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Maryland State Senator Catherine E. Pugh has introduced four bills in this legislative session, and Governor Martin O’Malley has announced a package of initiatives designed to further Maryland’s leadership as a hub for cybersecurity jobs.[read more]

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In the US, material created by the Federal government is, by default, owned by the public. In the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and others, governments are transitioning from closed copyright systems to more open ones. There's continuing scrutiny, review and debate over the 'right' setting for copyright, with the companies who only exist due to copyright often at odds with their own customers, who wish to share books, music and video material they enjoy.[read more]

I’m still not in any way convinced that the Savile and Newsnight affairs have any real and pressing read through to governance, but as we saw with the reform of the FA that followed revelations that the England Manager and the CEO were both seeing the Deputy CEO’s PA, in Britain, reform often starts from completely unconnected causes.[read more]

In an age where freak weather and natural disasters suddenly seem to be the norm, it’s important for governments to take weather warnings seriously, and prepare for the possibility of catastrophe... Like many Americans, I mistakenly believed that the normal day-to-day life I had always known was invulnerable...[read more]

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Cities continue to face the prolonged effects of the economic downturn according to a new report by the National League of Cities (NLC). The 27th annual City Fiscal Conditions report shows that for the sixth straight year city revenues continue to fall as financial pressures such as infrastructure, health care and pension costs combine...[read more]

Some people like to watch football games, or boxing. I like being a paraprofessional pundit, watching these TV “debates” as though they were boxing games, scoring them in my mind.[read more]

Beyond voter ID, getting elections officials to collude on voting hours like Governor Scott is attempting to do in Florida and officials in Ohio seem to have been successful at – including removing opposing officials from office, is another tactic.[read more]

There has long been a view in East London that this, the London Olympics 2012, should be about more than just the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park and a few thousand houses. It has to be about the lasting change for this part of London and a reversal of a century of inequality that has existed between the East and the rest of London.[read more]

Stop and search has always been a friction point between police and the communities they serve. Indeed several commentators cited it as a potential contributory factor to last year’s riots. The New York equivalent “Stop-and-Frisk” has proved equally contentious with almost 700,000 people questioned on the city’s streets last year...[read more]

It defies logic that people would place their livelihoods in jeopardy simply to report wrongdoing, especially when they haven't done anything wrong. They could look the other way and nobody would judge them badly.[read more]

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Recently somebody asked me why I spend so much time publicizing issues like workplace bullying,  abuse, human trafficking, feminism, abuses in organized religion, and the importance of outing and prosecuting child molesters. I understood the subtext of the question: "You must have been a victim, right?" As if nobody in their right...[read more]

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None of this is rocket science. The election crisis we see has to do with the fact that neither party seems to be taking advantage of basic political communication strategy. For inspiration they could look to JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon's handling of the $2 billion crisis.[read more]

"His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing." -- Democratic political strategist Hilary Rosen, referring to Ann Romney, wife of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, via Fox News -- Screen shot:...[read more]

Image by Jan Sefti via Flickr

I’m seeing upset from and others on Twitter about a disconnect between what’s on CNN now and the violence that many outlets are reporting in Syria. It feels like 2009 the #IranElection all over again, when the world finally awoke to how the real-time Web was disrupting mainstream media by driving conversations and coverage of an...[read more]

Amid what has been a flurry of Twitter update news this past week, the site has launched an @Gov account to track creative and effective uses of Twitter for civic engagement. This is a feature I recently mentioned Twitter was lacking  (when writing about Google’s G+ guide for politics and government). This could help source and...[read more]