The World Bank Institute is holding a virtual dialogue onOpening Up Development:How Can Countries Start and Run Open Data Ecosystems? The event will feature personal reflections from leaders in Kenya and Moldova-two countries that have successfully embarked upon an Open Data agenda. Following these reflections, Theresa Pardo will join in a panel discussion on the importance of developing Open Government Data Ecosystems for the success of Open Government initiatives. Participants worldwide can join the discussion via video conference, live webcast and Twitter: #opendta.
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Meghan Cook will participate at the European Commission-sponsored event on Transparency and Openness. This ePractice workshop will aim to address the subject of transparency and openness of governments relating to their interaction with citizens. Meghan will give a presentation on A Public Value Approach to Open Government Planning - How to Plan and Measure When Traditional ROI Isn't Enough and then participate in a round table discussion.
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Critical Decision Making During Crisis is a course developed collaboratively by CTG and the National Center for Security & Preparedness in support of the NYS Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. In this course the participants explore the decision-making process during daily activities as well as in crisis situations. It will provide discussion around overcoming hindrances and obstacles to effective decision making. The course makes use of scenario-based activity that involves critical decision making under stress and provides experience working in problem-solution situations. Anthony Cresswell will join staff from the National Center for Security & Preparedness in delivering the course.
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Anthony Cresswell will be participating on the plenary panel Open Government: Challenges and Opportunities at the 6th European Ministerial eGovernment Conference and Exhibition (egov2011PL). The panel will be focusing on the evolving openness of governments - from open data to open services. The session will facilitate sharing experiences from early adopters and identifying challenges, limits, and benefits arising from increased transparency, participation, and collaboration. It will be moderated by Prof. M. Muraszkiewicz from the Warsaw University of Technology, and also include Nigel Shadbolt, University of Southampton, UK; Haiyan Qian, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; and John Higgins, Digital Europe.
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Meghan Cook has been invited to give the keynote at the 4th Annual Government Innovation Forum (GIF). Cook's presentation will focus on the key challenges and opportunities governments are facing with pressures to use new technologies to build the government of the future, one that is open, transparent, and collaborative. GIF brings together top public sector IT professionals from the federal, state and local levels throughout Mexico. The event is an opportunity to share experiences and hear how other governments, colleagues or experts are using IT tools in ways that can empower citizens or improve transparency and governments operations.
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On behalf of SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, Theresa Pardo will be attending the Annual Conference of the Club de Madrid, Digital Technologies for 21st Century Democracy. At the conference, the world’s most experienced and inspirational political and business leaders, policy makers and scholars will be taking an in-depth look at the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasingly complex relationships between governments, their citizens and communication technologies. Conference participants will discuss how big data and networks are revolutionizing governance and democracy and outlining a series of principles for the implementation of 21st century democracy.
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The theme of the 2011 Fall Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Management & Analysis (APPAM) is Seeking Solutions to Complex Policy and Management Problems. Sharon Dawes will be speaking at the Symposia on Policy Informatics to address how advances in information technology and computational modeling have enhanced our ability to address complex research questions. Natalie Helbig will be a speaker at the Roundtable discussion on What does Policy Informatics Mean? and Why should APPAM care?, which will explore what policy informatics is, how and why it is relevant to the APPAM community, and how to involve policy makers and practitioners to be interested and effective users of these approaches.
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To help agencies formulate their strategic plans for devloping citizen-facing mobile capacities, the US General Services Administration (GSA) has asked CTG to conduct a workshop for federal government professionals. While many government professionals see mobile as the way of the future, they also recognize that such change requires a broad-ranging strategic approach enabling the transformation to be as effective and beneficial as possible. A strategic framework positions mobile technologies within the larger organizational context of policy, management, business practices, and mission. During the workshop, the participants will review and discuss a high level strategic planning approach to gain a better understanding of what citizen-facing mobile government entails and what challenges arise when implementing it.
This workshop supports GSA's Making Mobile Gov Project.

Natalie Helbig will present on Designing Social Media Policy in Government at the Conference of State Bank Supervisor's 2011 Technology Seminar. The 2011 Tech Seminar seeks to address the current technological issues affecting the financial industry, the banking departments, and the regulatory process.
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Theresa Pardo has been invited by the Information Technology Authority of Sultanate of Oman to participate in the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in eGovernment Award Jury Panel for 2011. The national competition targets government institutions and is a result of His Majesty's call for the development of a national strategy developing knowledge of citizens and skills in dealing with information technology and a call for all government institutions to accelerate the enhancement of services by digital technology and best practices.
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Theresa Pardo is participating on a panel about Smart Cities as part of the events for the 35th anniversary of the Public Administration and Policy program at Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE). Pardo will be joined by Sehl Mellouli, Professor, Department of Information Systems, Université de Laval and J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Associate Professor and Director, Data Center for Applied Research in Social Sciences at CIDE to discuss their partnership project to create a framework for service integration in Smart Cities.
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Sharon Dawes is traveling to Taiwan as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the 45th Annual ICA Conference, Innovative Government – Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future. Dawes is the chair and one of the facilitators for the session Looking to the Future, in which discussions will be focused on how learning from the past and emerging technologies can create open government (transparent, participatory and collaborative), transform service delivery to the citizens, and create operational efficiencies.
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CTG is a co-organizer of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2011), which will focus on the use of technology to transform relationships between government and citizens, businesses, civil society and other arms of government (Electronic Governance). In addition, Theresa Pardo is Co-Chair of the conference, Sharon Dawes is on the Steering Committee, and both are on the Program Committee. CTG will be leading a tutorial on Social Media, Pardo is moderator of a keynote panel on Open Government, and Dawes is Chair of the Doctoral Colloquium. Papers will also be presented, which were authored by Dawes, Pardo, Meghan Cook, Natalie Helbig, Jana Hrdinova, Taewoo Nam, and Djoko Sigit Sayogo.
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Anthony Cresswell, along with Professor Tero Päivärinta, University of Adger, Norway and Professor Reima Suomi, University of Turku are presenting at an e-Government Seminar given by INFORTE. Throughout the two-days, Tony will give several presentations on The concept of public value, Assessing public value of eGovernment, Assessing public value of eGovernment, along with one on eGovernment development in US government and research. INFORTE offers networking and education events to professionals working in Finnish companies, polytechnics and public administration with invited speakers from some of the top international researchers or industry representatives in their field.
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As part of the New York State Conference of Mayors (NYCOM) Fall Training Academy, Jana Hrdinová presented on the Use of Social Media by Local Governments with Glenn Clark, village trustee from Honeoye Falls in Monroe County, NY. NYCOM's Fall Training School is an opportunity for municipal officials from across the state comprised primarily of Mayors, Clerks, Finance Officers, Attorneys, Trustees, and Council Members to gather together to attend a variety of innovative training sessions specializing in municipal law, government operations, and local finance issues.
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CTG has been invited to participate at The Power of Open: A Global Discussion, a high-level conversation to highlight the transformative nature of open governance and celebrate the formal launch of the Open Government Partnership. The day-long event will bring together governments, civil society, industry leaders, academics and media for a series of panels and networking events focused on the role of openness in improving responsiveness, fostering accountability, creating efficiencies, promoting innovation and growth, fighting corruption, improving performance, and capturing dispersed knowledge in support of smarter policies. Theresa Pardo will participate in the How-To Alleysession on open source and open data sharing to increase government productivity and improve services, which will be kicked off by UK Cabinet Minister Frances Maude and Head of the Special Presidential Work Unit for Development Monitoring and Control for Indonesia, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto.
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The Civic Platforms Summit was a working meeting convened by Civic Commons, which focused on coordinating the architecture and interoperability of customer interaction tools for government. Participants spent the afternoon sharing experiences and assembling a road map for building interoperable tools for government-resident and resident-resident information sharing and interaction. This included a general discussion of models of interaction as well as more technical discussion of web services and data standards. City 311 services and the Open311 standard are one example of the technologies that fit into this topic, as are interconnecting issues like identity management. Expected outcomes include the beginnings of a high-level framework for interoperable systems and a sense of a process to follow moving forward to accommodate the development of standards and continued coordination.
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The IFIP eGovernment Conference 2011 wil bring together leading researchers and professionals from across the globe and from a number of disciplines. The Europe-based annual international conference is one of the core conferences that present the state of the art in the study domains of eGovernment and eGovernance. Sharon Dawes is on the Program Committee for the conference and is chair of the PhD Colloquium. Theresa Pardo, along with Karim Hamza, are organizers of a workshop on Social Media and Democratization. Pardo will also be presenting a paper, Understanding the Impact of Computing and Information Technology on Critical Challenges Facing 21st Century Financial Market Regulators, co-authored by Djoko Sigit Sayogo and Donna Canestraro.
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CTG is the US participant in a global consortium of investigators organized under a European Commission project called eGovPoliNet. The consortium is a group of social and political scientists, ICT researchers, and other experts from Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. CTG has worked together with many members of the consortium in the past, including the University of Koblenz-Landau (UKL) in Germany, TU Delft (Netherlands), Brunel University (UK), and Laval University (Canada). The project addresses the potential for ICTs and information resources to enhance governance and policy processes within the government, among experts, and with civil society. Sharon Dawes and Natalie Helbig will be attending the kick-off meeting with all 18 partner institutions to get to know partners, learn about the overall project deliverables, and assign tasks and work areas to partners.
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Brian Burke will present at ISM 2011: Enabling Change: Deep in the Heart of Technology. Brian will be participating on a panel, moderated by Phil Poley from Accenture, focused on State Consortiums, When, Why, and How? He will discuss CTG's capability assessment work to help conference attendees understand the policy, management, as well as technological capabilities required for cross-boundary collaboration, especially across states. The other panel presenter is Nancy Peterson, deputy director from The New England States Consortium Systems Organization. The session was organized by Richard Siemer, deputy commissioner and CIO for NYC's Human Resources Administration.
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The I-Choose project team is focusing on creating information interoperability among stakeholder communities for the single case of coffee grown in Mexico, and distributed and consumed in Canada and the United States. The first network meeting of these stakeholders will focus on three areas: (1) launching the I-Choose network; (2) obtaining expert feedback from participants on the growing demand from environmentally and socially conscious consumers for product information and exploring how it can be obtained; and (3) collecting feedback on the policy environment for coffee regulation and certification to help inform our work.
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As part of CTG's role in New York State's implementation of the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD), Amanda Kronen, graduate assistant at CTG from the School of Social Welfare, will be attending the NYTD Technical Assistance Meeting. The purpose of the meeting is for participants to learn more about the first round of national data and associated data quality issues, federal plans for data analysis and dissemination, and preparations for engaging youth in the next round of NYTD surveys.
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Theresa Pardo and Meghan Cook are invited to attend a meeting with White House officials and eight other key stakeholder organizations to share thoughts on a proposed U.S. National Plan to meet the four core open government principles as laid out by the Open Government Partnership (OGP): transparency, citizen participation, accountability, and technology and innovation. The OGP is a new multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
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Sharon Dawes and Brian Burke have been invited to brief senior managers at the U.S. EPA's Office of Air and Radiation and Office of International and Tribal Affairs on CTG's Understanding Transnational Public Sector Knowledge Networks project. Dawes and Burke will focus specifically on their findings from the AIRNow-I Shanghai case study.
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CTG is launching a study of the challenges connected with government's adoption of mobile technologies by conducting three workshops to elicit input from government professionals from New York State, New York City, and the US federal government.
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Jana Hrdinová will present on social media policies at the Advanced Learning Institute's "Social Media for Government Conference." The conference is focused on providing the latest practical advice from leading government agencies and organizations on how to engage employees and citizens by using social media.
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Held annually, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management's international research conferences attract the best researchers from around the world and covers topical issues in the public policy community. The Fudan University School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), the University of Maryland School of Public Policy (UMD), and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) are hosting this year's conference, entitled Collaboration Among Government, Market, and Society: Forging Partnerships and Encouraging Competition. Sharon Dawes will present the paper, Collaboration across Nations: Context and Dynamics, coauthored by Brian Burke and Lei Zheng (Fudan University). The paper focuses on the interactions among the participants during the six-year engagement that culminated in the implementation of AIRNow-I Shanghai, with particular attention to the ways in which their work was influenced by the need to deal with important contextual distances associated with culture, language, organizational factors, data, knowledge, and technology.
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The 2013 Major Cities of Europe Annual Conference will focus on "ICT:Fostering Cities' Prosperity.” The annual conference brings together local government managers and CIOs with leading experts in the ICT field to identify innovative solutions for the most pressing challenges cities face today. Meghan Cook will be a Track Chair both facilitating and speaking in the session, DATA: Leveraging a City’s Goldmine. The session will feature presentations and a roundtable from cities and public service ICT companies focused on maximizing a goldmine of data to promote new services, participation, economic development, societal changes.
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The 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2013) will focus on the theme, From e-Government to Smart Government. Natalie Helbig and Theresa Pardo are Track Chairs, Teresa Harrison and Jana Hrdinova are Panel Chairs, and Sharon Dawes and J. Ramon Garcia are co-chairs of the Doctoral Colloquium. Natalie, Theresa, Teresa, Sharon, and Ramon are also on the Program Committee. The dg.o meetings are an established forum for the presentation, discussion, and demonstration of interdisciplinary digital government research, technology innovation, applications, and practice. This year's conference is hosted by the Faculty of Business Administration at Laval University. Paper submissions are due February 1, 2013.
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