This is the third in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context. Read about the first two rules here and here

Increasingly, it seems like the only thing easier than finding a reason to deploy collaborative technology is finding a reason not to. In an era that demands massive change, government has a tendency to let its"inner lawyer" to slow innovation and empower the status quo.

The reality is that collaboration is happening whether or not government gets involved. The very attributes that make collaboration a powerful catalyst for change - low cost and complexity, widespread availability of data - also make it easy for normal citizens to bring about extraordinary change without much help from government. As far as government is concerned, this is the key paradox of mass collaboration: any technology that allows government to "go around" its normal bureaucratic constraints also has the potential to let citizens "go around" government itself.

Take, for example, Fix My Street. The wiki site, created by My Society, aims to help resolve issues like landscaping, rubbish collection, and street lighting in towns and communities across the United Kingdom. These problems are reported and aggregated on the site, and then sent to the nearest town council for action.

Fix My Street is a great way to deliver government services more efficiently and responsively. The catch is, it's fully citizen-run, and totally independent of the government. Apparently, instead of waiting for their government to work better, the ordinary citizens across the UK started transforming it themselves, from the outside in. While the site is a great asset, governments across the pond are now in the position of catching up to this new, citizen-invented paradigm. We all know what it's like when your mandates suddenly don't fit with your normal way of doing business or your stakeholders' expectations. The way that technology enables collaboration and empowers citizens means that this is going to be happening a lot more.

Throughout this series of "Big Rules", we've talked about the importance of providing a clear value exchange and the necessity of thinking about problems in a new way. The biggest rule of all, however, may be that doing nothing simply isn't an option. Mass collaboration represents not just an exciting chance to engage citizens, but also a responsibility to draw citizens and stakeholders into the process proactively and ensure that public deliberation is fueled by accurate data and realistic expectations about what government can and cannot achieve. We've entered an age where the challenges of collaborative governance are dwarfed by the opportunities it presents - and our leaders in government have a responsibility to rise to the opportunity and embrace it.

This is the second in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context. Read about the first rule here.

Last week, we talked about the importance of heading into any implementation of collaborative technology with your eyes open, and truly understanding why you've decided to launch a blog, start a wiki, or whatever your favorite flavor of web app happens to be. But that advice raises another critical question: How do you know when you're doing it right? Mass collaboration isn't a panacea. What it does do is give leaders an opportunity to bring data and people together in new ways. Today's most effective leaders are focused not on how they can solve a problem, but on who to pull into the problem-solving process.

The rule sets for all of this aren't defined, and the need is great. Collaboration is all about making government better, and the key to "doing what's right" is approaching every problem from a good-government perspective. The best collaborations in government come from leaders that aren't constrained by vertical hierarchies and see a need to bring multiple players together to solve a challenge.

One of the most impressive examples of this is also one of the most simple: The Environmental Protection Agency's Puget Sound Information Challenge. The Puget Sound is a body of water that branches off of the Pacific Ocean and stretches over a hundred miles into the northwestern coast of Washington State. In theory, the EPA has responsibility for regulating and ensuring the quality of Puget Sound's water. The thing is, though, the Puget Sound is a pretty important waterway to a pretty large number of people:

The urban region designated the Puget Sound Region is centered on Seattle, Washington, and consists of nine counties, two urban center cities and four satellite cities making up what has been dubbed "Pugetopolis". Both urban core cities have large industrial areas and seaports plus a high-rise central business district. The satellite cities are primarily suburban, featuring a small downtown core and a small industrial area or port. The suburbs consist mostly of residences, strip malls, and shopping centers. The region is also home to numerous ports. The two largest and busiest are the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma, which, if combined, comprise the second largest container port in North America after Los Angeles/Long Beach.

In this case, it's more about deploying collaboration in an agency by realizing that bringing a wider array of stakeholders into the process wasn't just a neat idea; it was also the right thing to do. In a situation where the environmental quality of one waterway affects so many different populations, why should only one agency have responsibility and authority for regulating it? Molly O'Neill, EPA's CIO, answered this question by establishing a wiki site that challenged anyone with passion and expertise about the future of the Puget Sound to lend their voices and inform the way EPA measures water quality there.

During the course of the 36 hour challenge, the site received more than 175 contributions of ideas, data and applications, and over 18,000 page views. Notable submissions included a NASA employee who shared information on interpreting air quality data from space, and members of the U.S. Geological Earth Observation Community who offered guidelines for utilizing remote sensing data indicators to measure water quality. Also, an impressive example of intergovernmental collaboration occurred when EPA scientists worked with Transportation Department employees to develop an idea to equip Puget Sound ferryboats with environmental monitoring equipment. Here's Molly talking about the success of the experiment.

The bottom line here is that pulling more voices into a discussion of the Puget Sound wasn't just a neat idea from a technology perspective; it was also the right thing to do from a governance perspective. The technology simply enabled tapping everyone – from other agencies, to stakeholder groups, to the citizenry at large – to change the game and get results. When it comes to thinking about when to deploy collaborative technologies, just do the right thing. Success will follow.

This is the second in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context. Read about the first rule here.

Last week, we talked about the importance of heading into any implementation of collaborative technology with your eyes open, and truly understanding why you've decided to launch a blog, start a wiki, or whatever your favorite flavor of web app happens to be. But that advice raises another critical question: How do you know when you're doing it right? Mass collaboration isn't a panacea. What it does do is give leaders an opportunity to bring data and people together in new ways. Today's most effective leaders are focused not on how they can solve a problem, but on who to pull into the problem-solving process.

The rule sets for all of this aren't defined, and the need is great. Collaboration is all about making government better, and the key to "doing what's right" is approaching every problem from a good-government perspective. The best collaborations in government come from leaders that aren't constrained by vertical hierarchies and see a need to bring multiple players together to solve a challenge.

One of the most impressive examples of this is also one of the most simple: The Environmental Protection Agency's Puget Sound Information Challenge. The Puget Sound is a body of water that branches off of the Pacific Ocean and stretches over a hundred miles into the northwestern coast of Washington State. In theory, the EPA has responsibility for regulating and ensuring the quality of Puget Sound's water. The thing is, though, the Puget Sound is a pretty important waterway to a pretty large number of people:

The urban region designated the Puget Sound Region is centered on Seattle, Washington, and consists of nine counties, two urban center cities and four satellite cities making up what has been dubbed "Pugetopolis". Both urban core cities have large industrial areas and seaports plus a high-rise central business district. The satellite cities are primarily suburban, featuring a small downtown core and a small industrial area or port. The suburbs consist mostly of residences, strip malls, and shopping centers. The region is also home to numerous ports. The two largest and busiest are the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma, which, if combined, comprise the second largest container port in North America after Los Angeles/Long Beach.

In this case, it's more about deploying collaboration in an agency by realizing that bringing a wider array of stakeholders into the process wasn't just a neat idea; it was also the right thing to do. In a situation where the environmental quality of one waterway affects so many different populations, why should only one agency have responsibility and authority for regulating it? Molly O'Neill, EPA's CIO, answered this question by establishing a wiki site that challenged anyone with passion and expertise about the future of the Puget Sound to lend their voices and inform the way EPA measures water quality there.

During the course of the 36 hour challenge, the site received more than 175 contributions of ideas, data and applications, and over 18,000 page views. Notable submissions included a NASA employee who shared information on interpreting air quality data from space, and members of the U.S. Geological Earth Observation Community who offered guidelines for utilizing remote sensing data indicators to measure water quality. Also, an impressive example of intergovernmental collaboration occurred when EPA scientists worked with Transportation Department employees to develop an idea to equip Puget Sound ferryboats with environmental monitoring equipment. Here's Molly talking about the success of the experiment.

The bottom line here is that pulling more voices into a discussion of the Puget Sound wasn't just a neat idea from a technology perspective; it was also the right thing to do from a governance perspective. The technology simply enabled tapping everyone – from other agencies, to stakeholder groups, to the citizenry at large – to change the game and get results. When it comes to thinking about when to deploy collaborative technologies, just do the right thing. Success will follow.

This is the second in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context. Read about the first rule here.

Last week, we talked about the importance of heading into any implementation of collaborative technology with your eyes open, and truly understanding why you've decided to launch a blog, start a wiki, or whatever your favorite flavor of web app happens to be. But that advice raises another critical question: How do you know when you're doing it right? Mass collaboration isn't a panacea. What it does do is give leaders an opportunity to bring data and people together in new ways. Today's most effective leaders are focused not on how they can solve a problem, but on who to pull into the problem-solving process.

The rule sets for all of this aren't defined, and the need is great. Collaboration is all about making government better, and the key to "doing what's right" is approaching every problem from a good-government perspective. The best collaborations in government come from leaders that aren't constrained by vertical hierarchies and see a need to bring multiple players together to solve a challenge.

One of the most impressive examples of this is also one of the most simple: The Environmental Protection Agency's Puget Sound Information Challenge. The Puget Sound is a body of water that branches off of the Pacific Ocean and stretches over a hundred miles into the northwestern coast of Washington State. In theory, the EPA has responsibility for regulating and ensuring the quality of Puget Sound's water. The thing is, though, the Puget Sound is a pretty important waterway to a pretty large number of people:

The urban region designated the Puget Sound Region is centered on Seattle, Washington, and consists of nine counties, two urban center cities and four satellite cities making up what has been dubbed "Pugetopolis". Both urban core cities have large industrial areas and seaports plus a high-rise central business district. The satellite cities are primarily suburban, featuring a small downtown core and a small industrial area or port. The suburbs consist mostly of residences, strip malls, and shopping centers. The region is also home to numerous ports. The two largest and busiest are the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma, which, if combined, comprise the second largest container port in North America after Los Angeles/Long Beach.

In this case, it's more about deploying collaboration in an agency by realizing that bringing a wider array of stakeholders into the process wasn't just a neat idea; it was also the right thing to do. In a situation where the environmental quality of one waterway affects so many different populations, why should only one agency have responsibility and authority for regulating it? Molly O'Neill, EPA's CIO, answered this question by establishing a wiki site that challenged anyone with passion and expertise about the future of the Puget Sound to lend their voices and inform the way EPA measures water quality there.

During the course of the 36 hour challenge, the site received more than 175 contributions of ideas, data and applications, and over 18,000 page views. Notable submissions included a NASA employee who shared information on interpreting air quality data from space, and members of the U.S. Geological Earth Observation Community who offered guidelines for utilizing remote sensing data indicators to measure water quality. Also, an impressive example of intergovernmental collaboration occurred when EPA scientists worked with Transportation Department employees to develop an idea to equip Puget Sound ferryboats with environmental monitoring equipment. Here's Molly talking about the success of the experiment.

The bottom line here is that pulling more voices into a discussion of the Puget Sound wasn't just a neat idea from a technology perspective; it was also the right thing to do from a governance perspective. The technology simply enabled tapping everyone – from other agencies, to stakeholder groups, to the citizenry at large – to change the game and get results. When it comes to thinking about when to deploy collaborative technologies, just do the right thing. Success will follow.

This is the first in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context.

Today, many public leaders see blogs, wikis, and other collaborative platforms, and feel immense pressure to do...something. But as we like to say around here, there's nothing magical about collaboration that changes human nature, and it is still fundamentally true that people only show up when you give them a reason. Making the decision to offer folks a chance to interact has the potential to add a lot more value than a one-way exchange, but it also means that the time and effort required to participate is greater. Simply deploying collaborative technologies doesn't mean that people will use them. In other words, if you build it...well, they still may not come.

Take blogs, for example. Blogs are one of the easiest solutions to implement, but one of the hardest to implement correctly. It's easy to overlook the fact that the "Comments" section at the bottom of each post isn't just a fun place for users to drop feedback; it's a commitment to responsiveness. Leaders looking to implement a blog have to think clearly about the value exchange: Why am I asking people to spend time and effort essentially giving me their best ideas for free? What do they get out of it in return?

A great example of a blog that has answered this question successfully is the Transportation Security Administration's blog, Evolution of Security. TSA Administrator (and friend of the Collaboration Project) Kip Hawley identified early on that a blog could be a powerful tool to gain public buy-in for an agency whose mission isn't always well-understood. Rather than just start a site and begin churning out blog posts, though, TSA thought carefully about what it would take to truly realize a value exchange with potential users. How, exactly, did they do it?

• First, they thought clearly about who would write the blog. The public thinks of TSA as a single, monolithic entity, but in reality there are over 43,000 TSOs and managers who are on the front lines of airport security, dealing directly with travelers every day. So, TSA made the decision to have some of these folks actually write the thing! The result is a blog that speaks to the problems and concerns of actual travelers, rather than simply talking inside-baseball (Federal Edition!) or sternly lecturing citizens about the dangers of air travel. It's a site with a mission to actually deliver better service to customers, which is a great value exchange and a truly refereshing thing to see in the federal community.
  
  
• From this decision naturally flowed the idea of letting bloggers write in their actual voices. Possibly taking a page from Us Magazine, TSA decided to let their bloggers show that they're just like us! Check out this line from a recent post on shoe removal:

  The TSA is well aware that the removal of shoes is not our most popular policy. In fact, it probably ranks up there with root canals and doing your taxes.
  
  What you've seen up until now has been our officers enforcing an unpopular policy that is based on the unfortunate truth that intelligence tells us that terrorists are still very interested in hiding items in their shoes.

  The tone is breezy, informal, and damned funny, and it instantly sets readers at ease and makes them comfortable engaging in a two-way dialogue. This may seem like a small issue, but if readers don't see a voice they feel they could have a conversation with...they won't.
  
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TSA's bloggers actually act on, and react to, the feedback they get from users. For example, in March 2008, TSA blogger 'Bob' was browsing Google News Alerts when he noticed a story making major waves in the blogosphere: traveler Michael Nygard had recently missed his flight because airport security had pulled him aside to take a closer look at his new MacBook Air laptop. While the passenger himself had not criticized TSA, his story set off a storm of complaints among bloggers who used the event to highlight the agency's supposed ineffectiveness.
  
  Using Evolution of Security as his platform, Bob immediately acknowledged the incident and promised to find out for his readers why it had happened. A week later Bob issued a follow-up post in which he included a video clip of an X-ray test that he had personally conducted with the MacBook Air. While this response did not immediately silence all of the critics, the majorityof blog comments were very supportive of the agency's actions – and demonstrated that spending time on the blog could actually pay off big-time for TSA and its traveling customers.

The bottom line is that there are three key success factors that make a collaborative platform or tool an attractive proposition to potential users, and all of them are the result of carefully considering the "social" aspect of the Social Web. Successful platforms seek to solve a clear problem, target a specific audience, and they provide a real value exchange for the user's effort. Lacking any of these three is usually the difference between experimentation with "cool" technology, and collaboration that truly adds value. What it all comes down to is that if users are not driven to participate by making the value of their efforts clear, then facilitating a productive discussion becomes harder than getting through an airport with your shoes on!

This is the first in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context.

Today, many public leaders see blogs, wikis, and other collaborative platforms, and feel immense pressure to do...something. But as we like to say around here, there's nothing magical about collaboration that changes human nature, and it is still fundamentally true that people only show up when you give them a reason. Making the decision to offer folks a chance to interact has the potential to add a lot more value than a one-way exchange, but it also means that the time and effort required to participate is greater. Simply deploying collaborative technologies doesn't mean that people will use them. In other words, if you build it...well, they still may not come.

Take blogs, for example. Blogs are one of the easiest solutions to implement, but one of the hardest to implement correctly. It's easy to overlook the fact that the "Comments" section at the bottom of each post isn't just a fun place for users to drop feedback; it's a commitment to responsiveness. Leaders looking to implement a blog have to think clearly about the value exchange: Why am I asking people to spend time and effort essentially giving me their best ideas for free? What do they get out of it in return?

A great example of a blog that has answered this question successfully is the Transportation Security Administration's blog, Evolution of Security. TSA Administrator (and friend of the Collaboration Project) Kip Hawley identified early on that a blog could be a powerful tool to gain public buy-in for an agency whose mission isn't always well-understood. Rather than just start a site and begin churning out blog posts, though, TSA thought carefully about what it would take to truly realize a value exchange with potential users. How, exactly, did they do it?

• First, they thought clearly about who would write the blog. The public thinks of TSA as a single, monolithic entity, but in reality there are over 43,000 TSOs and managers who are on the front lines of airport security, dealing directly with travelers every day. So, TSA made the decision to have some of these folks actually write the thing! The result is a blog that speaks to the problems and concerns of actual travelers, rather than simply talking inside-baseball (Federal Edition!) or sternly lecturing citizens about the dangers of air travel. It's a site with a mission to actually deliver better service to customers, which is a great value exchange and a truly refereshing thing to see in the federal community.
  
  
• From this decision naturally flowed the idea of letting bloggers write in their actual voices. Possibly taking a page from Us Magazine, TSA decided to let their bloggers show that they're just like us! Check out this line from a recent post on shoe removal:

  The TSA is well aware that the removal of shoes is not our most popular policy. In fact, it probably ranks up there with root canals and doing your taxes.
  
  What you've seen up until now has been our officers enforcing an unpopular policy that is based on the unfortunate truth that intelligence tells us that terrorists are still very interested in hiding items in their shoes.

  The tone is breezy, informal, and damned funny, and it instantly sets readers at ease and makes them comfortable engaging in a two-way dialogue. This may seem like a small issue, but if readers don't see a voice they feel they could have a conversation with...they won't.
  
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TSA's bloggers actually act on, and react to, the feedback they get from users. For example, in March 2008, TSA blogger 'Bob' was browsing Google News Alerts when he noticed a story making major waves in the blogosphere: traveler Michael Nygard had recently missed his flight because airport security had pulled him aside to take a closer look at his new MacBook Air laptop. While the passenger himself had not criticized TSA, his story set off a storm of complaints among bloggers who used the event to highlight the agency's supposed ineffectiveness.
  
  Using Evolution of Security as his platform, Bob immediately acknowledged the incident and promised to find out for his readers why it had happened. A week later Bob issued a follow-up post in which he included a video clip of an X-ray test that he had personally conducted with the MacBook Air. While this response did not immediately silence all of the critics, the majorityof blog comments were very supportive of the agency's actions – and demonstrated that spending time on the blog could actually pay off big-time for TSA and its traveling customers.

The bottom line is that there are three key success factors that make a collaborative platform or tool an attractive proposition to potential users, and all of them are the result of carefully considering the "social" aspect of the Social Web. Successful platforms seek to solve a clear problem, target a specific audience, and they provide a real value exchange for the user's effort. Lacking any of these three is usually the difference between experimentation with "cool" technology, and collaboration that truly adds value. What it all comes down to is that if users are not driven to participate by making the value of their efforts clear, then facilitating a productive discussion becomes harder than getting through an airport with your shoes on!

This is the first in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context.

Today, many public leaders see blogs, wikis, and other collaborative platforms, and feel immense pressure to do...something. But as we like to say around here, there's nothing magical about collaboration that changes human nature, and it is still fundamentally true that people only show up when you give them a reason. Making the decision to offer folks a chance to interact has the potential to add a lot more value than a one-way exchange, but it also means that the time and effort required to participate is greater. Simply deploying collaborative technologies doesn't mean that people will use them. In other words, if you build it...well, they still may not come.

Take blogs, for example. Blogs are one of the easiest solutions to implement, but one of the hardest to implement correctly. It's easy to overlook the fact that the "Comments" section at the bottom of each post isn't just a fun place for users to drop feedback; it's a commitment to responsiveness. Leaders looking to implement a blog have to think clearly about the value exchange: Why am I asking people to spend time and effort essentially giving me their best ideas for free? What do they get out of it in return?

A great example of a blog that has answered this question successfully is the Transportation Security Administration's blog, Evolution of Security. TSA Administrator (and friend of the Collaboration Project) Kip Hawley identified early on that a blog could be a powerful tool to gain public buy-in for an agency whose mission isn't always well-understood. Rather than just start a site and begin churning out blog posts, though, TSA thought carefully about what it would take to truly realize a value exchange with potential users. How, exactly, did they do it?

• First, they thought clearly about who would write the blog. The public thinks of TSA as a single, monolithic entity, but in reality there are over 43,000 TSOs and managers who are on the front lines of airport security, dealing directly with travelers every day. So, TSA made the decision to have some of these folks actually write the thing! The result is a blog that speaks to the problems and concerns of actual travelers, rather than simply talking inside-baseball (Federal Edition!) or sternly lecturing citizens about the dangers of air travel. It's a site with a mission to actually deliver better service to customers, which is a great value exchange and a truly refereshing thing to see in the federal community.
  
  
• From this decision naturally flowed the idea of letting bloggers write in their actual voices. Possibly taking a page from Us Magazine, TSA decided to let their bloggers show that they're just like us! Check out this line from a recent post on shoe removal:

  The TSA is well aware that the removal of shoes is not our most popular policy. In fact, it probably ranks up there with root canals and doing your taxes.
  
  What you've seen up until now has been our officers enforcing an unpopular policy that is based on the unfortunate truth that intelligence tells us that terrorists are still very interested in hiding items in their shoes.

  The tone is breezy, informal, and damned funny, and it instantly sets readers at ease and makes them comfortable engaging in a two-way dialogue. This may seem like a small issue, but if readers don't see a voice they feel they could have a conversation with...they won't.
  
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TSA's bloggers actually act on, and react to, the feedback they get from users. For example, in March 2008, TSA blogger 'Bob' was browsing Google News Alerts when he noticed a story making major waves in the blogosphere: traveler Michael Nygard had recently missed his flight because airport security had pulled him aside to take a closer look at his new MacBook Air laptop. While the passenger himself had not criticized TSA, his story set off a storm of complaints among bloggers who used the event to highlight the agency's supposed ineffectiveness.
  
  Using Evolution of Security as his platform, Bob immediately acknowledged the incident and promised to find out for his readers why it had happened. A week later Bob issued a follow-up post in which he included a video clip of an X-ray test that he had personally conducted with the MacBook Air. While this response did not immediately silence all of the critics, the majorityof blog comments were very supportive of the agency's actions – and demonstrated that spending time on the blog could actually pay off big-time for TSA and its traveling customers.

The bottom line is that there are three key success factors that make a collaborative platform or tool an attractive proposition to potential users, and all of them are the result of carefully considering the "social" aspect of the Social Web. Successful platforms seek to solve a clear problem, target a specific audience, and they provide a real value exchange for the user's effort. Lacking any of these three is usually the difference between experimentation with "cool" technology, and collaboration that truly adds value. What it all comes down to is that if users are not driven to participate by making the value of their efforts clear, then facilitating a productive discussion becomes harder than getting through an airport with your shoes on!

This is the first in a series of posts about the "rules" of deploying collaborative technology in an organizational context.

Today, many public leaders see blogs, wikis, and other collaborative platforms, and feel immense pressure to do...something. But as we like to say around here, there's nothing magical about collaboration that changes human nature, and it is still fundamentally true that people only show up when you give them a reason. Making the decision to offer folks a chance to interact has the potential to add a lot more value than a one-way exchange, but it also means that the time and effort required to participate is greater. Simply deploying collaborative technologies doesn't mean that people will use them. In other words, if you build it...well, they still may not come.

Take blogs, for example. Blogs are one of the easiest solutions to implement, but one of the hardest to implement correctly. It's easy to overlook the fact that the "Comments" section at the bottom of each post isn't just a fun place for users to drop feedback; it's a commitment to responsiveness. Leaders looking to implement a blog have to think clearly about the value exchange: Why am I asking people to spend time and effort essentially giving me their best ideas for free? What do they get out of it in return?

A great example of a blog that has answered this question successfully is the Transportation Security Administration's blog, Evolution of Security. TSA Administrator (and friend of the Collaboration Project) Kip Hawley identified early on that a blog could be a powerful tool to gain public buy-in for an agency whose mission isn't always well-understood. Rather than just start a site and begin churning out blog posts, though, TSA thought carefully about what it would take to truly realize a value exchange with potential users. How, exactly, did they do it?

• First, they thought clearly about who would write the blog. The public thinks of TSA as a single, monolithic entity, but in reality there are over 43,000 TSOs and managers who are on the front lines of airport security, dealing directly with travelers every day. So, TSA made the decision to have some of these folks actually write the thing! The result is a blog that speaks to the problems and concerns of actual travelers, rather than simply talking inside-baseball (Federal Edition!) or sternly lecturing citizens about the dangers of air travel. It's a site with a mission to actually deliver better service to customers, which is a great value exchange and a truly refereshing thing to see in the federal community.
  
  
• From this decision naturally flowed the idea of letting bloggers write in their actual voices. Possibly taking a page from Us Magazine, TSA decided to let their bloggers show that they're just like us! Check out this line from a recent post on shoe removal:

  The TSA is well aware that the removal of shoes is not our most popular policy. In fact, it probably ranks up there with root canals and doing your taxes.
  
  What you've seen up until now has been our officers enforcing an unpopular policy that is based on the unfortunate truth that intelligence tells us that terrorists are still very interested in hiding items in their shoes.

  The tone is breezy, informal, and damned funny, and it instantly sets readers at ease and makes them comfortable engaging in a two-way dialogue. This may seem like a small issue, but if readers don't see a voice they feel they could have a conversation with...they won't.
  
  
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TSA's bloggers actually act on, and react to, the feedback they get from users. For example, in March 2008, TSA blogger 'Bob' was browsing Google News Alerts when he noticed a story making major waves in the blogosphere: traveler Michael Nygard had recently missed his flight because airport security had pulled him aside to take a closer look at his new MacBook Air laptop. While the passenger himself had not criticized TSA, his story set off a storm of complaints among bloggers who used the event to highlight the agency's supposed ineffectiveness.
  
  Using Evolution of Security as his platform, Bob immediately acknowledged the incident and promised to find out for his readers why it had happened. A week later Bob issued a follow-up post in which he included a video clip of an X-ray test that he had personally conducted with the MacBook Air. While this response did not immediately silence all of the critics, the majorityof blog comments were very supportive of the agency's actions – and demonstrated that spending time on the blog could actually pay off big-time for TSA and its traveling customers.

The bottom line is that there are three key success factors that make a collaborative platform or tool an attractive proposition to potential users, and all of them are the result of carefully considering the "social" aspect of the Social Web. Successful platforms seek to solve a clear problem, target a specific audience, and they provide a real value exchange for the user's effort. Lacking any of these three is usually the difference between experimentation with "cool" technology, and collaboration that truly adds value. What it all comes down to is that if users are not driven to participate by making the value of their efforts clear, then facilitating a productive discussion becomes harder than getting through an airport with your shoes on!

A recent NextGov article written by National Academy fellow Anne Laurent discusses the potential use of games by IBM for both software development collaboration and in allowing businesses to interact with customers. (Most Companies Use Games; Shouldn't You?) Laurent also suggests that federal agencies ought to take notice of the growing usage of gaming technologies amongst most major employers.

As of yet our crack team of case study librarians have not researched any prominent usages of gaming by federal agencies, but you can add your own case study if you find an example of government gaming in a collaborative way.

...the GovLoop, that is! Steve Ressler, late of Young Government Leaders, has finally filled what we've always considered be an open niche: The first social networking site aimed explicitly at the federal community.

Aside from just being a pretty cool site, this is A Big Deal because it demonstrates the power of web 2.0 not only to tackle specific problems, but to bring together communities in ways that totally transcend individual agency walls. The challenges facing our nation are increasingly bigger than any one office, agency, or department. While more formal coordination wouldn't hurt, it still depends on traditional hierarchies. What GovLoop does is to go around that, and begin building the kind of informal, diverse, networked, socialized community that's going to be critical to maintaining the vitality of the federal government in the 21st century.

While it's aimed at government, anyone can sign up and join this fascinating dialogue.

...the GovLoop, that is! Steve Ressler, late of Young Government Leaders, has finally filled what we've always considered be an open niche: The first social networking site aimed explicitly at the federal community.

Aside from just being a pretty cool site, this is A Big Deal because it demonstrates the power of web 2.0 not only to tackle specific problems, but to bring together communities in ways that totally transcend individual agency walls. The challenges facing our nation are increasingly bigger than any one office, agency, or department. While more formal coordination wouldn't hurt, it still depends on traditional hierarchies. What GovLoop does is to go around that, and begin building the kind of informal, diverse, networked, socialized community that's going to be critical to maintaining the vitality of the federal government in the 21st century.

While it's aimed at government, anyone can sign up and join this fascinating dialogue.

Anne Laurent has a great summary of our recent event, held with Deloitte, on the future of collaboration in government:

The Deloitte-National Academy of Public Administration conference, "Web 2.0: The Future of Government," June 3 was awash with the inevitability of transformation, the cracking through of silos and the reconnection with customer-citizens long ago pushed out of problem-solving. It sounds familiar and even quaint to those of us who've grown jaded chasing NPR and GPRA and PART. But the hardy band of reformers who still believe government is a vital vehicle for little "d" democracy, can't help but be energized by each new effort to turn the battleship.

This time, it's collaboration that's certain to fix federal failures. A breadth and depth of collaboration within government, with it and other entities and with Americans heretofore unimaginable enabled by the tools of Web 2.0: wikis, blogs, social networking and even virtual worlds. And it's hard not to be swept away in the vision of agencies harvesting the ideas and plaints of employees and citizens online and addressing them in Internet time. Hard not to be enchanted by the notion of using Google maps and real-time information feeds to really get a handle on infrastructure, or disaster planning or improved grant making. Hard not to like the idea of smart people inside and outside the halls of power sharing what they know and what they don't without the endless, enervating vetting and cleaning process that slows most real interchange to a halt still today.

As the kids say, read the whole thing.

Frank and I are at 1105 Media Group's Government Leadership Summit in Williamsburg today. The sessions so far are really informative. Frank led off the morning by moderating a panel composed of Molly O'Neill (EPA CIO), Dan Mintz (DOT CIO), Chris Rasmussen (Knowledge Management Officer @ NGA) and Vivek Kundra (DC CTO). The discussion around how Web 2.0 is driving change in government was really captivating - check out the notes we captured during the session. You'll be amazed at what's going on in these agencies! My favorite example is Vivek's stock market approach to IT portfolio management.

Fast forward to the 11:30 session - Chris Dorobek moderating Rob Carey (CIO of the Navy), Casey Coleman (GSA CIO), Heath Kern Gibson (CIO at State) and John Kamensky (IBM Center for the Business of Government) on "Getting Started: Blogs". Yep, I'm blogging while hearing a panel on blogging. Casey, the CIO of GSA just announced she'll be launching a public facing blog through usa.gov. Great news, and a welcome voice on innovation in the business of government. Her working title is "Around the Corner", but she's actively shopping for a new name, so if you have any suggestions, drop her a note.

John K. is a Fellow of the National Academy and is deeply knowledgeable on the topic of blogs. If you haven't seen the report on blogging by IBM's Center for the Business of Government, you can get it here.

Worth noting that today is Chris' anniversary - three year ago today, he started his blog, the FCW Insider. Chris often blogs about Web 2.0, though his writing covers a wide range of topics around technology in government. He is always interesting and often provocative.

Great Summit folks - congrats to the good people at 1105 for bringing it all together.

We're continually amazed at the traction that Web 2.0 is gaining in the public sector. Latest evidence is a series of three events focused on 2.0 – all of which are worth noting, and if your schedule allows, attending. So as not to offend, I'll go in chronological order.

The 2008 Government Leadership Summit, an 1105 Government Information Group event (think FCW, GCN and Washington Technology) s entirely focused on Web 2.0. The theme is Change Leadership 2.0: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies in Government. Many of you know this conference by its former name, the CIO Summit. Well, we applaud the focus of this year's agenda, as well as 1105's efforts to extend this beyond the IT shop to a broader government audience.

The conference runs from June 1-3 and on June 2nd (shameless plug), our own Frank DiGiammarino will moderate a panel discussion featuring EPA CIO Molly O'Neill, DOI CIO Dan Mintz, Washington DC CTO Vivek Kundra, and Chris Rasmussen, Knowledge Management Officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Kudos to Chris Dorobek, Editor in Chief of FCW, who has been a driving force behind this event.

On June 3rd, Deloitte's Public Leadership Institute and the National Academy of Public Administration are hosting a half day session on Web 2.0: The Future of Collaborative Government. We will look at how Web 2.0 will transform policy development, mission execution and the delivery of government services. This event is free of charge, and by invitation only (naturally, readers of this blog are invited to register).

Finally, the ACT/IAC 2008 Management of Change Conference is just around the corner. It runs from June 8th-10th in Norfolk, VA and is focused on "Business Thinking in Government". The central question that will be explored - from several different angles - is how well (or not) government adopts best practices, many of which emerge from the private sector. One panel, moderated by yours truly, will examine how government is realizing the benefits of technology-enabled collaboration. Join us to hear from panelists Neil Bonner, Chief Web Strategist at TSA, Jim Walker, Director of Homeland Security for Alabama and John Murphy, Director of USA.gov Technologies at GSA.

Blogging. Vlogging. Flickr. Twitter. Folksonomy. Mashup.

Often, the terminology of the Internet obscures more than it reveals. One word that seems to have clung onto its meaning despite the odds is "Address"; in both actual and digital environments, it refers, intuitively enough, to a place you can go. Every building has an address; every website has one, too.

As web 1.0 blossoms into web 2.0, though, this is starting to make less sense. Today, the Internet isn't about delivering content to a person, it's about letting users leverage sophisticated interactive platforms to build their own library of content. Web 1.0 was about getting stuff from me to you; web 2.0 is about us sharing stuff with each other.

Okay, so today's web is about social groups. The problem is that through this lens, the idea of an "address" starts to unravel pretty quickly. In real life, I can go anywhere – to any address – with my friends. On the Web, though, there's only a few places I can go with my friends. They're called social networking sites; MySpace and Facebook are probably the best-known examples. On those sites, I can see what my friends are up to, share notes, pictures, and status updates, and generally hang out in a virtual community. But let's say I want to go over to a different address – say, this page of poems about dolphins. (My reading habits are none of your business!) I can go, but my friends can't. There's no social networking, no features aimed at building an interactive community around that content. It's just a page of stuff. Lame.

The tension between "you-to-me" sites and "us-with-each-other" functionality is real. Emerging bands have started using their MySpace pages as their official band websites; they can host all the normal content you'd expect to find, but also allow others to build a community around that content through comments, linking, friending, etc. Facebook has taken a somewhat different path, allowing users to import their interactions on other sites (say, buying movie tickets on Fandango) so that they become part of your ongoing social feed. Last week, I bought tickets on Fandango, and Facebook automatically figured it out, and notified all my friends, and all my wife's friends. Setting aside the amazing creepiness of that fact, there's still something big to grapple with: If web 2.0 is primarily about "addresses" that people can visit together, doesn't that make about 95% of the Internet woefully inadequate?

Leave it to the golks at Google to resolve the paradox:

To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month visit networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

But what if the Web itself operated as a social network?

Google announced yesterday another step in what its engineers see as that inevitable evolution. A new, free service from the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant will allow any Web site to become a social site.

Any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, could allow visitors to meet and connect with "friends" who visit that site. Like any such major network today, a Web page using the service could present users with the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another.

The announcement from Google comes at a time of ferment and speculation over how people will meet and fraternize on the Web.

"Ferment and speculation," indeed. The idea of being able to embed social networking into any site has potentially revolutionary implications. More on what this means for government in an upcoming post, but as they say, watch this space.