• UK | The Conservative Technology Manifesto - and the importance of skunkworks
  The Conservative Party recently launched the Conservative Technology Manifesto "to make the British government the most technology friendly in the world" (Rishi Saha talked about the Conservative party strategy at PDF Europe): increasing broadband speed, improving access to government data, creating 600.000 jobs are the keypoints. Anyway the document is ambitious and it seems to have one very innovative commitment: creating "a small IT development team in government – a 'government skunkworks' – that can develop low cost IT applications in-house and advise on the procurement of large projects".

Credit: BarackObama.com

• Organizing for America launches a little visualizer front-end interface for their campaign to have supporters send in signs saying why they're backing health care reform.
• That Google DC event on online democracy that fell victim to the great snow-valanche of oh-ten has been rescheduled for the end of March.
• The State Department reportedly plans an internal social network.
• And FEMA launches a map that shows you in plain color the flood history of your county.

(With Micah Sifry)

• Spain | eHealth Week 2010 in Barcelona
   “eHealth for sustainable healthcare: global changes through local actions”: this is the motto of the High Level Ministerial Conference on eHealth, that is taking place in Barcelona in these days (until March 18th). The program is ambitious: in the conference the most innovative projects driven by the EU Spanish and European regions will be presented, creating a debate on the importance of ICT and participation in healthcare and the contribution of entrepreneurs working in the field.

UPDATE: This call has been postponed. We apologize for the inconvenience; stay tuned for a rescheduled date!

Standing in line, pulling a lever, filling in bubbles -- voting in America isn't exactly on the cutting-edge of technology.

But with just a video camera, a simple question and an internet connection, one small organization is transforming Election Day itself.

How can your organization use online video to change politics?

Join the PdF Network on Thursday, March 18 as Jacob Soboroff, Executive Director, Why Tuesday, shows us how a camera and an idea can spark a national conversation.

Thursday, March 18th at the PdF Network
Reform by Video: How to Build an Organization Using Online Video
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Check out our upcoming PdF Network calls...

• Iceland | The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
  Iceland is a country with huge economic problems but also with an ambitious idea in development to save freedom of expression: The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. It is a cross-party proposal (19 out of 63MPs are making the proposal) aimed at adopting the strongest press and source protection laws from around the world: "The goal of the IMMI proposal is to task the government with finding ways to strengthen freedom of expression around world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers. To this end the legal environment should be explored in such a way that the goals can be defined, and changes to law or new law proposals can be prepared".

Credit: The White House

• Nope, that's not Wall-E in the front row of the White House theater, sitting between Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, as we first thought. Through the miracle that is the "original size" feature on Flickr, you can zoom in and see that it's actually some kind of a purse. Probably Spielberg's.
• As part of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign, the White House is running an Apps for Healthy Kids competition that offers up $40,000 in prize money for "innovative, fun and engaging tools and games that encourage children directly or through their parents to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active." The contest seems to bring together some of the Obamas favorite things: vegetables and open government; they want developers to make use of the USDA's nutrition data that it recently released through Data.gov.
• The federal highway folks have was seems to be a new zoomy-in map of federal highway projects.
• And Ben Smith's "Remainders" end-of-the-day link post (which, we freely admit, inspired our "Clearing the Cache" regular feature) figures into a plot line on the rather enjoyable new CBS drama The Good Wife. What a world!

• Italy | "Internet is freedom": Lawrence Lessig at the Chamber of Deputies
  There were high expectations for Lawrence Lessig's lecture at the Chamber of Deputies yesterday afternoon during the event "Internet is freedom". Some days before, the organizers asked people to tweet about the theme of the conference: the chosen hashtag was #difenderelarete, a reference to some recent bills attempting to limitate freedom of expression on the web. There were thousands of tweets and even more during the speech, making the topic the most popular of the day in Italy.
  But, apparently, mainstream media still don't get it: the lecture was preceded by a speech of the President of the Chamber, praising the Internet as a force of peace and innovation, and that is the only part of the conference that has made it to the news so far.

Credit: WhiteHouse.gov

• U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra reports back in with some basic highlights from his swing to the West Coast last week. On a stop in Silicon Valley, Kundra sat down to brainstorm with "venture capitalists and technology innovators" from companies like Mint.com, Mozilla, and Facebook. What'd they come up with? If you have the vision of a bald eagle, you might be able to make out some details in the storyboard above.
• Here's a map showing the real-time location of the 13 vehicles that the Census Bureau has out and about in the U.S., letting people know about the upcoming head count. Each van is doing its own tweeting from the road.
• Also from the census folks: you can read the census form online, but you can't fill it out there. Yet.
• "For someone who claims to hate the 'Democrat[sic]-media complex,' Breitbart sure knows how to work it."
• TurboTax -- as in, the people who make that tax preparation software -- takes to Twitter to respond to those who had criticized them for supporting a certain political TV show. They tweet, "Thanks everyone for your feedback, & for reminding us of what we value. We’ve pulled advertising from the Glenn Beck show."
• And Mr. Beck is also the target of a new campaign from the likes of MoveOn, Brave New Films, and the SEIU that makes use of that your-name-here technology to make fun of the Beck-board.

Credit: NCinDC

• For just under half an hour yesterday afternoon, there was no power in the Longworth House Office Building. In the United States of America.
• New to Twitter is Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson (@lisapjackson), who is looking to "expand the way we thinking about environmentalism." She might want to talk to Cory Booker about how you go about using Twitter to do some reputational enhancement.
• After some further noodling, Kevin Drum decides that "anonymous" blogger briefings inside the corridors of power can, indeed, be worthwhile.
• Parsing what John Yoo has to say about what became of his Justice Department emails.
• The AP analyzes White House tweet spin.
• And, completing our House of Representatives news sandwich, the House has launched a new caucus on global Internet freedom. There are only two members on board as of now, with Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey and Democrat David Wu of Oregon. But it's still early.

• Germany | Creating a more transparent Frankfurt
  Frankfurt-Gestalten.de (Create Frankfurt) is a new space for citizen participation: the aim is tracking local political decisions, making them more transparent and motivate citizens to connect locally and to discuss on how to change their neighborhood.
  The website offers information in form of geo-referenced data and documents properly tagged. It also offer an email service and space for comments and proposals.