The City of San Francisco recently opened DataSF.org, a website to help improve government transparency, and increase citizen access to city data.

Earlier this year, we wrote about the creation of Data.gov- a site that allows access to a large amount of US government data. DataMasher is a tool that takes these vast quantities of information and allows you to whittle it down into simpler terms- offering an easy way to get hard data on certain topics without any intrusive media spin.

This last Wednesday, we were able to attend TED @ State—a US State Department sponsored TED conference.  The one-day conference is the result of the Global Partnership Initiative, which is, in the word of Hilary Clinton, designed to reflect the State Department’s “opening its doors to a new generation of public-private partnerships.”  Basically, the conference was the government’s recognition that innovation will likely not be found inside the Beltway (a sound judgment in our opinion).
TED brought out their heavies to address an audience primarily made up of folks from NGO’s, the US government and diplomatic circles.  The presenters focused mostly [...]

Popular venture capitalist Fred Wilson has posted the video of the (rather lengthy) talk he gave at Google on which markets he expects the internet will disrupt next. He starts the talk with the impact of web and explains that attractive start-ups today are ones that offer services for less than five times the current market price. He says that this may lead to lower revenues but as expenses should be significantly lower, profits should be greater.

So what businesses does he predict will be impacted? He says that any businesses that can be end to end digital will be [...]

Yesterday, the Obama administration launched Data.gov to allow the public access to large set of raw data in a variety of readable formats.  The move marks a new step in the government’s use of technology and appeals to the growing interaction between average citizens and lawmakers.  While the site is still noticeably lacking the wealth of information the US government holds, it starts a number of interesting projects such as the access to widgets tracking the H1N1 Flu and the NOAA Weather Watch.  Wired writes about the current state of the site,
“Data.gov says that our information is your information,” said [...]

The NY Times reports that New York Governor David A. Paterson signed an executive order on Tuesday calling on state agencies to phase out the use and purchase of bottled water in all government workplaces. Citing both economic and environmental reasons, the move seeks to gradually replace both single use bottles and water coolers in favor of tap water fountains and dispensers, setting a strong precedent for local government, businesses and residents to follow suit.
A press release from the governor’s office explains:
Bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to bottle and transport. Over 450 million gallons of [...]

Proposed legislation compressing the working hours of employees of New York state agencies could add up to huge savings. Assemblyman Michael Gianaris is looking to require state agencies providing nonessential services to cut back their workweek to only four days. According to his calculations, trimming down work hours to 8-6 Monday through Thursday could save New York $30 million a year in building maintenance and transportation costs. This same schedule for state workers has saved Utah a respectable $3 million a year. Definitely an interesting idea to ponder. If these agencies are still getting their work done in 4 days [...]