Delaware's Cloud

posted by Ellen Perlman

Delaware's home page has a word cloud. Also known as a category cloud or a tag cloud. You know, one of those lists of words, some bigger than others, that show which subjects visitors have clicked on the most. I can't recall any other government home page having a word cloud. Are there others? 

I can't decide whether it's edgy or sooo 2007. But it does, in its reductionist way, help people navigate the site. That is, if they understand that they can click on one of those words to get more info.

The word cloud shows that visitors to the site search for information on employment issues more than any other subject. "Wanted persons" is the second most popular.

Many visitors also click on child support, courts, department of education, DMV, inmates, jobs, sex offenders, unclaimed property and warrants. Far less visited are the subjects of 529, income tax, real estate, SEED (a scholarship program) and state police. Not that revealing, all in all. But a quick and interesting snapshot.

Going The Opposite of Green

posted by Zach Patton

Here at Governing, we get random promotional stuff sent to the office all the time. (If you need a copy of a new book about the Helen Boosalis, the mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska, from 1975-1983, I'm your guy.) But we just got something that takes the cake.

It's this package of stuff from an event planning company (like I said: random). It's all about how the company has gone green by banning Styrofoam from its events.  (Which is great, of course, but what is this, 1997?  Shouldn't they have quit using Styrofoam before now?)

Anyway, this press release all about how green this company is contained the following:

--a thick, glossy portfolio
--a full-color promotional booklet describing the company
--a CD in its own glossy, full-color case
--a 3-page press release on heavy paper
--6 separate, full-color posters describing the company's services and "food philosophy"
--6 small cards on topics like "A Guide to Sustainable Seafood Choices" and "10 Easy Steps to Make Your Facility Greener"
--a canvas bag with a plastic bottom insert, printed with the company's logo

The real kicker? We got SEVEN of these packets delivered -- EACH IN ITS OWN CARDBOARD MAILING BOX -- from the post office.

The irony is positively suffocating.

Sure It's Detroit, But Where's YOUR City's Epic Poem?

posted by Zach Patton

Plenty of city's have inspired songs or stories or, more recently, blogs. But where's the romance? Where's the epic poetry?

Apparently, Detroit.

In "The Straits," Kristin Palm, a California native who spent a few years living in Detroit, writes about "the D" on a grand scale. From the Detroit Free Press:

"The Straits," issued by a California publisher, is essentially an epic poem about Detroit. It's perhaps the first epic poem about Detroit, or at least the first of the 21st Century.

It starts by describing the French fort of the 1700s and ends by talking about "broken streetlights, failing schools, Crazy Larry pushing his shopping cart down the left turn lane of Woodward Avenue."

And while it might be epic -- it is 97 pages long -- it might not really be a poem in the traditional sense. It contains lists, for example, of the jobs performed by Detroiters in the 19th Century: stove builders, printers, iron molders, millers, brewers, Teamsters.

Other lists include how the 43 victims died during the 1967 riot; long-gone auto companies, and the cities to which Detroit jobs have gone in recent years.

The Phishing Catch

posted by Ellen Perlman

When's the last time you've gone phishing at the office? New York State did an exercise in 2005, sending a fake email to 10,000 state employees in five agencies. The "scam," perpetrated by security officials, was a spot check on employee e-mail behavior. And it was a test of how well the Office of Cyber Security & Critical Infrastructure Coordination was getting its cyber security message across to employees about what turns up in their inboxes.

Recipients got an email that looked as though it were from the cyber security office. They were told to check the security of their password by clicking on a link to a Web site. From there, they were asked to put in their password. If they did so, they essentially were told "gotcha."

Three-quarters of the recipients opened the e-mail. Seventeen percent followed the link. And 15 percent attempted to type on the fake password form. Ouch. There was no fingerpointing at, nor punishment of, that last group. But they were directed to a tutorial on how not to be so forehead-slapping gullible as to type in their password by e-mail request (the solution described diplomatically as how to be more "aware" and "prepared.")

Up Next: Ban on Murder Forces Rewrite of 'Hamlet'

posted by Zach Patton

Whether you agree with city-enforced smoking bans or not, you can probably at least see the arguments for them -- people shouldn't be subjected to carcinogens just to enjoy a meal or a drink in public.

But Chicago's ban on smoking might be going a little overboard. The ban -- which includes herbal cigarettes -- has forced the Broadway musical Jersey Boys to rewrite its script, according to the Chicago Tribune:

The Chicago production of "Jersey Boys" has gone smoke-free in the last few days. It is as if the Four Seasons never took so much as a drag.

But in New York and London, Frankie and the boys still puff away. That's because those more enlightened cities allow artistic exceptions to their bans on smoking in public. But as the anti-smoking law is written in Chicago, no such exception is possible. And the law makes no distinction between tobacco and herbal cigarettes.

The Tribune critic goes on to say that legally requiring "that shows pretend that no-one ever smoked in the history of the world is absurd, unreasonable, damaging to the city's cultural reputation and injurious to art."

So is smoking a First Amendment right?

Lifting Saggy Pants Miraculously Solves All of Flint's Problems

posted by Zach Patton

You know Flint, Michigan? The place so decimated by job losses that it's sort of become synonymous with Rust Belt poverty?

Well, fear not!  The city has just solved all its problems by requiring its residents to wear their pants a few inches higher. From the Detroit Free Press:

Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.

Dicks, who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.

"Some people call it a fad," Dicks told the Free Press this week while patrolling the streets of Flint. "But I believe it's a national nuisance. It is indecent and thus it is indecent exposure, which has been on the books for years."

On June 27, the chief issued a departmental memorandum telling officers: "This immoral self expression goes beyond freedom of expression."

The crime, he says, is disorderly conduct or indecent exposure, both misdemeanors punishable by 93 days to a year in jail and/or fines up to $500.

The city has even developed a highly scientific method for determining exactly how much you're harming society with your saggy jeans:

Pants pulled completely below the buttocks with underwear showing is disorderly conduct; saggy pants with skin of the buttocks showing is indecent exposure, and saggy pants, not completely below the buttocks, with underwear exposed results in a warning.

Seriously, doesn't the city of Flint -- and its police force -- have slightly bigger fish to fry?

Where to Get "Grande" Ideas for Government

posted by Mark Stencel

I have a big idea for Starbucks. OK, it's at least a "tall" idea: a drink-to-own policy. Instead of the frequent-drinker cards offered by some coffee shops (10 cups and your next drink is on the house), Starbucks could offer up stock instead. Perhaps one share for every thousandth latte?

With the company's stock price down and plans announced to close hundreds of stores, Starbucks' marketing gurus are thirsty for good ideas. So a few months ago, the Seattle-based caffeine pusher unveiled a new Web site -- MyStarbucksIdea.com -- to collect customer input. Registered users not only can post suggestions but vote and comment on other people's ideas too. In fact, several customers had already posted their own variations of my sip-for-stock concept before I tried it out.

So can government organizations collect constituent ideas the Starbucks way? Apparently some leaders in the United Kingdom think so.

A four-month-old Power of Information Task Force there just unveiled a new Web sited called "Show Us a Better Way." The site is designed to collect citizen input on new ways to make use of government data and info. "Tell us what you'd build with public information and we could help fund your idea!" it promises.

Here's how it works:

"The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level....

"To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition.  Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people."

Ideas are posted publicly and user comments are welcome too. The site also offers examples of what its creators are looking for. And a "House Rules" page makes clear what sort of ideas they do not want -- including those that are "intended to be humorous, or which have no point about government policy (however witty these are, it is not appropriate to use a publicly-funded website for purely frivolous purposes)."

(Thanks to former media biz colleague Maxine Teller, a business development and strategy consultant here in D.C., for tipping me off to the U.K. initiative. Next coffee is on me, Maxine.)

NYC Explores Bike-Sharing

posted by Zach Patton

Washington, D.C. is well on its way toward implementing the nation's first large-scale bike-sharing program (although the launch has been delayed a bit).

Looks like New York City may join D.C.'s ranks, according to the New York Times' City Room blog:

One year after a nonprofit group hosted a five-day bicycle-sharing experiment, the New York City Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it was considering creating such a program on a permanent basis.

“If feasible and adopted, such a program would create a network of publicly accessible bicycles at minimal cost, and could provide an important transportation link at transit hubs and commercial and social areas ­greatly increasing mobility citywide,” the department said in a news release.

The announcement signaled yet another example of how the Bloomberg administration is trying to find ways to ease congestion and vehicle emissions and make the city’s streets more accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists, despite the defeat in Albany of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion pricing proposal, which would have charged drivers $8 a day for operating vehicles in the most congested parts of the city.

Incidentally, it's not all full-steam ahead for these kinds of bike-sharing programs. Portland, arguably the most bike-friendly city in the country, recently ditched its bike-sharing plans after failing to find a vendor.

Photo via Flickr, from sierrams

Potayto, Potahto?

posted by Zach Patton

Outside magazine just came out with its 2008 list of the "Best Towns" to live in.

(Side Note:  I've been fortunate enough to live in the top two places on the list.)(Side Note 2: I wrote about these kinds of "best of" rankings in February, and how they don't really make any difference.)

Anyway, here's a list, Outside says,  of "20 stars of America's 21st-century renaissance [that] are riding a wave of civic reinvention and fresh ideas."

What city would argue against being described like that?

Well, none. But the list has caused a lively discussion on DCist -- but the controversy isn't over the "best" part. It's over the "town" part.

Now, we're not ones to argue with anyone who wants to say that D.C. is the best -- we love our city and wouldn't bother obsessing over every small detail about what life is like here for residents if we didn't think it was a great place to live. But we can't help but notice that most of the other "towns" on this list are much smaller than the District. With a population within the city limits of only about 580,000, we know D.C. itself is a much smaller city than Philadelphia, New York, or Chicago. But the D.C. metro area all together still has the 9th largest metropolitan population in the country, with more than 5.3 million people living in the region. Is it really fair to compare the District of Columbia with someplace like Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with its population of 20,600? Would you ever refer to Washington, D.C. as a "town," instead of a "city"?

Comments on the post pretty much agree that it's weird to call DC a "town." I'd chalk it up to meaningless semantics, except it does seem a little strange to lump DC in with places like Ogden, Utah, and Crested Butte, Montana.  I mean, we have a subway system.  And a half-dozen pro sports teams.  And three airports...

By the way, the list isn't available on Outiside's Web site yet, but you can read it here.

Five Reasons to Love Birmingham's New City Center

posted by Zach Patton

The Pentagon is heading for Birmingham!  Okay, not the Pentagon. But the Alabama city might be getting a shiny new five-sided building all its own.

A new city jail, police and fire headquarters, police academy and public works offices would be housed in one pentagon-shaped building under Mayor Larry Langford's plan to build a municipal center in Titusville.

Holding an aerial photo of the Pentagon building in Washington to show the design, Langford detailed his plan Monday during a City Council committee meeting.

Langford on Saturday first told a crowd gathering for Titusville Day of his idea to demolish the jail and other buildings on Sixth Avenue South and build a municipal complex across the street. On Monday he described the shape of the building and named the other offices it would house.

Hey, it's good enough for the federal government, right?

The Out-Googling of Governments

posted by Josh Goodman

I just googled Louisville and was surprised by the result.

The first hit? Louisville.com, an entertainment Web site.

Number two? The University of Louisville.

Third? The Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Up fourth? The city's Wikipedia page.

Finally, coming in fifth is the city's official homepage.

This is a trend I'm starting to notice. Government Web sites are slipping down in search engine results (Try googling New Orleans, for example).

In some sense, I'm sure that's gratifying to municipalities. It means that there is enough going on in their jurisdiction that someone other than the government has a well-visited Web site.

However, the trend also deprives governments of a form of message control. The person who knows nothing about a place and wants to get a bit of information will, quite likely, get that first bit of information from somewhere other than the government's Web site. And how will anyone know that Louisville is "Possibility City" if they don't visit the city's official homepage?

Gruesome Hospital Vids Lead to Changes

posted by Zach Patton

By now you've probably heard about the disturbing security video from New York's Kings County hospital. It shows a patient -- who's already been waiting for 24 hours in the psychiatric E.R. -- collapses and falls to the floor. She lies there for over an hour while hospital staff did nothing to help. She died soon after.

Eerily enough, a remarkably similar incident has come to light Los Angeles. The LA Times has acquired a tape of a May 2007 incident in which a woman "writhed for 45 minutes on the floor of the emergency room lobby at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital as staffers walked past and a janitor mopped around her. Her boyfriend called 911 from a pay phone outside the hospital, pleading futilely for help."

In both cases, the grim tapes have led to changes. The New York Times reports that the state will step up monitoring the hospital, which has been criticized many times in the past for substandard care.

In Los Angeles, where the incident (but not the videotape itself) was highly publicized last year, the effects have been even great, according to the LA Times:

Los Angeles County is still grappling with the legal and medical consequences of the King-Harbor incident. It helped precipitate the long-troubled public hospital's closure last year and spawned three lawsuits, all pending. Efforts to reopen the hospital have so far faltered.

You can view both videos if you want, after the jump.