data.gov – Insights@Cofluence

Open government and public value: Beyond the bottom-line

John Wells — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 04:17:13 +0000

Theresa Pardo is well known for her work leading the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). This discussion looks at public value and taking a portfolio approach to open government, as articulated through the CTG’s Public Value Assessment Tool.

In this interview, Theresa explores several dimensions of what it means for governments to authentically deliver public value. Her position that “engagement is not either/or… we need a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by engagement” makes great sense when we think about harnessing diverse perspectives and disciplines to better understand the value that open government can add. The Public Value Assessment Tool asks the questions that practitioners can use to create value-based portfolios of open government initiatives.

We think not so much in terms of measures… but helping government management and government leadership think about value in a way that is more broadly based than the bottom-line return-on-investment models… in government, we need to think beyond the bottom-line.

Theresa also discusses her belief that the next generation of open data will be more about creating community-oriented data resources – creating and presenting data in ways that are of use to specific communities.

The Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany at the State University of New York are hosts of the 2012 ICEGOV international conference.

About Theresa Pardo

Theresa Pardo is the Director of the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany at the State University of New York.

Theresa’s current portfolio includes the development of a public value assessment framework for U.S. federal government open government initiatives funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the development of models of social and technical interactions in cross-boundary information sharing and integration as well as information technology enterprise governance. In addition to funding from NSF, Theresa’s research at CTG has been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the United Nations and New York State and local government agencies, among others.

Theresa is a Research Associate Professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Administration and Policy and an affiliated faculty member of the College of Computing and Information at the University at Albany. She is one of the founding developers of the highly ranked Government Information Strategy and Management curriculum at Rockefeller College. The academic program focuses on the policy, management and technology dimensions of information and technology use in the design and delivery of government programs. In 2008, Theresa received the University at Albany’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Theresa is also the co-chair of the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Tags: #opengov #icegov

Data.gov: Communities, voices and value

Allison Hornery — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:43:34 +0000

The US Data.Gov platform now features more than 470,000 datasets from 172 agencies, as well as thematic communities representing such diverse interests as health and education through to developers and consumers. Jeanne Holm shares some of the lessons learned over the last 12 months of escalating the platform, reinforcing the importance of a focus on people rather than the data itself.

I think the most important aspect of Data.gov is not necessarily the data it provides but the voice that it gives to people across the country.

Jeanne also discusses the collaboration between the US Data.gov and Indian data.gov.in teams to develop the open source Open Government Platform, and give us an update on the activities of the W3C e-Government interest group.

About Jeanne Holm

Jeanne Holm is the Chief Knowledge Architect at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech. She chairs NASA’s Knowledge Management Team, which facilitates access to and reuse of the knowledge to support future missions and drive innovation. Her team’s solutions help people manage space missions, learn virtually, and share lessons learned by transforming NASA into a learning organization through innovative techniques in developing communities of practice, harnessing the power of social media, and ensuring lessons are shared and embedded across the organization.

Jeanne was the manager for the award-winning NASA public and internal portals. She supports several DoD organizations in multi-generational learning, utilizing social media, creating collaborative structures, and identifying emergent technologies. Her activities range from social media, virtual worlds, gaming, ontologies, to collaborative systems. As a Fellow of the United Nations International Academy of Astronautics, she leads teams that set standards for how space missions should manage knowledge and share data in the future. She is the former chair of the Federal KM Working Group with 700 members across government, and serves on international standards and conference boards.

Jeanne is also a speaker at the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Tags: #opengov #opendata #gov2in #egov

Data, Gov and the W3C

Allison Hornery — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:40:22 +0000

Join us for a conversation with Jeanne Holm, Evangelist for data.gov and Chair of the W3C eGovernment Interest Group. We chat about some of the innovative ways in which data is being used by government and citizens, and also how the W3C interest group is working across countries to expand take-up of eGovernment.