Change // Reform // Collaboration
Barack Obama's 2012 campaign released their first video earlier this week, and it's a cavalcade of presidential memes. The Story of Us: Five Years Ago Today, highlights many internet platforms such as Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more.
The first edition of the EUhackathon took place on the 8th and 9th of November 2011 in Brussels.
This hack-a-thon brought together 54 participants from 17 different nationalities to work on two challenges around the theme of transparency on the Internet.
EU Vice-President Neelie Kroes incharge of the Digital Agenda offered her support and congratulations at the Awards Ceremony.
The hackathon winners were:
For the Internet Quality Track measuring network speeds:For the Global Transparency Track:
(via Google Policy Blog and http://www.euhackathon.eu/)
The film below discusss the past, present and future of connectivity with a mix of people including David Rowan, chief editor of Wired UK; Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr; and Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder of Soundcloud.
Each of the interviewees discusses the emerging opportunities being enabled by technology as we enter the Networked Society. Concepts such as borderless opportunities and creativity, new open business models, and today's 'dumb society' are brought up and discussed.
For more, check Ericsson's Networked Society
Clearspending was created to analyze how well government agencies report their spending on USASpending.gov.
Created by the Sunlight Foundation, it revealed that more than $1.3 trillion in federal reporting data from 2009 is broken; i.e. not meeting one of three basic metrics: timeliness, completeness or accuracy.
They've just released their analysis for 2010 and Ellen Miller (Director of the Sunlight Foundation) says not much has changed:
OMB have failed to correct the problems we uncovered
For more, check ClearSpending.org and the Sunlight Foundation.
Earlier this week, the Obama Administration celebrated 18 technology innovators as part of their “Champions of Change” initiative. White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, honoured these citizens for building applications on government data in order to improve life for their fellow citizens. The applications vary widely in scope, from helping citizens to solve local issues through collective dialog, through to informing parents of child-friendly destinations and helping asthma patients track the use of their medication.
The White House's website is hosting profiles of many of these innovators including:
Valerie Jarret, Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama, explained the Champions of Change initiative as 'highlighting Americans doing extraordinary things in their communities'.
For more, check Whitehouse.gov's series of blog posts from these champions:
Aleem Walji, practice manager for innovation at the World Bank Institute, which assists and advises policy makers and NGOs, tells the Guardian's Activate summit in London about the organisation's commitment to open data.
Last month, the 2011 Government of the Future Summit gathered together European decision makers and senior government officials to explore the role of innovation in public services and the importance of state institutions in driving economic growth.
For more, see LisbonCouncil or GovernmentOfTheFuture.net along with their publications below
