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Serious about service on Martin Luther King day (#MLKday)

Okay, the deal is that things get better for everyone when we pull together, and this is a really good day to remind each other of that. Check out the Facebook page for MLKday.

I've been asked to mention what I'm doing for the day, but figure it's time to up the ante, and to partially disclose a lot more of my efforts.

My deal is that I'm now spending most of my time in public service and philanthropy, and on MLK day, ironically, I'll be flying to Washington in that pursuit. Makes sense to me to document some of what I've been doing and what will do around MLK day. Much of this I've been doing for five to ten years, but it's time to step up my game.

Since I don't write good, here's just the bullet list, incomplete where I haven't gotten permission to discuss, or it's too sensitive. This is a partial list, kind of a two week snapshot.

• "accountability journalism" and public service media
• helping Charity Navigator and GreatNonprofits (get started to) measure the effectiveness of causes and related nonprofits
• supporting #veterans across the country, and particularly where I live, the Bay Area (multiple parallel efforts)
• helping teachers via DonorsChoose.org
• helping FEMA figure out how to use social media for emergency management #smem
• working with CiviliNation trying to get reasonable social discourse going
• supporting Wikipedia with customer service, also financially
• using social media on behalf of AARP
• helping several Federal agencies with how to better do customer service online
• working with the State Dept, Palestinian and Israeli gov'ts on jobs in IT in
• the West Bank (I just found out I'm a cochair of the US Palestinian Partnership)
• working with multiple agencies regarding interoperability of health systems and medical records

An IT success story in Haiti

Inveneo focuses on building computer centers in places which need, but find it hard to get, reliable electrical power and bandwidth. They get stuff done, and you'll hear more about our their work, with a little of our support, in Kenya and the West Bank.

Check out A Haitian ICT Success Story: Jerry Joseph and remember that in the US we say IT, but elsewhere, it's Information Computer Technology

Jerry Joseph is pursuing a dream - he wants to be an expert in information and communication technology (ICT). Thanks to Inveneo, he's working toward that goal with Multilink, a Haitian ISP, by bringing broadband Internet to rural Haiti and changing the lives of people in his community.

...

Working with us to deploy long-distance WiFi, Jerry gained valuable practical skills and the attention of Multilink. Now Jerry is managing bandwidth and tech support as an independent contractor for Multilink in Léogâne, in the process, he is gaining real expertise in ICT and making an impact in his homeland.

Politifact: gop-pledge-o-meter joins the obameter

The folks at Politifact do some really serious fact checking of politicians, holding them accountable.

The GOP Pledge-O-Meter follows dozens of promises made in 2010 by Republican leaders in their speeches and in the Pledge to America, their blueprint for the 112th Congress.

 

 

The Obameter follows more than 500 promises made by Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. (Turns out he's doing great, particularly considering the atmosphere.)

A quick intro to "net neutrality"

Okay, what we're calling "net neutrality" isn't about regulation, it's about consumer protection.

For the best intro I've seen, check out A Guide to the Open Internet

Expertnet - public/private engagement for results

Turns out, the folks in Washington have been increasingly working with the private sector to run things more effectively, providing better return for the taxpayer dollar. We don't hear about this much, but I just noticed Designing for Democracy.

The deal is that they're looking for an effective engagement tool for public workers to engage expert citizens in stuff that matters.

This would be serious engagement with citizens, where government workers would take all suggestions and comments seriously, and where there would be actual results.  The public would vote good stuff up, hopefully dealing with trolls that way.

This effort goes the extra step, getting questions to people in the online communities where they spend their time.  Instead of having people visit government sites, people visit Facebook or LinkedIn or maybe an online support group for cancer sufferers.

Consider a government policymaker wants people to invest in the green economy or promote use of solar energy, and so on. Right now there's no way to find people with expertise in and passion for areas like that. "It's not just about connecting up to people with 3 PhDs but about making sure that people who care about a given topic know about the chance to participate."

You can get directly engaged:

To provide feedback by January 7, 2011, please go to http://expertnet.wikispaces.com where you will find a draft description of ExpertNet.  (ExpertNet is a working title.  You’ll find a page to suggest a better name.) 

Federal IT gets more effective while saving money

Okay, the deal is that the Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, just launched a 25 point plan to get very real about Federal IT projects.

Too many of 'em cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than they should, take years longer than necessary to deploy, and deliver technologies that are obsolete by the time they're done.

They're already gotten results, documented here:

This summer we took a hard look at 26 high priority projects that were either over budget, behind schedule, or at high risk for the kinds of problems that too often plague our large IT efforts. We completed the review of two projects in October, and this week, we announced the results from our review of the next 16 projects.

• One project has been terminated entirely, as the agency decided the project was too troubled to continue.

• For seven projects we have accelerated delivery of meaningful functionality.
  

• For eight projects, we’ve rescoped the projects back to increase the likelihood of success and reduced budgets in the process.

You can find it at cio.gov, highlights include:

• Turnaround or terminate at least one-third of underperforming projects in IT portfolio within the next 18 months

• Shift to “Cloud First” policy. Each agency will identify three “must move” services within three months, and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 month and the remaining two within 18 months.

• Reduce number of Federal data centers by at least 800 by 2015

• Only approve funding of major IT programs that:
−− Have a dedicated program manager and a fully staffed integrated program team
−− Use a modular approach with usable functionality delivered every six months
−− Use specialized IT acquisition professionals

• Work with Congress to:
−−Consolidate commodity IT funding under the Agency CIOs and
−−Develop flexible budget models that align with modular development

• Reduce barriers to entry for small innovative technology companies

• Launch an interactive platform for pre-RFP agency-industry collaboration

What is Lobbying? A Public Service Remix by Sunlight Foundation

Hey, the Sunlight Foundation just did this very good very brief about the damage lobbying does to our country.

Some lobbying is really good, like public interest work, and when a small business defends itself. Howevever a lot of lobbyists really hurt our country.

Here's more context on this.

Disclosure: I'm on the board of Sunlight.

Playing well with politicians on Wikipedia

I feel that Wikipedia is the repository of the history of our times, and a great example where large numbers of people work together for the common good. We're not talking only good intentions, but big results.

Months ago, I assumed an insignificant role related to Wikipedia customer service for the "biographies of living persons." The folks there already think about this kind of thing all the time, they strive for better ways of improving the accuracy of the info on their site.

In that time frame, I figured that the US midterm elections could get unpleasant and that we'd see a lot of information warfare. My suggestion involved getting both Republicans and Democrats to use Wikipedia problem reporting tools, with me helping grease the skids if useful.

Volunteers at Wikipedia suggest projects all the time, and like 'em, I thought I might be able to help out. With a lot of help from the fine people at Wikipedia's volunteer email response team, I approached some candidates and office holders and asked if they needed help on Wikipedia, and promised to route them to someone who could really help them. We didn't promise to whitewash articles (and in fact, in a lot of cases we had to say "Sorry, but it's verifiable and probably belongs") but they knew they would get a fair chance at having their say.

Sometimes, just having a conduit is enough to make people feel heard. It looks like that worked this year. People I know and trust tell me that the level of partisan arguments on Wikipedia was much reduced this year over election cycles past.

A lot of the credit belongs to the fine volunteers who answer several hundred thousand pieces of email every year for Wikipedia. They quietly did what they do all the time: make Wikipedia a better place, and the kind of resource that we've all come to depend on.

Job training for veterans via the Dept of Labor

Hey, there's a lot of help coming for veterans who need help getting jobs, though the word isn't getting out well.

Turns out the the Department of Labor has some help:

VETS and its sister Employment and Training Administration’s (ETA) Job Corps agency are partnering in a demonstration project that will provide Job Corps’ comprehensive array of career development services to eligible veterans 20 to 24 years old to prepare them for successful careers. This is a fully-funded, all-expense-paid demonstration project that is free to the veterans. The program includes transportation to and from the Job Corps center, housing, and meals, among other things. The pilot is being run at three Job Corps centers: Atterbury Job Corps Center in Edinburgh, Indiana; Earle C. Clements Job Corps Center in Morganfield, Kentucky; and Excelsior Springs Job Corps Center in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

Secondly, VETS has begun a rural veterans outreach pilot program in Washington State that will provide veterans in rural areas with better access to employment programs and services.  VETS will utilize partnerships with state and local organizations to contact rural veterans by telephone, mail and in person to determine employment services for which they are eligible.

Finally, The U.S. Department of Labor and VETS have made available a new online toolkit to guide employers through the process for hiring veterans. The free toolkit is designed to assist and educate employers who have made the proactive decision to include veterans and wounded warriors in their recruitment and hiring initiatives.

UPDATE: Facebook email: spam killer?

UPDATE: check comment below, new take on creating FB identities. Thanks!

Okay, we don't know what'll be announced, but Facebook email could indeed dominate all email.

The deal is that a Facebook identity (profile) pretty much ensures that there's a real person behind it. It's possible to fake a Facebook identity, but it's a fair amount of work, way more expensive than getting a new gmail or hotmail account.

Let's suppose that Facebook provides an email tool, and gives you options to control what email you'll actually see.

For example, you might tell Facebook email to only accept email from people with Facebook-verified identities. You might have different levels of email priority, from friends, fans, friends of friends, and so on.

(People might link their outside email addresses with their Facebook profiles, and you might choose to accept those.)

Spammers can create their own Facebook identities to try to work around this, but that's way more expensive than getting temporary email addresses, and that raises the cost of spamming people.

So, if Facebook does this, it might provide the most personal, and spam-free email available, and it might be relatively easy to do so. That's killer.