just sayin’…