Sunday, March 22, 2009

North Carolina State Board of Elections Site Rated Best in Country in Government 2.0

The website of the NC State Board of Elections has been rated best in the country by the group "Social Government" a group dedicated to turning US goverment agencies into Government 2.0. That means using the full powers of the internet to serve and engage the public and provide transparency.

State Election Web Sites: The Good and Bad
By Ethan Klapper on March 21st, 2009 Social Government

One of the most important functions of state government is to administer elections. A good Web site for a state elections body is essential to make the entire electoral process go smoothly. Users should be able to find voter registration forms, rules, absentee ballot information and results with ease. The Web site should not be cluttered and should be accessible.

After reviewing 49 of 50 Web sites (Iowa’s was not reachable), I can say without much hesitation that North Carolina has the best election Web site in the country. The Tar Heel State’s Web site uses a clean and crisp design that is organized without any clutter. All of the information is easy to find. As a bonus, voters are even able to look up provisional ballot information. The top bar of the Web site contains current
voter registration counts — a nice touch.


More on what Government 2.0 is from Wikipedia

Government 2.0

Government 2.0 is neologism for attempts to
apply the social networking and integration advantages of Web 2.0 to the practice of government. Government 2.0 is an attempt to provide more effective processes for government service delivery to individuals and businesses. Integration of tools such as wikis, development of government-specific social networking sites and the use of blogs, RSS feeds and Google Maps are all helping governments provide information to people in a manner that is more immediately useful to the people concerned.[1]
A number of efforts have been made to expose data gathered by government sources in ways that make it available for mashups.
The election of Barack Obama has become associated with the effective use of Web 2.0 technologies during his campaign, and in the implementation of his new government in 2009.[2][3][4]


Social Government is a group aimed at turning Government into Government 2.0 by provising analysis, interviews and lins about various U.S. government agencies Web and Web 2.0 initiatives.

Note - North Carolina also has 100 County Board of Elections, each with their own website. Almost all of these counties are at or near Government 2.0 . NC Coalition for Verified Voting urges the few counties that are not yet using the internet to faciliate voter participation to do so pronto. Perhaps we need some legislation to that effect, unless ordering this is within the State Board of Elections authority.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Frankie Milley said...

How sad bacterial meningitis has taken another life. I know this patriot will be missed.


I am the mother of an only child, Ryan, who died from of meningococcal meningitis and the founder and executive director of a national organization, Meningitis Angels, www.meningitis-angels.org.

Too many infants, teens, kids and young adults are left debilitated or die from this vaccine preventable disease.

What is meningitis?
Meningitis is a dangerous and sometimes fatal inflammation of the brain and/or spinal cord that can leave survivors with serious life-long physical problems such as, organ failure, blindness, deafness, loss of limbs, severe seizures, brain damage and other disabilities.
You should also understand meningococcemia and sepsis.

Signs and Symptoms
The early signs of meningitis and blood poisoning which could improve detection of the disease and save lives are unrelenting fever, leg pain, cold hands and feet and abnormal skin color can develop within (12 hours) after infection long before the more classic signs of the illness such as a rash, headache, stiff neck, sensitivity to light and impaired consciousness, debilitation or death. Anyone can get meningitis especially infants, children and teens.

What parents and students should know:
According to ACIP/CDC children ages (11) years through college freshmen should be vaccinated against meningococcal meningitis. The current vaccines are approved for ages (2) years and older. However be informed, there are (5) sero-groups of the disease, all sero-groups are not covered. However the most common in the United States are sero-groups C Y, W135 and A which are.

Infants and toddlers should be vaccinated against pneumococcal and HIB meningitis.
Those children in daycare and those of American Indian, Eskimo and African American heritage are at a higher risk for some forms of meningitis.

There are no vaccines to prevent viral meningitis.

Frankie Milley, Meningitis Angels, Founder/National Director