Tidbits from the Transforming Local Government Conference by the Alliance for Innovation. A great read.
Profound Thoughts from Innovative Public Managers
Link
Reply
Category Archives: Professional
Retirement of Fairfax County Executive
The Washington Post has a great article on the retirement of Tony Griffin, Fairfax County’s county executive:
As Fairfax County’s county executive for more than a decade, Griffin has quietly managed one of Virginia’s most diverse and dynamic jurisdictions, a suburb of more than 1 million people that covers nearly 400 square miles. Only one person has held the post longer.
There is a reason I’ve gotten into government, and specifically city/county management. And Tony Griffin has lived a life of it. Go read the article, because this is what I want to do.
Year Interview with Edmonton City Manager
I’ve had this link sitting in my inbox for a long time, and I’ve been meaning to post it. An Edmonton, Alberta, blog posted this interview with the City Manager on his year anniversary. I really like a lot of what Simon Farbrother implemented in Edmonton and his general mindset.
Great News for Kansas City, Kansas
Yesterday Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas, would be the first city to participate in the Google Fiber project. The Google Fiber project seeks to bring 1-gigabit internet access to every house.
Google will have to reach an agreement with the Unified Board of Commissioners, but when that is completed they will work to roll out access to 50,000 to 500,000 residents of Kansas City, Kansas, at a competitive price.
You can read about the news from the New York Times, Government Technology, and the press release from the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas (pdf file).
I couldn’t be happier for the residents of Kansas City, Kansas. I worked for a year at the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, and it is a place with great citizens and great workers. Kansas City was hit pretty hard by the end of the industrial boom, and the city has never really recovered. I think Google Fiber will give them a leg up on other cities in attracting new businesses and great residents. I am extremely proud that Mayor Joe Reardon and the staff at the Unified Government won this project for their citizens.
Google Opens More Public Data
Red and Black on the Key Acquisition
The University of Georgia student newspaper, the Red and Black, wrote up the UGAKey.com acquisition. I really appreciated this from Koofers:
“UGAKey.com is one of the most widely used sites in this category, particularly for the course registration process,” Hatfield said. “It is a popular tool with solid data.”
UGAKey.com Announces Acquisition by Koofers
UGAKey.com Announces Acquisition by Koofers
Georgia Alumni Thank Users, Ensure Grade Data for Future
February 14, 2011
University of Georgia students have a new resource for choosing their courses and professors.
UGAKey.com, a website containing grades for most University of Georgia courses since 1999, will now be available from Koofers.
The eleven years of grade data previously available on UGAKey.com, along with several thousand syllabi, will now be accessible through Koofers.com, along with course textbook listings, professor reviews, and other services that Koofers brings to over 2,000 campuses nationwide.
UGAKey.com was developed by UGA alumni Chris M. Lindsey ‘08, Noah Mink ‘08, and Paul Ruddle ‘09. An original version of The Key was available on a Black Tie Party website in March of 2006, while UGAKey.com officially opened its doors on August 11, 2007.
“We created UGAKey.com to provide a service to UGA students,” said Chris Lindsey, UGAKey.com co-founder. “We’ve had a great time building and maintaining the site. But, as we’ve graduated from UGA, we’ve found less time to add the new features to the site that we’ve always dreamed of. Koofers will provide more great services to UGA students, at no cost.”
Fellow co-founder Paul Ruddle added, “We want to thank all the UGA students who have made UGAKey.com an invaluable part of their course registrations for more than five years. We know Koofers will continue to provide the important information you’ve come to expect from us, and we look forward to seeing what exciting new things they have in store.”
UGAKey.com Founders,
Chris M. Lindsey
Noah Mink
Paul Ruddle
About Koofers
Koofers, Inc. is a social learning company transforming higher education through student-driven, intercollegiate collaboration. Founded in 2008, Koofers empowers students to help each other learn by providing open and free access to: course materials, class and professor ratings, study aids and more.
Drupal CMS for House of Representatives
GCN noted yesterday that the U.S. House of Representatives is moving to the open source Drupal content management system. The White House recently moved to Drupal also, which I have discussed here and here.
The founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, talked about the House move to Drupal and mentions the requirements:
- Accommodate hundreds of independent websites, each with different sets of features.
- Provide the ability to deploy new sites quickly and efficiently.
- Enable House Members to use the web designer or developer of their choice by leveraging the Drupal community.
A couple of examples of the new Drupal websites, which have initially been deployed for freshmen House members, are here and here.
My Pet Peeve – Gen Y Characterizations
*Note – this issue has long been a pet peeve of mine. Beware. Also, I am a member of the demographic cohort known as Generation Y or the Millenials.*
The ICMA twitter account (@LocalManagers) tweeted today about an article in the Globe and Mail about employees from Generation Y.
While the article discusses several generalities about Gen Y employees, the crux (and title) identifies that workers from Generation Y prefer job training to cash bonuses.
I don’t argue this point. I don’t know what people from Generation Y prefer(and I truly don’t know which I prefer). But, I object to the idea of this article (and thousands of others) that society can characterize people solely based upon their birthdate.
You understand that, right? Any time we talk about Baby Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y, Millenials, etc., we are generalizing on defining characteristics of massive populations of people. I’m not talking about the statistics like ten thousand Baby Boomers retiring every day (that can be statistically proven); I’m talking about people characterizing people from each generational cohort. The people of our country have long fought generalizations based on race, religion, nationality, gender, or birthplace – so why generalize based on something so utterly distinct from personality, someone’s birthday? Each person is different!
Most of these types of article (the ones I read, at least) tell managers how to manage employees based on their generational cohort.
Here’s my point: Manage your employees based on those individuals. If you want to know whether they prefer cash bonuses or job training, ask! If you want to know if they prefer open work environments, flex scheduling, meetings, health spending accounts, job perks, or anything else, ask them! Need to know how to manage or discipline employees, interact with and get to know your employees!
Don’t manage me based on what a book or article in USA Today says people in my age group like. Manage me!
This is how I will manage.
Twitter Helps Cory Booker Dig Out His Residents
I am a little late on this, but I wanted to point out a great public interest/public administration/politics piece.
During the most recent snow storm on the East Coast, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, patrolled the streets using Twitter to direct snow plows and city workers, and even shoveled out residents and cars himself. The Twitter Blog has a great piece on Booker’s heroic efforts and it links to stories at several major news outlets.
You can follow Mayor Booker (@CoryBooker) on Twitter yourself.
These are the accomplishments we public servants can achieve with the help of social networking and social media. These are the types of things I want to do in public service, and services like Facebook and Twitter can help us all improve our communities.