To ensure that building inspectors are making the rounds they are responsible for, New York City's Department of Buildings will begin using GPS technology in department-issued cell phones to track inspectors’ movements and hold them accountable. The system is in part a response to one inspector’s fabricated report about the soundness of a tower crane which later fell and killed several people.

The University of New England in Biddleford, Maine, has created a program that puts medical students in the place of their geriatric patients. Students are given a “diagnosis” of some ailment and live in a nursing home for several weeks as someone with the condition does. The experience includes the challenge of navigating a wheelchair in tight spaces, being helped in the bathroom, trying to sleep through night checks, and learning and living with the other residents. One goal of the program is to encourage medical students to consider geriatric medicine, an underrepresented specialty.

Wellington, Florida, responsible for maintaining vacant and abandoned properties, is using plecos, a type of fish, to feast on algae accumulating in the stagnant water of untended swimming pools. A year of cleaning the pools with the fish costs around $700, compared with the more expensive and less eco-friendly measure of hiring pool services and chemically treating the water.

In Florida, the Broward County school district wants to save as much as $200,000 by requiring more than 100 previously certified school administrators to work as regular substitutes twice a month. A similar but voluntary project has sprouted in Miami to bring district administrators into classrooms of struggling schools at least six times a year as either co-teachers, guest lecturers, or as tutors and mentors. These programs also give perspective to those who shape standards and promote curricula as to their practicality in the classroom.

Florida Virtual School (FLVS), serving middle and high school students, continues to be cited as a first-rate example of the benefits that can come from marrying education and technology. This virtual “district” allows the state to deliver courses of instruction at a fraction of the typical cost, saving on busing, food, and building maintenance. Students work with their teachers by email, instant messaging, and the telephone. Additionally, the school gives students the opportunity to take specialty classes without the school needing to hire specialized instructors. Besides the virtual learning environment it provides, a second FLVS innovation involves the state funding model, which is based partially on course completion, not simply enrollment.

Utah will launch its own private computing cloud to host e-mail and Web applications to cities and counties within the state. Private clouds give public entities the ability to utilize hosted applications without the perils of releasing secure government data and applications to private providers.

The National Naval Medical Center, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, and Suburban Hospital are planning the implementation of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system to track patients and assets in case of disaster. Once implemented, the system would include a real-time application to monitor and view the location of these patients in disaster areas.

The U.S. Army is requiring its 1.1 million soldiers to participate in a first of its kind training to strengthen their mental fitness. The goal of the training is to not only improve combat performance, but to ward off mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that frequently afflict troops returning from war. The program will be introduced in October, at two bases, and gradually phased in.

To increase the transparency and accessibility of federal courts, Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy has developed an online tool to provide the public with more free documents. Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is a paid service site that gives the public access to records. Through the program, downloaded on a web browser, whenever a user accesses the PACER site, the application automatically donates purchased documents to a free online repository. The service simultaneously identifies documents that one might be searching for as previously donated and therefore available without purchase.

Pittsburgh is using an iPhone application, iBurgh, to help citizens register complaints faster and to help the city respond faster. Using the application, a concerned citizen can upload a picture of their complaint and add a caption explaining the issue. When sent the complaint will automatically include the user’s exact location. Residents in Boston, Houston, New York and many other cities are using a new service called SeeClickFix that allows users to insert a “ticket” on a Google Maps image denoting a problem they have identified, and then share it with decision-makers and other community members.

California held a garage sale at a Sacramento warehouse to relieve itself of state inventory it no longer needs, such as government vehicles, jewelry confiscated from criminals, technical equipment, surplus prison shirts, and other assorted collectibles like vintage scales and an antique piano. The state has also listed some items on the website Ebay. The money from sales is slated for California's general fund.

The government continues to upgrade its facilities to be more energy-efficient. NASA is building Sustainability Base which, when completed, will most likely be the greenest building in the federal government. It will utilize solar panels, fuel cells, and water recycling systems, among other technological marvels. It will power itself and use 90 percent less potable water compared to other buildings of equal size. The U.S. Postal Service has also opened up its first, and New York City’s largest, green roof. Expected to last up to 50 years—twice as long as the roof it replaced—it provides a green place for workers to sit, keeps the building cooler, and reduces polluted runoff.