Commonwealth Conversations: Engage!

Bay State Briefs: Travel Abroad and Tourism At Home

The Bay State Briefs is back! Check out this episode to learn more about the Governor's economic development mission to Israel and the UK, a conference on tourism in Massachusetts, a new community colleges program and much more. 

• Click here to read Governor Patrick's remarks to the AFL-CIO on Tuesday on continued partnership with organized labor. 
• On Wednesday, the Governor participated in the announcement of the Community College Connection Program, an innovative new program that will act as a bridge between community college graduates and a four-year university. Click here to learn more. 
• Earlier this week, two international bond rating agencies reaffirmed the strength of Massachusetts' economy and fiscal outlook. Click here to learn more.

Here are some highlights from around the state government blogosphere in the past week:

• Here at the Governor's office, we updated our online agenda page to reflect all the work we're doing here around the Governor's priorities. Learn more in this blog post. 
• A blog post on the Transportation blog announces the preferred route for the critical South Coast Rail project the Administration has been working to advance. 
• Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, the state's secretary of Health and Human Services, has a blog post celebrating the one-year anniversary of national health care reform and a discussion of its benefits for Massachusetts. 

Bay State Briefs: Visiting Waltham, Barnstable High School & Rallying for Jobs

It’s been another busy week in the Governor’s Office! This week, Governor Patrick travelled throughout the state promoting job creation and meeting with locals as they voice their concerns.

On Tuesday, the Governor visited Career Opportunities in Hyannis to connect with unemployed youths and adults and learn more about how the center is assisting unemployed Cape Codders. Learn more about Career Opportunities here.

On Wednesday, Governor Patrick met with the Quincy Jobs Club at IHOP to hear member’s concerns and to follow up on last year’s visit. Later that day, Governor Patrick visited both South Shore and Brockton Hospitals to discuss the Administration’s healthcare cost-containment legislation.

Yesterday, the Governor promoted job growth for youths at the Youth Summer Jobs Rally at the State House. At the rally, the Governor spoke of the importance of youth jobs and encouraged the private sector to hire youth workers. Read more about the event in the Associated Press.

In addition to all we’re doing here, our partners in state agencies have been out and about doing good work too! Here are just a few recent updates from around your state government blogosphere:

• Many prospective clean energy companies are deterred by the high start up costs. Check out the Energy Smarts blog as the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) highlights the efforts of their Clean Energy Equipment Grant projects.
• Need some school vacation ideas? Check out the Great Outdoors blog! This week they are highlighting winter agricultural tourism. 

 

 

Bay State Briefs: Chinese New Year, Our National Guard and the Cost of Health Care

Welcome back to the Weekly Wrap Up and your Bay State Brief for the week. It's been an important week for the Patrick-Murray Administration. Catch our Bay State Brief below to hit the road with Governor and Lt. Governor as they make stops around the state.

On Thursday, the Governor kicked off the second phase of health care reform in Massachusetts, aiming to bring down health care costs for consumers while improving patient care. Click here to read our blog post from yesterday and get all the details.

Yesterday the Governor also signed a bill helping to save Massachusetts businesses about $402 million this year. The bill will provide immediate relief to Massachusetts’ businesses by freezing employer contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund at current levels. This will relieve pressure on small businesses and help encourage business to keep hiring.

Our partners in state agencies across Massachusetts use blogs and new media to share all the good work they're doing. Here are just a few recent updates from around your state government blogosphere:

• Get more detail on our affordable health care proposal from Health and Human Services Secretary Bigby at the Public Health blog.
• Education Secretary Paul Reville has an update on new charter schools applications at the Education blog.
• Got a case of cabin fever? Check out photos and information from a snowshoeing adventure in Middlesex Falls Reservation on our Great Outdoors blog.

Bay State Briefs: November 15-19

Matt Bennett

Production Manager and Photographer, Office of the Governor

 

Have you seen "Bay State Briefs" on YouTube? Each episode highlights recent accomplishments of the Patrick-Murray administration.

The November 15-19 episode takes a look at Yawkey Commuter Rail Station, the Commonwealth's first net-zero energy station, and Bristol Community College's eHealth Center's work on reducing costs and improving patient care. Later in the week, the Governor honored our law enforcement officials and celebrated National Adoption Day.  Also featured are the Governor's visits to the Greater Boston Food Bank and Medford High School.  

We hope you enjoy these clips. Please feel free to comment below or contact us if you have any questions.

 

 

 

2009 EOT Developers Challenge and Conference

Posted by: Chris Dempsey, Assistant Secretary of Transportation

Change is coming to transportation, and we want you to be a part of it.  You've probably heard about the reform bill which merges the state's major transportation agencies into MassDOT on November 1st.  As part of this reform effort, transportation officials have been thinking about doing business in some new ways.  In July 2009, the Executive Office of Transportation launched the Developers Page as part of the Patrick Administration’s commitment to creating a modern, efficient, and customer-friendly transportation system.  The EOT Developers Page provides information and data from Massachusetts’ transportation agencies and authorities that is useful to developers interested in creating mobile phone and web-based applications that will deliver information more efficiently and effectively to customers. Data released through the Developers page includes MBTA and RTA route and schedule data, MHD and MTA planned construction event data, RMV branch wait time feeds and a variety of other information. Engaging developers is a new form of Civic Engagement -- at it's core, it is about citizens interacting with government in new ways.  In addition, EOT uses Twitter for updates, a Google Group, and regular meetings to engage developers.  In less than two months, more than five applications have been built using this data.

To build on this momentum, EOT has announced the First Annual MassDOT Developers Conference, on November 14th, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. The Conference is free and open to the public. EOT, which becomes MassDOT on November 1, is also announcing the 2009 EOT Developers Challenge, which inspires developers to create both applications and data visualizations, to submit them to EOT, and to release them to the public. The two top submissions will receive a CharlieCard valid for one-year of free travel on the MBTA, in addition to recognition at the Conference.

This Conference will be interesting to anyone who works on issues related to transparency, open government, technology, civic engagement, transportation and planning, state and local government, and public-private partnerships.  We hope to see you there!

To RSVP to this free event, please click here: http://massdotdevconference.eventbrite.com/

Better Tracking for Better Websites

Posted by:
Brad Blake, Director of New Media and Online Strategy

The web is changing quickly.  As I discussed in a previous post, we're doing our best to use new tools and technologies to better inform, increase transparency, and give you more ways to have an impact on the policies that affect your life. However, even with all the new 'stuff' out there, we still need to keep our basic websites easy to use so you can find what you need as quickly and easily as possible.

One of the main ways site managers do that is by using statistics to help them understand how people are using their site.  While the commonwealth has been using some basic statistics, they can be difficult for our site managers to understand and use.  We need to do a better job and that requires using better tools.

To that end, we are considering the use of Google Analytics on Mass.gov, which requires the placement of cookies on your computer. Most websites use cookies, but that may sound like overreaching by your government.

Tweeting, Blogging, Following and Friending

Posted by:
Brad Blake, Director of New Media and Online Strategy

If you can't tell by my title, I'm kind of "into" new media (social media, web 2.0, etc).  Like many others, I believe in the power of the these new tools and technologies to connect people to each other and to their government in ways that were previously very difficult or impossible due to distance, time, and simple access to information. 

In the Governor's Office, in addition to our official website full of deep and broad information, we work our tails off to better include people in their government via social media.  We manage a Twitter account where the Governor and members of his staff share information, thoughts and ideas and respond to constituent and media questions.  We have a robust YouTube channel where we post direct messages from the Governor, clips of questions and answers from Town Hall Meetings, and answers to video questions.  We've begun a series of Commonwealth Conversations Blogs, including this one, to talk about issues around public health, transportation, innovation, jobs and more.  We post photos to Flickr, make information available via RSS feeds, a public event calendar, and more.  This past spring, we lead an online community forum where citizens, the Governor, and senior members of his administration openly discussed issues around revenue, transportation, ethics and pension reform. And that's just the start.  We've been working with many of our state agencies to use social media to better connect and inform.

We've come a long way, but I still sometimes hear from friends and family, "I don't really know what the Governor and his administration are doing," or they repeat short headlines they've heard.  They're unaware of the ways, both online and off, that they can stay informed, plug in, and influence the policies that affect their lives.  Of course, this can be frustrating to hear, but it also tells me we need to be constantly re-examining what we're already doing and looking for ways to do it better.

So, you're here, you've found this blog and (hopefully) are still reading this post.  If you didn't know about some of the ways we're using social media, you do now.  What are we doing well?  What could we be doing better?  How can we let people know that all of this information and tools for connection and input are out there?