“Working in the open” – blogging and talking about your work on social media – has become a lot more common in the past few years. As a federal public servant, though, it’s still sometimes hard to know what you are or aren’t allowed to talk about.| sboots.ca
One of the terms that comes up often in digital government work is “shipping”, or getting things out the door. Let’s take a look at why shipping is important, why it’s so hard, and ways to make it easier.| sboots.ca
James C. Scott’s fascinating and seminal book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, examines how, across dozens of domains, ranging from agriculture and forestry, to urban planning and census-taking, a very predictable failure pattern keeps recurring. The pictures below, from the book (used with permission from the author) graphically and literally illustrate the central concept in this failure pattern, an idea called “legibility.”| ribbonfarm