White House Mobile Strategy Might be a Game Changer

May 23, 2012 By News Staff - Government Technology

"The White House unveiled a new mobile initiative on Wednesday, May 23, that’s intended to reshape how government agencies utilize mobile platforms in serving the public.

To kick-start the initiative, federal CIO Steven VanRoekel and federal CTO Todd Park released a report on mobile strategy titled Digital Goverment: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People, a “12-month road map” to assist agencies meet goals for a more mobile government."

...

"Make Data More Open

The Office of Management and Budget will be formulating a governmentwide policy pertaining to Web API (application programming interfaces). Systems will have to be architected to support access to high-value open data and metadata tags, the report said.

“For decades, we’ve been locking government data up in paper files or nonsearchable PDF documents and things like that,” VanRoekel said.

Launch a Shared Platform

As a method for reducing duplication and cutting costs, VanRoekel is calling on government agencies to take a “governmentwide approach” to IT solutions. Applications or other solutions that have been deployed inside a government agency should be used across other agencies as well, giving multiple agencies access to features they may have otherwise not had access to before, and in addition, allowing the private sector access to those features when appropriate."


Read the full article http://www.govtech.com/e-government/White-House-Mobile-Strategy-Might-be-a-Game-Changer-.html

What do you think? Funny, Useful, Derogatory?

As a GIS professional what do you think about the maps presented below? Are they funny, helpful, useful, derogatory? Share your opinion with us in the CFGIS LinkedIn group or CFGIS Blog (cfgis.blogspot.com).

560 - A World Map of Heavy Metal Density  - By Frank Jacobs, Big Think

Cartography has the curious capacity to bypass a map-reader’s critical function when conveying information, and never more so than when a map is plain and simple. Two examples treated earlier on this blog spring to mind - also because they’re quite funny: the Jesusland map (#3), and the New Simplified Map of London (#199). 

Some maps are beautiful because of their rich complexity. Others capture our attention because they are so starkly simple.  

Jesusland is based on electoral data, the Simplified Map on a more subjective idea of wealth distribution. But both communicate a sentiment rather than merely solid data. The map shown here is less editorial, but the information it presents is equally stark. 

This map reflects the number of heavy metal bands per 100,000 inhabitants for each country in the world. It codes the result on a color temperature scale, with blue indicating low occurrence, and red high occurrence [1]. The data for this map is taken from the extensive Encyclopaedia Metallum, an online archive of metal music that lists bands per country, and provides some background by listing their subgenre (Progressive Death Metal, Symphonic Gothic Metal, Groove Metal, etc). Click Here to View Full Story