open government - Page number 9

If you’re involved in open government, I encourage you to participate in this first informal open government communities survey. The objective of the short survey is to create a view of the broad community of constituents that comprise the open government movement, with a special interest in understanding the interplay and influence of open source software and the open source community in forwarding their objectives. » Read more

Last week, the Slovak Ministry of Finance proposed a revision of communication law by extending it to create a list of websites to be banned by all Slovak Internet service providers (ISPs). Even more disturbing, this list would be maintained by the tax office in Bratislava, a governmental office. Long story short, under this proposal, the tax office would have the power to dictate which websites are blocked and which are not. » Read more

The Open Technology Foundation (OTF) is a collaborative initiative that delivers results through a close relationship between the government sector, information and communications technology (ICT) industry, and academia across Australia and New Zealand. It will be a conduit to other similar peak bodies internationally where open technologies supported by local industry are mainstream in their public sectors. There is a wealth of knowledge and experiences which can be shared with us and vice-versa–"a global sharing alliance." » Read more

What do you think? Does the information paid for by taxes in a democracy belong to the people who helped pay for it? Or maybe governments have a right to keep secrets and an interest in doing so--everything can't be open. » Read more

In the past few months, the Australasian region has seen several developments building on their commitments to open government.

Last week in New Zealand, the Ministers of Finance and Internal Affairs adopted a statement detailing a new Declaration on Open and Transparent Government. The Declaration has been approved by » Read more

Originally published at GovLoop.com

Last week, I had the opportunity to present for the Maryland Association of Counties (MACO) summer meeting along with Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. Earlier this year, he announced that Baltimore County would be launching 23 technology initiatives and he shared a bit about their social media efforts to communicate more effectively with citizens on these and other county projects. » Read more

Open Source for America recently celebrated its second anniversary, and plans to recognize the individuals, projects, and deployments that support its mission to encourage free and open source software adoption in the US government. Nominate an individual or project for an award. The categories and last years winners are listed below. » Read more

Personal Democracy Forum‘s TechPresident recently published a post on the drawbacks of "civic hackathons" – weekends where, generally, developers and designers set out to solve city problems through coding and rapid prototyping in the course of 48 hours or less. This post, from TechPresident Associate Editor Nick Judd, was followed up by a very well-written article from Alex Howard of O’Reilly Radar highlighting the importance of realizing sustainability, community, and civic value beyond a single weekend of hacking and prototyping civic solutions. » Read more

Last week, the Iceland Constitutional Council, made up of 25 Icelandic citizens, presented a bill to their parliament outlining a new constitution. The bill contains 114 articles in nine chapters, and includes elements for a more open government. It appears that the population will be given the chance to vote on the new constitution after the Alþingi (national parliament) reviews the draft.

In April 2011, Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution by crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions from the Internet. We've taken a look at the draft constitution and there are several articles that create a more open government for Iceland. » Read more

It is summer, and travel season is upon us.

The annual summer air travel forecast released by the industry trade association for the leading US airlines predicts that those airlines will carry a total of 206.2 million passengers from June through August this year. That is an average of 2.24 million travelers taking to the skies every day this summer. » Read more