Comments on: Leveraging the Government 2.0 Platform http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136 "Ministers... cannot in any country be uninfluenced by the voice of the people." Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:10:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: ….::: VOX POPULI :::…. » Blog Archive » Lots of Gov 2.0 Potential in Twitter Geolocation http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136&cpage=1#comment-780 ….::: VOX POPULI :::…. » Blog Archive » Lots of Gov 2.0 Potential in Twitter Geolocation Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:58:50 +0000 http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136#comment-780 [...] Twitter currently has some limited geolocation support that utilizes the account-level location field, but there is no validation on what is entered, so it is not terribly reliable. The imminent support for “geo-Tweets” holds enormous potential for governments if you think of Twitter as another communications channel that citizens can use to interact with government. (Clearly, I do.) [...] [...] Twitter currently has some limited geolocation support that utilizes the account-level location field, but there is no validation on what is entered, so it is not terribly reliable. The imminent support for “geo-Tweets” holds enormous potential for governments if you think of Twitter as another communications channel that citizens can use to interact with government. (Clearly, I do.) [...]

]]> By: Mark Headd http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136&cpage=1#comment-753 Mark Headd Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:18:48 +0000 http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136#comment-753 Cool - so the RSS feed includes bills that have been acted upon within a specific period, correct? Would this include a bill that was just introduced (and referred to its initial committee for consideration)? I had some of the same thoughts that you did, about being able to proactively notify someone when an action is taken on a bill. I was thinking it would be neat to allow someone to "subscribe" to a bill through one of the channels listed above. So, for example, when someone sends a tweet to @opensenate to get the current status of a bill, they could then send a follow up like "#notify S1234" to be notified of future changes in the status of a bill. These notification requests would need to be persisted somewhere - probably just require the addition of a database backend to the app. If the OpenLeg RSS feed includes changes for a specific time period, it should be pretty straightforward to use it to find out which bills have seen a status change, query the database to see if the bills have any "subscribers" and then send out a notice to the end user on the same channel they used to subscribed. Just thinking out loud here, but I think its a viable approach. I like the idea of weaving bills into the conversations on social networks - I see you have Facebook and Twitter integration in the discussion section of the bill summaries. I need to try that and add a comment to a bill or two. Cool - so the RSS feed includes bills that have been acted upon within a specific period, correct? Would this include a bill that was just introduced (and referred to its initial committee for consideration)?

I had some of the same thoughts that you did, about being able to proactively notify someone when an action is taken on a bill. I was thinking it would be neat to allow someone to “subscribe” to a bill through one of the channels listed above. So, for example, when someone sends a tweet to @opensenate to get the current status of a bill, they could then send a follow up like “#notify S1234″ to be notified of future changes in the status of a bill.

These notification requests would need to be persisted somewhere - probably just require the addition of a database backend to the app. If the OpenLeg RSS feed includes changes for a specific time period, it should be pretty straightforward to use it to find out which bills have seen a status change, query the database to see if the bills have any “subscribers” and then send out a notice to the end user on the same channel they used to subscribed.

Just thinking out loud here, but I think its a viable approach.

I like the idea of weaving bills into the conversations on social networks - I see you have Facebook and Twitter integration in the discussion section of the bill summaries. I need to try that and add a comment to a bill or two.

]]> By: Nathan Freitas (NY Senate) http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136&cpage=1#comment-752 Nathan Freitas (NY Senate) Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:20:37 +0000 http://www.voiceingov.org/blog/?p=1136#comment-752 This is fantastic work, Mark. I'm flattered and relieved to have a developer of your quality and vision to be utilizing our OpenLeg API. I am working on a big update to the open.nysenate.gov home page and will plan to include your work in a showcase section. Voxeo/IMified is a neat platform to build on, especially with their support for XMPP. As a side note, have you noticed the RSS feeds we now have available? That is what is powering: http://twitter.com/nysenateopenleg I am really interested in getting data proactively pushed out and indexed, where citizens don't have to go and seek out information, but it is instead weaved into the conversation throughout the web, social networks and more. This is fantastic work, Mark. I’m flattered and relieved to have a developer of your quality and vision to be utilizing our OpenLeg API. I am working on a big update to the open.nysenate.gov home page and will plan to include your work in a showcase section. Voxeo/IMified is a neat platform to build on, especially with their support for XMPP.

As a side note, have you noticed the RSS feeds we now have available? That is what is powering: http://twitter.com/nysenateopenleg

I am really interested in getting data proactively pushed out and indexed, where citizens don’t have to go and seek out information, but it is instead weaved into the conversation throughout the web, social networks and more.

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