Posts Tagged ‘open government’

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Top 200 .Gov Websites: Thinking about Metrics and Performance Management for Open Government

December 7th, 2009

Top Government Websites by Visitors:

  • Top FederalWebsite:  ED.gov
  • Top State Website:  CA.gov
  • Top City Website:  NYC.gov

On the eve of the open government directive, I wanted to start thinking about to measure how well an agency does Open Government.  Afterall we are not working on Open Government to say we are doing it, but to serve the mission of a specific agency and the government as a whole.  A rough measure of service though very imperfect is how many people are visiting a website monthly.   At least you can do an ROI on the cost per visit and see whether the site is actually attacting visitors.   To start thinking about this, I did a survey of all the .Gov websites I could find and determine the number of visitors based on publically available visitors for the month of August which I could find for free (not claiming these stats are the best but they are a start).  Then I organized the list with the sites with the most visitors in one month at the top.

Not doing a full analysis now but some interesting observations: 8 Cities make it to the top 200. The top city is Nyc.gov with about 1.5 millions visitors in a month.  Dc.gov is #2 with about 300K per month.    The top state is California at 8.5 millions visitors in a month.   » Read more: Top 200 .Gov Websites: Thinking about Metrics and Performance Management for Open Government

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Posted in Building Better Government Websites, government 2.0

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Building Better Open Government Websites Recap: Accessibility and Social Media Panel

December 7th, 2009

On our October 30 workshop with Potomac Forum, we invited Terry Weaver, Director of the Center for Information Technology Accommodation (CITA), to be on a panel discussing 508 legislation compliance and Social Media. 5 significant points emerged from that discussion which will affect multiple agencies engaging in social media and open government initiatives:

  1. Youtube now offers captioning. Ms. Weaver made it a point to indicate that since it is now possible to caption videos on YouTube, an excuse for posting a uncaptioned video no longer exists. Federal agencies must caption videos wherever they are posted. Posting an uncaptioned video and directing screenreader users back to the agency site for the captioned version is not equal access. It is more like the separate text version of a website that some agencies used in the early days of Section 508 when they couldn’t comply with the standards on the main page. It is a “separate but equal” approach which provides an alternative means and a practice  she discouraged.
  2. If you are not 508 compliant, indicate that you are planning to be and how someone who wants the information but cannot access can request accommodation. Having a plan is the first stage of 508 compliance and making it clear that you are progressing toward compliance is an important step toward mitigating risk.
  3. There are limitations on some social media sites for 508 compliance. Facebook for instance has content which often cannot be read by screen readers. Therefore any information posted on facebook by a government agency should be available from a compliant webpage elsewhere.
  4. Blogs in Open Government: Images should be captioned with description. Non-captioned videos should not be allowed. It is fairly easy to make most blogs 508 compliant by making sure they can be read by screen readers and also to caption with a description in the ALT tag any images. It was recommended that video submissions by the public not be allowed in comments as most will not be captioned.
  5. In any use of a social media site for official agency business or open government efforts, be sure to check with your agency’s general counsel to be sure that you have all of the proper agreements in place. GSA has examples of the modified terms of service (TOS) agreements it has put in place on www.apps.gov. GSA encourages all agencies to create similar agreements.

Stay tuned for more workshops on building better

open Government websites.

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Posted in Social Media, government 2.0, online social networking

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Linking Benefits to Federal Spending to drive Government Innovation.

August 4th, 2009

Opportunity: Spending of government  money should have a purpose and that purpose should be for the benefit of someone whether directly or indirectly.  The benefit might for an employee to work better and that employee might be working to benefit a group of citizens. The administration wishes to create a more transparent, effective and innovative government as well as to reduce the federal deficit. In order to do this, the administration must identify opportunities for innovation which can increase efficiency as well as decrease spending and make the case to the American people that it is making more effective use of taxpayer funds.  I want to make the case here that linking spending data to benefits of that spending in ways which are detailed,  clear and relevant to large numbers of citizens is the best way to find innovations to create a more effective government as well as to make transparency have meaning and value for the average citizen.

Challenge:

  • Linking Spending to Benefits: Federal spending is reported in ways which do not clearly connect it to the benefits that specific expenditures provide.  While certain dollar amounts may be reported as going toward ‘Defense’ that is not specific enough to understand whether a given expenditure is justifiable and doesn’t allow an expenditure of group expenditures to be compared to alternative solutions for the same specific benefit oriented goal.  Therefore we must find ways to better connect specific spending to specific benefits. » Read more: Linking Benefits to Federal Spending to drive Government Innovation.

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Posted in government 2.0, linked data

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Gov 2.o Spoofing is here. Reciprocal Link Authentication could prevent misunderstanding.

June 2nd, 2009

Postscript:  Another example of government spoofing was a prank cell phone call from India to the Pakistani Defense Minstry the day after the Mumbai terrorist attack.  The called claimed to be an Indian Defense Ministry Official and was claiming that India was going to retaliate. Planes went up in the air on both sides and the US had to intervene to prevent further escalation.  The call was taken seriously because normal authentication procedures were not followed or did not exist.

Hot off the press: Another spoofing incident which alleges civil damages involving Twitter the St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa.

While in general I dont think western Democracies have a lot to learn from the North Korean Government, I think in the case of Gov 2.0 spoofing there might be an exception.  The North Korean Central News Agency was recently impersonated on Twitter in a way which might have fooled a lot of people.  The twitter feed was made to look realistic because it used actual articles released by the Central News Agency. The prank was pulled off by a parody website called Stupidedia and they didn’t seem to intend to create any harm with it.

But this points out how easy it is to pretend you are an official government agency on twitter.  Recently I advocated for a simple reciprocal link authentication policy which would place a link on any official government web 2.0 account (twitter, facebook fan page etc) to a .gov or .mil page which would then give a link or list of links to the official social media account for that agency.  Then anyone could with 2 clicks verify that a social media account is authentically coming from an official government source.   As government presence becomes more common on social media, we will likely see more attempts to grab attention through this type of impersonation.  While it doesn’t seem like much could come of this, all it takes is one person believing one source is the voice of a government and acting on it to cause at the least embarassement and at the worse some harm.

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Posted in Identification, Policy, Social Media, Tools, authentication, government 2.0

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Online Authenticity: Should Feds carry a badge in cyberspace? Or at least a reciprocol link?

May 4th, 2009

The future of the internet will involve more authentication than it does today but here is a potential interim solution to provide some level of authentication for Gov 2.0 presence on online social networks such as facebook and twitter. standard policy of having a reciprocal link back to a facebook fan page or twitter account on a .Gov/.Mil website which the social network page points to could be a simple interim solution. I call it Reciprocal Link Authentication.

Government 2.0 includes a government presence on non-government websites such as online social networks (OSNs) (think facebook fan pages and twitter accounts) so that citizen’s can encounter government guidance and assistance where they ‘live’ in cyberspace.  But how can citizens be certain that the government account/representative is authentic?    If you run into someone in the street and they say they are working for the government, how do you know for certain?  They provide you will a badge or ID right at the beginning of the conversation.

If we encounter government workers as official government representatives in non-government cyberspace, should we also be able to see some sort of identification?   Since cyberidentity is more easily assumable in many cases than aliases in real life (especially on social networks), shouldn’t there be a way to verify the authenticity of someone claiming to represent a government? Often times government officials on OSNs such as agency fan pages on facebook or informational twitter accounts will have an official seal or emblem. The problem with this is that it is trivial and relatively low-risk to copy or create an image of a seal or official looking emblem and put it on an anonymous OSN account compared to duplicating a paper credential which someone might show you in person.

The commercial solution for authentication won’t work on social network pages. Here’s why.

Commercial websites sometimes provide SSL encrypted links to independent authentication websites (Verisign, Godaddy, among others) to prove their authenticity.  The problem with the government using this method is that it would add paperwork and costs to implement SSL badges or require changes in existing online social networks profile options.  Also I don’t think there are products which work with OSNs and the authenticators to verify anyone on social networks yet.  Perhaps more importantly, the government would be then depending on a commercial company to prove its authenticity.  Basically it’s a non-starter if you want to actually achieve a Government 2.0 presence online in the near future for several reasons ranging from practicality to policy to politics to costs.

But wait, there may be a much easier and better way. .Gov and .Mil web sites already are monitored and checked for authenticity unlike .com and .org sites.   So you don’t need an independent cyber authenticator such as Verisign because any .Gov or .Mil site can serve as that authenticator.

Reciprocal Link Authentication.

Why not have a simple policy that any online social network account or non-.Gov/.Mil online presence have a link to a .Gov/.Mil webpage which then links back to that same OSN account?   So if someone wanted to verify a government twitter account, they could simple click on the URL provided and easily find a linkback to that same twitter account on the .Gov/.Mil webpage they landed on.  If the account is hijacked then a notice of the problem could be put up until the account identity is secured again.  If this is done on all federal OSN accounts, the cybercommunity will become quickly accustomed to the authentication method and if a hijacker removed the authentication link, the visitors will know to dismiss the account.  And if they see something which sounds a bit off, then can instantly verify it by following the link back to the OSN account.     It would not mean much work since online government representatives at non .Gov/.Mil sites almost always have some .Gov/.Mil landscape under their control.

Reciprocal Link Authentication seems easy, low cost and instantly provides a universal method to authenticate any online government representation without much effort.  Sure its not perfect from a cybersecurity point of view, buts it goes a long way to addressing several important concerns about government representation on non-government websites.

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Posted in Policy, Security, Social Media, government 2.0

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