Influence and Muckety Maps

I first became familiar with influence maps when I read about them on the Mind Tools website and it wasn't until last year that I really put it into practice.  It proved to be a very a useful technique to help me manage stakeholder relationships in my new project management role.

Whlist browsing the web today I came across a website called 'Muckety.com - Exploring the paths of power and influence' which actually maps out relationships between people and organisations doing some of the leg work for you.  Admittedly it is more of a novel way of viewing networks than true stakeholder management (although for political people there are indications as to whether someone supports or opposes the person) but it is pretty interesting none the less.  Today their front page poses the question Do ties between Apple, Google pose antitrust issues? with a muckety map showing what appears to me to be a possible conflict of interests with the directors... You can even create your own...fun stuff!

Creating accessible and accountable government in the US

I came across a post on CIO Insight.com called 'Obama's Triad takes on government IT'. In it the author Robert Otto talks about the big challenges facing the Obama administration’s CIO, CTO and CPO and goes on to put forward elements of a potential vision going forward over the coming years. It's pretty idealistic but sensible stuff. What I can't help wondering is if they actually achieve something like this whether the UK would finally bite the bullet and work in a more joined up fashion too.

The holders of the posts are as follows:

• CIO - Chief Information Officer - Vivek Kundra
  
• CTO - Chief Technology Officer - Aneesh Chopra (Also see Aneesh Chopra named federal CTO)
• CPO - Chief Performance Officer - Jeffrey Zients
  

Related links:

• President Obama Names Vivek Kundra Chief Information Officer
• Federal CIO Vivek Kundra outlines top priorities for first 100 days