[government] Forum Topics

The British Government's decision to throw £30 million on getting everybody online is of course laudable in its way. The idea is to save a lot of money - and as the last European country still in recession goodness knows we could do with it - by taking Government services …

An increasing number of cities in the United States and Canada are releasing data to developers to use in applications. While regions have released geographic information system (GIS) data for some time, such data required complicated software to use. Cities are now releasing all kinds of data, some of them …

This is a bit off topic, but times are tough and money is money. There's an opportunity to earn between US$10 and $20 an hour working for the [U.S. Census Bureau](http://2010.census.gov/2010censusjobs/) for the 2010 population count. And after seeing number of hits that "[Craigslist: Developer's Jobs and Other Jobs](http://www.daniweb.com/news/story232973.html)" generated, …

Keeping the Internet safe for satire, the World Intellectual Property Organization [URL="http://didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com/legal.php"]ruled[/URL] that the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com was not a violation of the conservative political commentator's intellectual property. The WIPO [URL="http://reporter.blogs.com/files/decision-d2009-1182.pdf"]ruling[/URL] "dismissed Beck's argument that Internet users could be confused by the domain name and its accompanying Web site," noted …

Here's a switch. Instead of newspapers trying to protect the identities of the people posting to their websites, the newspaper is the one outing them. As [URL="http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-editors-desk/the-editors-desk/2009/11/post-a-vulgar-comment-while-youre-at-work-lose-your-job/"]described[/URL] by editor Kurt Greenbaum of the [I]St. Louis Post-Dispatch[/I], someone posted a vulgar word in the paper's online commenting system, and re-posted it …

If you've ever had Google Maps literally send you up the river or down a sidewalk, you may have wondered whether the company ever actually sees the areas it maps. Now, it does, through an increasing number of volunteers who make corrections and add more detail to maps, according to …

A [URL="http://gawker.com/5367093/mcsteamy-v-gawker-media-llc/gallery/5"]lawsuit[/URL] over a website's [URL="http://gawker.com/5339221/danes-anatomy-mcsteamy-his-wife-and-a-fallen-beauty-queens-naked-threesome"]publication[/URL] of a celebrity threesome sex tape is provoking some [URL="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/11/does-gawkers-publication-of-mcsteamy-sex-tape-constitute-fair-use315.html"]thoughtful discussion[/URL] about fair use. Not to mention giving PBS, [URL="http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/11/what_a_celebrity_sex_tape_laws.html?sc=fb&cc=fp"]NPR[/URL], and the [URL="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/mcsteamy-vid-lawsuit-its-a-copyright-beef/"][I]New York Times[/I][/URL] the opportunity to talk about sex tapes. The tape consists of [I]Grey's Anatomy[/I] actor Eric Dane and his wife …

Far from being made superfluous by the Internet, a [URL="http://www.ala.org/ala/research/initiatives/plftas/2008_2009/index.cfm"]recent study[/URL] by the American Library Association finds that the library is often the only source of free Internet access in a community. More than 71 percent of all libraries (and 79 percent of rural libraries) report they are the only …

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously earlier this week to outsource its e-mail system to Google Inc., according to an [URL="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/10/city-council-votes-to-adopt-google-email-system-for-30000-city-employees.html"]article[/URL] in the Los Angeles [I]Times[/I]. The contract is worth $7.25 million and covers 30,000 employees. In June, Washington, D.C. made a similar decision, signing a contract worth almost …

In addition to funding [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231771.html"]broadband projects[/URL] in the states, particularly in rural areas, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, includes funds for [URL="http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press/2009/BTOP_mapping_090701.pdf"]collection of state-level broadband data[/URL], as well as state-wide broadband mapping and planning. The project, which will also help create …

The Associated Press [URL="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iuRIVBTLUvW7823FC-fcfhvkSxHgD9BHLF180"]reported[/URL] this weekend that the [URL="http://www.whitehouse.gov/"]official White House website[/URL] has been switched to using the open-source Drupal content management system Using open source will result in improved security -- because more programmers will be looking for errors in the software -- as well as more quickly and …

Twitter, Inc., has shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives, but fake websites using the Democrats' names are still up. The story was [URL="http://current.com/177fi4c"]reported[/URL] in the Hartford [I]Advocate[/I], an alternative newsweekly. State Republican Chairman Chris Healy told the paper that it …

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The deadline for …

The 2008 presidential election featured a new emphasis on using the Internet, ranging from raising money to [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story219553.html"]advertising[/URL] to getting support. It's still going on. Facebook, in particular, due to the ease in which people can set up affinity groups, is proving to be a new source of online activism, …

GovLoop, an online social network for government workers that was started by a federal worker, has been sold to GovDelivery Inc., a venture-backed government communications platform, with GovLoop founder Steve Ressler as its head of social networking. Terms of the sale were not [URL="http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090928_8720.php?oref=rss?zone=NGtoday"]disclosed[/URL]. The service currently has about 20,000 …

It's been known for a while that current and potential future [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2555.html"]employers[/URL] look at people's profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook. And it's also been known that people are using social networking sites to announce the status of their relationship -- or [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3874.html"]lack of one[/URL]. Now the two …

In its ongoing effort to become the coolest city in the U.S., the mayor of Portland, Oregon, is going to attempt [URL="http://portlandoregon.gov/auditor/index.cfm?c=50265&a=264719"]tomorrow night[/URL] to make it an "open source city," making its data as open as possible while respecting privacy, and buying open source applications when possible. If passed by …

A poll on whether President Barack Obama should be assassinated, which was posted to Facebook on Saturday, has been taken down after an investigation by the Secret Service, according to [URL="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113282766&sc=fb&cc=fp"]NPR.[/URL] The poll consisted of a single question: 'should obama be killed? [sic]' with the choices yes, maybe, if he …

In an attempt to build support for a bill that would roll back a ban on Internet gambling enacted when Republicans led Congress, the online gambling industry is running online ads noting that legal online gambling could raise $48 billion for the deficit-plagued U.S. government. "At a time when the …

Remember [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story219413.html"]Terry Childs[/URL]? He was the network administrator for the city of San Francisco who -- claiming he was protecting the city government's computer system from incompetent coworkers -- changed the system's passwords and then for more than a week refused to give them to anyone, even after being arrested. …

If you've used Facebook for more than, oh, five minutes, you've seen a Facebook quiz. "What Greek dance are you?" "Which NFL coach are you?" "Which Diplomacy country should you play?" and so on. (I forget every quiz I see, and I'm up to more than 250 by now.) But …

What, you hadn't heard? "A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a "kill switch" to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks -- a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties," [URL="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/senate-president-emergency-control-internet/"]FOX News[/URL] said breathlessly. (Nice …

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that not only threw out other cases, but has more broadly set a limit upon the use of data seized in a computer search. The ruling has to do with the "plain view" doctrine, which allows law enforcement to take …

I'm not a great fan of the phrase 'total coincidence' and nor am I a fan of The Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills and Lord President of the Council to be formal. While I'm on the small matter of …

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, states were required to set up websites in a specific format to explain to citizens how the money was spent. The [URL="http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/ARRAwebreport.pdf"]first look[/URL] at how states have done has come out, and it …

[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4412.html"]As feared[/URL], the Administration has caved to telecom industry restrictions on mapping the availability of broadband Internet, making it less likely that $7 billion in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, will actually help improve broadband access to people who …

Want to do a public records search on email messages from your state legislator? Chances are, you won't be able to, even with the recent move toward [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4592.html"]transparency in government[/URL]. Even states that do have an email retention policy in state government -- and many of them don't -- often …

Convention and visitors bureaus -- perhaps more than 300 of them -- are increasingly using Twitter to help market their locations, and a [URL="http://www.aboutdci.com/dci/media/docs/CVB%20Twitter%20Report%20Final.pdf"]recent study[/URL] examined how they do that. Development Counsellors International, a New York-based tourism firm, said it looked at the convention and visitors bureaus representing the nation’s …

Gary McKinnon is either a UFO-obsessed nerd who happens to suffer from a form of autism, or a fugitive from justice who was responsible for the biggest military hack of all time. The description varies depending upon whether you are a balanced individual with no axe to grind or the …

How transparent is too transparent? In an attempt to make it easier for ordinary people to see what their governments are spending their money on, more entities -- from city to federal -- are putting this information online, noting that it's a public record. But some government workers are uncomfortable …