Ellen Perlman

Recent Articles

• How Many Jobs Does a Playground Make?
• Jul 2, 2009
• "When it comes to jump-starting the economy, a playground isn't going to cut it," according to a story in the Virginian Pilot ...

• Grab the Fee and Run
• Jul 1, 2009
• No phone charge is too small to escape a governor's grasp.
• 1 Comments

• $4B in Stimulus Money for Broadband Ready, Biden Announces
• Jul 1, 2009
• Finally, $4 billion dollars in loans and grants will be available for expanding broadband access in underserved and un-served areas, Vice President Joe Biden announced Wednesday. ...

• Virginia Fires Its Tech Chief, Readers Fire Off
• Jun 30, 2009
• A story in Friday's Richmond Times-Dispatch about how the "embattled" Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) interim CIO met with and praised employees, ...
• 2 Comments

• Keep the $3.65 - I Don't Need it Anymore
• Jun 18, 2009
• I truly cannot believe what it took to get a $3.65 refund from the Metro system in D.C., also known as WMATA, the Washington Metropolitan ...
• 3 Comments

• Not Just Topless -- Bottomless and Sideless, Too
• Jun 3, 2009
• Update: In March we wrote about a topless coffee shop in Maine and the ordinance banning nudity that it inspired. Well, don't plan your ...
• 2 Comments

• Wi-Fi and Social Justice
• Jun 1, 2009
• A failed wireless deal has San Francisco's CIO pondering tough moral questions.

• Brainstorming on Transparency in Government
• May 22, 2009
• You got ideas? The White House wants to hear them. Remember that Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government President Obama issued in January? Well, the ...
• 1 Comments

• It's an Emergency! Now What?
• May 14, 2009
• How will your local government inform citizens if there's an emergency? I ask because a week or two ago, sometime during the swine flu ...
• 5 Comments

• Spending Transparency: Vital to the State of our Union
• May 11, 2009
• The following Thomas Jefferson quote is getting a lot of play these days in connection with transparency Web sites. Not that Jefferson was much of ...

• Broadband -- at Any Price
• May 1, 2009
• Small cities are eyeing stimulus money to bring high-speed Internet to all.
• 1 Comments

• States CIOs Talk Transparency
• May 1, 2009
• Two words are reverberating around the halls of the Marriott in Baltimore this week where state CIOs are meeting: Transparency and recovery act money. Okay, ...
• 2 Comments

• See-Thru Government
• Apr 30, 2009
• "A new level of transparency" is what President Obama says he wants as state and local governments spend economic-stimulus dollars. But what does that mean?...

• Seeing the Sites
• Apr 30, 2009
• ALASKA/Checkbook Online URL: fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/checkbook_online What it does: Provides Excel or PDF spreadsheets with spending by organization, vendor...

• Getting in the GovLoop
• Apr 28, 2009
• People in thousands of government offices perform similar jobs. If only they could find a way to tap the expertise and wisdom of others via ...