TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

You've seen those BlackBerry-crazed workaholics that take their jobs with them everywhere -- out to dinner, to their kids' soccer games, even on their honeymoons -- but only in the movies, right?

Well, according to a new CareerBuilder survey, 60 percent of workers actually do check their smart phones on vacation, and more than half do so while driving. Technology allows workers to stay connected anywhere and everywhere, including the bathroom, the gym, children's events and even church.

However, not all survey respondents actually want to be accessible at all times. Eighteen percent said they are required to be accessible outside of office hours, and 14 percent felt obligated to do so because of the economic situation.

"The lines between work and life can be very blurry these days," said Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder's vice president of human resources. "Seventeen percent of workers said they feel like their work day never ends because of technology connecting them to the office. To reduce burnout and avoid potentially risky behavior, workers should allot technology-free time when away from work."

Friday is the last day to submit a nomination for the Nextgov Awards. Do you know a colleague who took on personal risks to push through an idea, policy or management change that used technology? If so, please tell us their story.

A panel of judges will pick the winners and Nextgov will honor them at a luncheon at the Gov 2.0 Expo at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The expo is co-sponsored by O'Reilly Media Inc. and TechWeb, and Nextgov is the premier media sponsor.

Wired Workplace blogger Brittany Ballenstedt posted findings on Wednesday from a study conducted by Accenture on Millennials' use of social networking tools at work. (Millennials are the youngest workers among us, those younger than 28.)

One finding, near the end of Brittany's post, is of particular importance for agencies looking to hire young workers - and that's just about everyone - and needs to be highlighted, underlined and bolded. Brittany writes:

Millennials in the United States also noted that state-of-the-art equipment and technology will be essential when choosing an employer. More than 52 percent of U.S. Millennials agreed or strongly agreed that technology would be a key factor in their employment decision, while 45 percent partly agreed and 13 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed.

That's 97 percent of young workers who said they at least partly agreed that how an employer uses technology would be a key factor in who they would work for. Again, 97 percent - just about everybody.

As Peter Orszag said at a Government Executive event on Tuesday, the federal government must come out of the cave and into the 21st century.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag spoke at a Government Executive leadership breakfast on Tuesday and talked about the Obama administration's effort to close the federal government's "IT gap," a situation in which many agencies work on computer systems -- or on no systems at all -- that are woefully behind what the private sector has. (As an illustration, he showed a photo of what he called "the cave" in Pennsylvania, where federal employee records are stored in row upon row of metal file cabinets. Loose wires dangled from the ceiling.)

With the IT gap, "it's impossible to move to a new level of productivity" in government, he said.

But don't expect an increase in the $80 billion federal IT budget to fill that gap, Orszag said. "I'm not sure we need more money," he explained. We need "better management of the money we are already spending." The Obama administration proposed a relatively flat IT budget for fiscal 2011.

When asked if he was ruling out more money for IT in the future, Orszag replied, "I'm not ruling out more. . . . But more money isn't always the solution and can be counterproductive because it doesn't force choices that lead to more efficiency."

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists flew to Capitol Hill last week to promote the Startup Visa Act, a bill that would amend immigration law to make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to stay in the United States -- and create jobs here -- if they demonstrate funding from U.S.-based investors.

This wasn't just a stakeholders' party. So far, more than 780 voters have sent over 2,800 messages to their elected representatives through 2gov, a nifty tool that channels Tweets to Congress. And 95 percent are supporting the bill.

2gov taps into the viral nature of Twitter to bring as many voters as possible into the decision making process in government. Once users sign onto 2gov using their Twitter accounts and submit their online petition, their statements aren't just broadcast live on Twitter. An engine grabs the Tweet, verifies the identity and the constituency of the person who sent it, so that Tweets can be collated it into a report and delivered to the right elected representatives.

2gov's authentication process weeds out astroturfers -- people who have been paid to create online buzz and the illusion of a real grassroots movement. The term was coined from the brand of synthetic grass, if you were wondering.) David Binetti, the chief executive officer of Votizen, the company that developed 2gov, said he'd been trying to use the concept for USA.gov, the monolithic government information portal that he
co-founded in 2000, but the technology wasn't quite ready.

The tide has changed a lot since. To cast a wider net, 2gov will soon be integrated with Web sites such as Facebook. Plans to use phone text messaging to send out petitions are in the works. Binetti said he was pleasantly surprised by the level of civic participation: More than 90 percent of Tweeters had been legitimate voters. He expected more than half of users to be spammers. Why? More online users are realizing the need to take responsibility for political speech and ensure it gets through to the right channels.

"People want to have their voice heard, and they're realizing that more things get into the political discourse if they have some measure of authenticity," Binetti said.

Startup Visa made a trending topic last week, meaning that it was one of Twitter's most talked-about issues. (You can read more about the controversy the bill has invited here.)

An hour after an e-gathering of Startup Visa supporters was scheduled at noon on March 2 on Twitter, 5,000 people announced their presence by Tweeting with the #Startupvisa hashtag. Binetti jumped on the bandwagon. He Tweeted, "I support #Startupvisa and it's more important than Justin Bieber." (Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old pop star, is still trending; Startup Visa is not anymore.)

Our colleagues at Government Executive point to a blog post that highlights a 1995 Newsweek article on how the Internet will fail. A great line: " . . . no computer network will change the way government works."

And this:

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney.

The 2010 census is fast approaching, and a friendly challenge could help boost public excitement. The Census Bureau today launched an online mapping tool showing the 2000 census' participation rates across states, counties and cities.

The searchable, zoomable and clickable "Take 10" map, named for the 10 minutes needed to complete and return the surveys, color codes geographic areas based on mailback rates. The application will be updated when 2010 forms are distributed in March, allowing citizens to track, in real time, how their area is fairing. To increase participation, jurisdictions could see this as an opportunity for a little competition with their neighbors or simply try to best their 2000 performance.

Census also developed a toolkit, including sample Twitter and Facebook posts, to help government officials and communities spread the word about the decennial campaign.

If you've ever had a burning desire to read Zachary Taylor's inaugural address, wondered about the exact wording of the Mayflower Compact or simply forgotten the 17th Amendment, worry no more. There's an app for that.

MultiEducator Inc., a multimedia software developer, earlier this month released American Dreams, an iPhone/iPod application that compiles historical documents, speeches and Supreme Court decisions. The program allows users to search and favorite text versions of 480 speeches (including every inaugural address), 90 Supreme Court rulings and 18 audio recordings, which will expand as events occur and other historical documents are deemed worthy of inclusion.

Students of history, government officials and anyone who wants to have this information in the palm of their hand -- literally -- will appreciate American Dreams, said Marc Schulman, the app's developer.

The most important documents and decisions for inclusion jumped right out, added Schulman, who has been working to bring history to multimedia platforms since the early 1990s. He said that the app also shows users why the document or speech was important with a contextual description, an added value similar apps lack.

A quick search of the iTunes app store revealed U.S. Historical Documents, which lets users search, bookmark and create inline notes. Other related apps compile information on members of Congress, presidents and famous speeches.

Schulman anticipates an updgrade in a month or so to fix various formatting inconsistencies and spelling errors, and users will be able to download a free update every three to six months as new content becomes available. The app is supposed to have an email function, which Schulman said will be added immediately. The development team also is exploring a video component and adapting the app for Apple's new iPad.

The app, available for $2.99 in iTunes, was released Feb. 1.

Do you know a federal manager who recently took risks to push through a bold idea, policy or program that uses technology to make government work better or improve public services? If so, we'd like to hear your story by nominating your colleague for a Nextgov Award.

The Nextgov Award program, developed in partnership with O'Reilly Media Inc. and TechWeb, will recognize government executives who stepped outside their comfortable confines to think and manage differently. They acted boldly to push through an innovative program, policy or new management practice that relied on technology to move government in a new direction, to challenge employees to think and work differently, and that ultimately improved the lives of citizens.

We know there are many managers who have done just that, and we want you to tell us about them by nominating them for a Nextgov Award. The deadline is March 12, but we suggest you don't wait. Visit the nomination page and spend just a few minutes filling out the form. We'll tell the stories of the winners later this spring on Nextgov.

A panel of respected judges will make choose the winners, who will be honored at a luncheon on May 27 at the Gov 2.0 Expo at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The expo is co-sponsored by O'Reilly Media Inc. and TechWeb, and Nextgov is the premier media sponsor.

An experiment in crowd-sourced digitization kicked off last week with the inaugural meeting of the International Amateur Scanning League. Carl Malamud, president of Public.Resource.Org, the nonprofit dedicated to the free and open access of public domain material, was delighted to announce that:

David Ferriero, the U.S. Archivist, joined me in the initial meeting where we taught volunteers how to rip DVDs!

This new club's first task will be to organize its volunteers to digitize 1,500 DVDs from the National Archives and Records Administration so that the content can be shared on YouTube, the Internet Archive and PublicResource.org's Public Domain Stock Footage Theater for free. This grassroots effort brings more citizen hands on board FedFlix -- a joint venture by National Technical Information Service to digitize and put government videotapes online. Here's Malamud's plug:

The International Amateur Scanning League is an experiment in crowd-sourced digitization to help government and other institutions make their archives more widely available. Volunteers will be given credit for their work in the online metadata, will receive cool tchotchkes, and will be eligible to display Public Domain Merit Badges upon completion of designated levels of service.

On a more serious note, he adds,

When citizens help make works of the government more broadly available, this leads not only to increased access by the public but a host of commercial opportunities for print-on-demand, DVD sales, and other value-added operations.

So far, 25 volunteers -- including employees of the Smithsonian working after hours and members of DC CopyNight, a social gathering of people who meet to talk about developments in copyright law -- have been mobilized. Some of this stuff is not easy to do. "Digitizing videotape, for example, takes some
real training and equipment," Malamud admitted. Nonetheless, he hopes that the new club will pave the way for a host of new crowd-sourcing initiatives that will help make the public domain more accessible.