Rock Creek Roundup (January 15 Edition)

Posted by: Meagen Ryan, Director of Strategy Jan 15, 2010 0 Comments

The State Department uses social media to help direct assistance to Haiti, the US Army’s iPhone app makes the top 25, a research firm predicts social media will get a larger piece of the federal IT budget and the White House hosts a ‘Who’s Who’ technology forum, all in this week’s Rock Creek Roundup.

—As part of the United States’ efforts to help the earthquake-stricken nation of Haiti, government agencies have turned to social media to help communicate about donations, missing people and other related topics. For example, the State Department has used its website, blog, and Facebook page to provide contact information for the best ways to give money or provide assistance, as well as to provide phone numbers where Americans can call to try and locate the whereabouts of family member who may have been in Haiti at the time of the quake.

—Earlier this week, the United States Army announced that its ‘US Army News and Information’ app is one of the iTunes store’s top 25 free iPhone applications. The application lets users select news stories from specific regions or covering specific topics, and delivers news stories, photos, and even videos directly to the user’s iPhone. The Army app also includes a component that allows people to share information that they find interesting directly from their iPhone to their Facebook page, their email messages and even their Twitter feed. Congrats to the Army for a developing such a useful and popular application!

—Government spending on information technology is expected to rise from $73 billion to $75.7 billion, or nearly 4%, in the 2010 fiscal year. And research firm Government Insights predicts that some of the additional funding will go toward agency’s goals of meeting the new transparency guidelines set forth by the Obama administration’s Open Government Initiative. However, the firm also predicts that social media initiatives will also grab a larger piece of the pie, as agencies continue to take advantage of existing services like Facebook and Twitter rather than developing similar functionality for their own sites. You can check out all of Government Insights’ predictions in a PDF report; it’s a fascinating read.

—Just yesterday, the White House invited the CEOs of more than 50 companies to take part in the White House Forum on Modernizing Government. The forum, including attendees Steve Ballmer from Microsoft as well as representatives from companies including Adobe Technology, Trader Joe’s, Facebook, PepsiCo and Craigslist, was a discussion focusing on making government technology more effective and efficient. “Twenty years ago, people who came to work in the federal government had better technology at work than at home. Today, that’s no longer the case,” said OMB Director Peter Orszag on the White House blog. “The American people deserve better service from their government, and better return for their tax dollars. This forum is part of our efforts to modernize government and bring us into the 21st century.” In keeping with the theme of transparency, the opening session and breakout sessions were livestreamed.

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Meagen Ryan

Director of Strategy

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