Drupal in Government Part 1: Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives

Why is Drupal important to the the Federal government? That is the main topic I will cover in a 3 part guest blog series on GovFresh. GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. It features Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.

The first post Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives provides some high profile examples of who is using Drupal effectively in government and why Drupal is a great fit for what these sites are trying to achieve.

My second post will focus on the unique aspects of providing web content management for government that are relevant for Drupal (i.e. what can Drupal learn from Government?) And my final post will provide ideas and predictions for the future of Drupal within the Federal government.

Go.USA.gov the Government URL Shortener using Drupal

"Does the world really need another URL shortener?" Asked TechCrunch in a snarky post by Erick Schonfeld on October 13, 2009 entitled Go.USA.Gov! Our Taxpayer Money Hard At Work Shortening URLs. He was referring to Go.USA.Gov the new URL shortener that lets government employees create short .gov URLs for their links. Go.USA.gov also tracks the number of clicks each shortened URL receives, so you can measure the impact of the spread of those links. We feel this is more like an example where the government rapidly and inexpensively deployed something innovative that will protect the reputation of government assets on the web.

While You Were Sleeping

A look back at some of the "disruptive technologies" which emerged in the last couple of years and how they are changing the way we live and operate.

DC Area Online News Association Meetup Talked Government 2.0

On Tuesday night, a group of the DC areas leading online news practitioners gathered in a bar (go figure) to learn about the best sites and solutions for covering and digging into the new trend of government transparency. There were great presentations from Washington Post.com's Amanda Zamora and Phase2's Jeff Walpole.