Alissa Black

Alissa Black is principal of investments at Omidyar Network. At the Omidyar Network, she is working to improve the relationship between citizens and government through driving sector-level change in government and the emerging civic technology ecosystem. Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Black was director of the California Civic Innovation Project (CCIP) at New America Foundation, where she was responsible for developing the project’s strategy and managing the research portfolio.

Rachel Burstein and Alissa Black

Rachel Burstein is Academic Director at Books@Work, a public humanities nonprofit organization. Dr. Burstein previously served as a Research Associate at the New America Foundation’s California Civic Innovation Project. In her role at the New America Foundation, she studied perceptions of innovation among government staffers, knowledge and innovation diffusion, and civic innovation theory and practice at the local level.

Looking ahead at key challenges and opportunities for government

The Center’s new report is the result of multiple interviews with government leaders, an assessment of research and reports on challenges and opportunities from the Center and many other sources; and a roundtable involving key government, academic, and industry officials last May.  

Eight Actions to Improve Defense Acquisition

In this report, the authors look back at history, noting that the Department of Defense (DoD) has made numerous attempts to reform its acquisition system over the last 50 years, but that these and similar reforms have pro­duced only modest improvements.

Celebrating and Elevating Senior Leaders as Key to a Successful Federal Workforce

This event, the first of its kind under the current Administration, brought together several thousand Federal leaders (primarily SES, but also other senior executive designations – this post will refer to the group as SES henceforth), joined by a cadre of supporters of good government. The grand ballroom at the Hilton was full, and the mood was positive as the attendees listened to remarks from a variety of perspectives.

Enterprise Government: How the Next Administration Can Better Serve Citizens (Part One)

On September 16, the IBM Center for The Business of Government and the Partnership for Public Service co-hosted a Roundtable to discuss how agency leaders can coordinate and integrate activities to drive successful outcomes for the next Presidential term. An exceptional group of current and former senior officials from Administrations of both parties, leaders from Capitol Hill, as well as experts from academia and the private and non-profit sectors participated in a robust discussion.

Making Innovation Labs Work

The White House recently released its final iteration of the Strategy for American Innovation – a set of policies and initiatives aiming to drive innovation and economic growth.  Among the suggested initiatives, Innovation Labs are slated to receive additional funding in the 2016 budget.  While Innovation Labs have the potential to create significant improvements for government, they have also received criticism for not meeting their goals.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Transform Government

In hindsight, it is easy to identify Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in the 1870s as an instrument of marvel, eventually connecting people worldwide. And of course, there is the internet, which, although it burst into the public realm less than 30 years ago, is a technology and service that few can envision living without, whether we understood that in the 1990s or not.

Next White House Should Create an Enterprise Government

By using an enterprise-wide view of how the government can work, the next president may be more effective in getting large-scale initiatives underway and successfully completed, writes University of Massachusetts Distinguished Professor Jane Fountain, in a new report, being released today jointly by the IBM Center and the Partnership for Public Service.

The report offers three key recommendations to the next president’s transition team and the next White House:

Interoperability - Next Steps

In one of my previous posts, I referenced the Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework, which enables healthcare stakeholders to create standards, specifications, and implementation guidelines that facilitate effective healthcare information exchange. This will facilitate the adoption of interoperable standards.

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