E-Government: A Graduate Class

Wow! It has been 6 months since I posted anything to this blog. Not setting a very good example I am afraid. It has been a busy winter and spring, and I have a lot of material stored up. Now if I just had the time to write!

One thing I am working on for this fall that I am very excited about is a class at VCU that is near and dear to me: E-Government.

The class title is INFO 691 Topics in Information Systems – Digital Government

This class is about using information and communication technologies to provide government services. Open data, social media, websites, APIs, collaboration & sharing networks. Students will review and assess different levels of government and their approach to e-government. Business models and implementation strategies for e-government projects will be examined. Students will be prepared at the conclusion of the class to assess, design, implement and evaluate e-government solutions.

Students will be required to have and use a twitter account and other social media, create and contribute to blogs and use other digital resources.

This will be a very hands-on course. No tests or exams, we will have reading assignments and writing assignments and a main project for the course.

A word about me as the teacher for the class. I am not an college professor. I am a practitioner with 35 years in the IT industry, 9 years in government service and many awards.  I have guest lectured for the FTEMS program as well as other graduate MIS classes. Information security, leadership, coding and networking are primary interests of mine.

We will spend time on lots of websites for review of content and evaluating approaches including www.govloop.com, www.govtech.com, www.elgl.org, and www.data.gov.

This is a new elective course, and is described in this doc on the www.vcu.edu website.

Drop me an email if you want a copy of the syllabus.

Barry