Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas

While I rarely like to use my blog as a dumping ground of PDF’s, this one I really wanted to share with you. It was written by Toby Fyfe and Paul Crookall on behalf of The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC). The title of the report  is “Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas“. This is by far the most comprehensive and well written report on the subject this year. If you work for the Government, especially the Government of Canada, you need to read this.

Data, data, data, and more data…

For those of you that missed it, the February 27th-March 5th edition of The Economist featured a special report on the over abundance of data, and where we’re heading with it. This may seem like a boring topic at first, but if you start reading , you’ll quickly realize why I continue to be so interested in social media, especially the broader social-cultural and global implications of  all the content/data that we are feeding into “the cloud“.

Rather than providing you with a summary of the article (which hopefully you will read in full), I am providing some excerpts which I highlighted myself while reading:

• There are 4.6 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide (though many people have more than one)
• By 2012 the amount of traffic flowing over the Internet annually will reach 667 exabytes
• Farecast can advise customers whether to buy an airline ticket now or wait for the price to come down by examining 225 billion flight and price records.

Vancouver 2010 Mobile Olympics

I love the Olympics. Besides the excitement of the actual events, I love the sense of camaraderie, national unity and general goodwill that the games bring with them. While it’s true that Vancouver has had its series of mishaps, including a tragic death, the overall spirit of the games can be felt radiating out of the homes and workplaces of our great country.

What’s really exciting about these games is that they mark a new era of interaction and engagement during a global sporting event. I remember only having two options as a kid during past Olympics: watch a select few live events on TV (time-zone permitting) or listen to them on the radio. The rest I would pick up on during the evening news or the next morning’s paper.