Recently in Federal Government Category

The Federal Consulting Group (FCG), a franchise operation within the U.S. Department of the Interior, is hosting a thought-provoking and educational roundtable event beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20 - and you're invited. The panel will include federal agencies that are driving awareness, policy and their mission through compelling online content. The panel includes:

 

• Jeff Morin Senior Web Editor, Environmental Protection Agency
• Maxine Teller, New Media Strategist, U.S. Department of Defense
• Sheila Campbell, Team Leader for USA.gov Web Best Practices Team
• David Haradon, Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
• Ron Oberbillig, Chief Operating Officer, FCG
• Brett Berntsen, Director of Product Management, GovDelivery

 

The discussion will focus on embracing new channels, leveraging channels like email and how different agencies use compelling content to engage users.

 

Event details:

 

November 20, 2008, 8:30 a.m. EST
Treasury Executive Institute
1st Floor
801 9th St NW
Washington, DC 20239

 

To register for the event, please visit http://www.govdelivery.com/usergroups/federal_nov08/index.html

This post from Chris Dorobek at the DorobekInsider.com and Federal News Radio is an interesting look at Gartner's 10 Technologies to watch.

Find the post here

Here are the technologies listed:

• Virtualization
• Cloud computing
• Servers -- Beyond Blades
• Web-Oriented Architectures
• EnterpriseMashups
• Specialized Systems
• Social Software and Social Networking
• Unified Communications
• Business Intelligence
• Green IT

We've talked about the Web 2.0 concepts (Social Networking, Enterprise Mashups, and Web-Oriented Architectures) in this blog.

Chris points out that Cloud Computing is a challenge in government.  I think this is true, but I believe that government can find certain areas where Cloud Computing provides real benefit for minimal risk.

We have been working with a government agency on allowing them to tap into our email delivery infrastructure for messages they need to send out regarding new rulings.  Rather than force them to manage all of the data on our servers, we simply accept the email address(es) of the recipients and the message content when it is ready for distribution.  This information has to go out over the Internet anyway, and by using our email delivery infrastructure, our client has better assurance that the information will get to the inbox of the intended recipient in a timely manner.  If the email bounces, we take care of it.  If the client needs to send a lot of emails, they leverage our scale.

Cloud computing is just as powerful for government as it is for others, but we need to work hard to find the right opportunities to make it work well without risking secure data.

There is a lot of interest in this topic.  Yesterday, we had 80+ people on a webinar discussing the work we are doing in cloud computing through our On-Demand Mailer which allows any government agency to use GovDelivery as its mail sender for any important email (we used to just offer our service for mass email communication.  The interest and the fact that no one dropped off during the whole presentation or the case study by www.nlrb.gov was a good sign to me.  You can signup to get a recording of the Webinar and our presentation here if you're interested.

One of the challenges for us with Cloud Computing is figuring out how to explain it to our clients.  In our webinar, everyone kept asking us to "explain again how this is different from what we already do."  I am hopeful that is people get more used to the concept the explaining will get easier.

Citizens crave information, but they are also busy and difficult to reach.

Blogs, social networks, and other Web 2.0 capabilities can help you reach citizens with critical information how and where they want to obtain it.  But, are any government agencies really using these tools?  We've provided examples before, but here are some new findings.

In April, a ScienceLogic survey found that more than 65 percent of government IT workers surveyed said Web 2.0 tools are important to their operations and 20 percent were using tools like wikis, blogs and RSS feeds. More than 50 percent said they are planning on having these tools in place by next year.

In some cases, such as the Intelligence Communities' wikopedia project, Intellipedia and the Navy Department CIO blog, the Web 2.0 tools are internal communications tools.

But other applications face the public such as those at USA.gov where they use social media applications to reach the public, including blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and microblogs.

A recent article on Read Write Web, "To 2.0 or Not 2.0? That is the Governments' Question" (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/government_20.php), provides additional examples of how the government is using social media to reach the public.

In a recent blog post by Daniel Mintz, chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Transportation, states, "The second generation of Web access will change the way government delivers services and its relationship with the American public."

While there are many examples of government embracing Web 2.0, I am now looking for more examples of how this embrace of technology is resulting in positive change and efficiency in how government interacts with the citizen.  The changes instituted following comments on the TSA blog are very positive examples.  I hope to find more and document them here over time.

One thing we do see is that content that challenges and engages the citizen (what we call, "Compelling Content") seems to be more successful in Web 2.0 which is fundamentally an environment where content faces a lot of competition for attention.

We will be discussing these issues at the Proactive Communication Roundtable at the Department of Treasury where we will talk about embracing new channels, leveraging channels that have been with us for longer (mainly email), and how different agencies use compelling content to engage users.

I have the following rules for my use of email with colleagues, friends, and family:

• Avoid emails when I'm angry
• Avoid constructive feedback by email
• Avoid emails in the evening (Google has a new tool called Mail Goggles that forces people to do math problems before sending email in the evening so you don't email anyone while intoxicated)

This incredibly insightful video that should be required watching for the whole world really gets to the bottom of why email is not useful for many types of communication.

The main reason... drum roll please... email is good for facts and data, but does not carry the visual and emotional cues that are critical to human interaction and understanding.

What does this mean for government?

• For official communication (i.e., facts and data), email is unrivaled and is perfectly suited for the role.  You can see my previous entry on this.
  
• For citizen service, email is only useful up to the point where tone becomes important
• For internal collaboration and cooperation between offices and agencies, there is no substitute for in person and (as a decent substitute) phone meetings and conversations

GovDelivery thanks guest Blogger, Jamie Findlater, for this interesting post.

Posted by: Jamie Findlater, Department of Defense, Community Relations and New Media Team Member

Going Viral: DoD's New Media Tactics for the Troops

 

This year marked the fourth annual Department of Defense America Supports You (ASY) National Freedom Walk in Washington D.C.  The ASY Freedom Walk is an opportunity to reflect on the lives lost on September 11, 2001 at the Pentagon and remember the sacrifices of our veterans past and present.

 

Employing new media tactics to communicate to the public about DoD policy and programs is an important part of the Department of Defense's public affairs mission, and letting folks know about the ASY Freedom Walk is no exception. This year, for the first time, we incorporated viral marketing and new media tactics to increase awareness about the opportunity to walk in the DC area, which led to great walker registration and turn out. We also experimented with new media tactics the day of the event, understanding that these components are an important way to connect with our audiences.  

 

A central part of our new media campaign was the creation of an America Supports You Freedom Walk widget. The widget displayed a countdown to the day of the national walk and tallied the number of local walks being organized around the country. The widget also provided links through which participants could register and spread the word about the event. Milbloggers, military spouse bloggers and online publications could post the widget on their sites. Then, during the ASY Freedom Walk, we enabled participants to send text messages honoring our troops and the lives lost on the day of the event. The messages scrolled through the widget after the event.

 

In terms of viral outreach, we relied largely on cross-promotion from the ASY homefront groups, military support organizations and partner government agencies. GovDelivery sent our viral e-mail to its own subscription lists and partnered us with their other subscribers. Here at DoD, we placed e-mail footers at the bottom of our news articles. Other organizations, including DisabilityInfo.gov and USA.gov, were instrumental in helping us get the word out to their subscribers through similar tactics.

 

The viral outreach campaign also incorporated online video components. The DoD New Media team created a video blog, or "vlog," to share information with communities about opportunities to start local walks in their area. The video was showcased on the DoD "video on demand" Web site, DoD VClips, along with many other DoD videos centering around September 11^th. This year's ASY Freedom walk and recognition of September 11^th was particularly important due to the dedication of the Pentagon Memorial, and viral video was an important part of telling this story. 

 

Overall, thousands of participants participated in the ASY Freedom Walk. This event provided a good opportunity to experiment with viral notification and new media tactics.

We have a host of other new media ideas that we hope to develop as well. At DoD, we are constantly experimenting with new ways of delivering information, realizing that the way the public consumes information is constantly evolving.

GovDelivery invites anyone with interesting government-to-citizen communication issues to discuss to be guest bloggers on reachthepublic.  Please contact product at govdelivery dot com with your ideas.

We've been looking at different Web 2.0 sites and exploring how best clients can use them in conjunction with our system and on their own.

One site I like is Twitter.  Twitter allows an organization or an individual to post a couple of lines about what they are doing at a given moment.  This overlaps with the Facebook "status" update so I thought it wouldn't be worth the effort.  However, now that I've got Twitter working well with Facebook, I can update my status on Twitter and it gets posted everywhere.  Twitter is easier to use and something that can be updated quickly from a cell phone or blackberry.

I don't have any specific ideas yet for interconnections between GovDelivery and Twitter, but in looking around, I did see a lot of Twitter accounts being managed by government agencies and public officials.  Take a look at the GovDelivery Twitter Account and Who We are Following.  You can also take a look at my "young" Twitter account.

Here are just a few:
http://twitter.com/pueblo81009
http://twitter.com/USAgov

NASA has many offices and programs using Twitter.  As usual, they are very advanced in use of Web 2.0 tools.

and lots of public officials:
http://twitter.com/MayorMark
http://twitter.com/MayorRTRybak

Why does this matter?  Any government entity has a lot of information to offer.  Twitter is an easy way to pull forward and call attention to the information that you think might be most interesting or valuable.  I've blogged before on the difference between "give me what I want" content and "give me what you think I need" content. 

Twitter allows an agency to highlight for me the information that I might need and to do it in a simple and interesting way. 

During our Web 2.0 Webinar last Tuesday, many participants asked for examples of existing government blogs. Since we didn't have a chance to answer this question during the Webinar, we assembled this list to show that blogs are being published at all levels of government.

Federal
    http://blog.aids.gov
    http://www.tsa.gov/blog/
    http://www.cdc.gov
    http://blog.epa.gov

State/Local
    http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/trees/blog.htm
    http://www.humanrights.state.mn.us/velblog3.html#
    http://www.ci.santa-paula.ca.us/blog/
    http://secondward.blogspot.com/

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list. It's only a sample of the many blogs that are being published by governments throughout the United States.

Please let us know about other government blogs you are reading.

My company, GovDelivery, just completed a Webinar on Web. 2.0 in government where we had 150 attendees.  The quality of the questions was very exciting because it shows how much government Web managers are thinking about how best to use Web 2.0 to meet the needs of the public.

For anyone who attended the webinar or is interested in this topic, I want to point out some useful links:

1. Previous post on Web 2.0  which includes a useful glossary
   
2. Follow-up on Cloud Computing
3. Post on TSA Blog

Also, we have some upcoming webinars on on-demand emailing (cloud computing) and other topics as well as a recorded version of the Government Web 2.0 webinar you can request from us by going to the registration page.

My previous entry was on Web 2.0 in government.  I want to add some fresh links and expand the conversation to cloud computing which some people, in an effort to give the entire world a headache, refer to as "Web 3.0".

Before we talk about Web 2.0+, let me share this glossary of Web 2.0 terms.  I used to go mad trying to understand all of the Web 2.0 / Web 3.0 terms.  Blogs, Wikis, Folksonomies, Mashups, Tags, Tag Clouds, Widgets, Cloud Computing, SaaS, etc.  Like Web 2.0 itself, there is no one in charge of Web 2.0 and the terminology has taken on a life of its own.

While I initially thought Web 2.0 was just for kids (hence all of the annoying terms), I'm a convert now.  Facebook really makes my life better both personally and professionally.  Mashups allow our company to deliver more value than ever to the government, and SaaS companies serve our most critical CRM and Web conferencing needs.

Most importantly, I'm convinced that cloud computing is going to make technology more powerful and cost-effective for government in so many ways that we will look back on 2008 10 years from now and see it as the infancy of e-government.

To that end, I want to add another important link which is this story on cloud computing.

We have over 250 government agencies using our Software as a Service platform here at GovDelivery.  I don't consider use of our hosted, SaaS, platform by itself as cloud computing, but now that the service is becoming more open and allowing other applications to tap into it for limited functions, it really is "service in the cloud."  For us, this means allowing agencies to connect to our "On-Demand Mailer" whenever an agency needs additional mail sending scale for certain applications or needs to send a message to a stakeholder with assured delivery to the inbox, tracking, reporting, etc.

The article referenced above lists these benefits of cloud computing:

• Reduced Cost
• Increased Storage
• Highly Automated
• Flexibility
• Allows IT to Shift Focus  "No longer having to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues"

This list of benefits is literally the Holy Grail of government IT!

The article concludes with the typical security concerns that are always raised when government talks about doing something new.  Here is the good news, it's not all or nothing. 

For example, the On-Demand Mailer service we offer is currently built to handle emails you are already sending out over the public Internet. 

We are not offering the service to the CIA for sending highly-classified emails... that is not something that belongs in the Cloud. 

Still, there are many services that fit well into the Cloud now.  Web 2.0 and cloud computing raise all kinds of security concerns.  Luckily, from the looks of all the blogs, Wikis, mashups, etc. that we see on government sites despite the security concerns raised about Web 2.0 in government, government Web and e-government managers will find the appropriate areas where they can leverage cloud computing without taking unnecessary security risks.

Everyone is talking about and writing about government 2.0 recently.

There was a great write up in FCW with a panel interview that included Bev Godwin from USA.gov and others.

There was another post on Mashable.com that provided an "Insider's Perspective" on government 2.0.

My company, GovDelivery, has made a big push into Web 2.0 in the past year.   We've found a lot of enthusiasm from our clients in a few key areas.

1. Collaboration: Using the Web 2.0 concept of "mashups" to present the citizen with "one stop shopping" for government information.  Another Web 2.0 concept, Software as a Service, SaaS, makes mashups a lot easier.
   
   Example: Use the Get Email Updates link on this DHS page and watch how you are walked through a subscription process that brings together many agencies including some outside DHS. [This is my only example that is "powered by" GovDelivery)
   
   
2. Distribution: Enabling websites, RSS feeds, and email alerts with forwarding and posting capabilities that allow citizens to repost publications and announcements to social networks, tagging sites, blogs, etc.
   
   Examples: Visit www.state.gov and look in the upper right for a simple widget that allows you to repost content or tag it using social networking sites.  Another great example is the FBI Widget Tool.
   
   
3. Aggregation: Bringing together content by using tag clouds and other tagging approaches
   
   Examples:  See right side of NASA homepage; CDC has also experimented with tag clouds.
   
   
4. Blogging: Posting content updates or more colorful blog-style entries and allowing citizens to comment. 
   
   Examples: Local government excels here with more blogs than I could possibly list for Mayor's and elected officials (take a look here).  These officials are embracing Web 2.0 in campaigns and they bring the same concepts into office.  One interesting blog is the DC Summer Intern Blog.
   
   In federal government, for all the discussion and fear around blogging, there are some truly terrific examples (and no disasters that I know of).  DoD sets the standard, but TSA, GovGab, and the Secretary of Transportation are also running exceptional blogs.

In short, for all the discussion about risks, government 2.0 (aka, government's embrace of Web 2.0) is already here.  In many cases, government is further along than private industry in embracing Web 2.0

Sure, some agencies are further along than others, but the progress and momentum is amazing.  Remember, these concepts are all relatively new. 

Additional resources:

• If you're interested in blogging, you must read "Naked Conversations"
  
• The Federal Consulting Group recently hosted a Webinar on Government 2.0 where I participated along with FEMA.  Register for a recorded version of this here
  
• Janice Nall from the CDC discusses their strategy here

If you're interested in this topic, we have another upcoming Webinar on Government 2.0.   

Our webinars are focused on how governments can use our platform to take advantage of some of these concepts, but we've received good feedback that we don't lay the sales pitch on too hard, and anyone is welcome to attend.