Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to tackle the final three principles for government 2.0 –  the importance of design, status updates and follow the data  

Principle #9 – Design Can Make a Big Difference

While in theory, this principle may seem like a no-brainer, it is important when it comes to government 2.0 to keep in mind that small design changes can make a big difference.  Taking the time to understand the positioning of the community, along with how exactly people use different features, is key to the success or failure of a government 2.0 strategy.  For example, a community deployment within the US military made a number of fairly minor design changes, and they were able to dramatically increase the number of views, visits, comments, blogs, bookmarks and question replies with very little growth in the total number of community members.   A small change to the commenting feature resulted in a more than 350% increase in the number of comments being made within the community.

Principle #10 – Status Updates 

Consumer social networking has driven the status update phenomenon, with most services including function so we can see what our friends, family, coworkers and other associates are up to.  While it may seem that the status update is too frivolous or fun for the enterprise, it offers a powerful tool to engage users within communities. 

Within a social learning community, setting the status update to what are you learning provides a relatively simple, yet robust way to communicate with and engage others in the community.  Status updates are particularly interesting as they have proven very effective within consumer social networking sites and now users are comfortable with communicating in this manner.  They provide an easy way to engage users that may be hesitant to participate as the approach closely mirrors something they are likely doing on a personal level.  As these users visit the site to do status updates they are apt to become engaged in other activities over time.

Principle #11 – Follow the Data

In the enterprise there are multiple technology products and solutions to support a wide variety of essential business process needs.  Government 2.0 applications are not intended to replace these approaches but to take their data and make them relevant to a broader audience and contextualize them with the wisdom of the crowds.  One example is at the Defense Acquisition University in the United States where they produce guidance for military acquisitions.  In this context, producing documents are highly structured and require multiple levels of sign-off before the document is complete.  In this case they use SharePoint for document routing.  However, at inflection points in the process and at the end, this document needs to be disseminated and used by a broad community in a Web 2.0 style context.  The key is to make it easy for data in these workflow driven systems like SharePoint to become visible and usable by a broad enterprise audience.

Government 2.0 offers organizations a new and tangible way to drive business results using proven technologies and approaches from social networking.   Applying the above principles can enable organizations across the public and private sector to make Government 2.0 and communities a success.

Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to tackle the four more principles for government 2.0 –  the importance of design, status updates and follow the data  

Principle #5: Nurture Content Addiction

Successful sites are those active enough to maintain the attention of even the busiest people.  Novelty and change are one big reason for people to keep coming back.   The ongoing success of FaceBook and Twitter illustrate how “content addiction” creates a reason for visitors to continually engage with the site.

From an enterprise perspective, this “content addiction” can be achieved by applying the practice of content aggregation across the social learning community.  Aggregating content across all topics and areas provides pulse on the project, or even the entire organization.  Social filters are key to making this information meaningful to users.   A good public example of this Digg.com. 

Personalized aggregation, which continues to grow in popularity, is another important strategy where users collect all the feeds from topics or colleagues to see in one location.  This Facebook or Twitter style aggregation when applied within the government provides a broad view introducing users to new information, while the personalized view trims down the information.  An important piece of content production is revealing both implicit content [content as revealed user activity such as ‘Ted marked document X as helpful’] and explicit content [content that is added by typing].  

Principle #6 – Use Play and Gaming

Enterprise learning professionals are increasingly relying on play and gaming as a key element of corporate training and development programs.   They are doing so with good reason, as play and gaming are engaging in a very deep way.  For those people who are into gaming, their games and communities are very consuming, and keep them coming back.  A good example of this is the popularity of online gaming communities such as World of Warcraft or the interactive components of gaming consoles like Xbox Live.

These same principles can be applied to social learning applications.  Taking the principles of gaming and applying them to a training scenario offers a very compelling and engaging way for enterprises to keep users active within a community. 

For example, the Army relies heavily on play and learning in its MilSpace community in helping members develop critical decision making skills.  Users watch a real-life scenario on video and are asked what they would do in a similar situation.  When respondents answer, they can then see others’ responses as well as how the real-life person decided and what happened in the end.

Principle #7 – Keep Users Connected

Social and web 2.0 approaches rely on continual participation.  Continual personalized hooks and calls to action keep people coming back and keep people addicted.  The trick is to let the application do the work.  Think of the emails that you may receive from Linked In (Someone has added you to their LinkedIn Network) or FaceBook (Bob has sent you a new message on FaceBook). 

Traditionally, within the community setting, a newsletter or similar tool was used to engage users on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.  Applying the successful approach from social networking of continual updates throughout each day encourages ongoing interaction with the community, which keeps users both connected and engaged.

Principle #8 – It’s a Service

A major difference of intranet communities versus social media or social networking sites is that users come to the communities because they want something.  Users are likely looking for information or need a solution to a specific problem. As such, the organization needs to keep in mind that the community is a service and the community’s goal is to provide the best possible service to users.  For example, if you include questions and answers as part of your community, you need to ensure that people are successful by treating it as a true service.  Mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that unanswered questions are addressed, questions are routed to the right people, and new answerers are enlisted.  That many questions get answers, how many are “good” answers, and how long it takes for users to find answers.

Watch this video by Andrew Chambers on how service is important for communities at the Federal Reserve Bank and Northern Lights.

Check back next week for the final three principles for communities and social networking  as part of Government 2.0.

Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to examine four principles for government 2.0 – simplicity, crowdsource relevance, appropriate calls to action and measurement matters.

Principle #1 – Simplicity

Call this the Google lesson.  The popularity of sites like Google and Twitter are based on the simplicity of their interfaces, and a clear path for participation.  Even new users can quickly and easily comprehend the steps they need to take.   To increase adoption of government 2.0, organizations need to ensure that they practice simplicity and not make things overly complicated.  A clean user interface, with a specific path for participation from the first visit engages users instead of intimidating them. Furthermore, it is important to understand that much of simplicity is about layering; you can achieve the same outcome in terms of activity or desired activities by just not showing everything up front.

Principle #2 – Crowdsource Relevance

Most social networking sites and communities have so much content, that it can be overwhelming to  users.   These sites, to varying degrees, make use of crowdsourcing, where users essentially do the work of “classifying” the information.  For enterprises, crowdsourcing is a powerful tool that enables the organization to take mountains of information and connect users with only the best and most relevant content. 

Just a few examples of crowdsourcing in action include when users bookmark information (which is an implicit endorsement), users mark something as helpful, users visit something (implies popularity), users tag or classify something (when you upload the content) which provides important meta-data.  Crowdsourcing, when used in conjunction with social filtering, becomes a powerful tool for government 2.0 initiatives as the information is classified and aggregated for users, enabling them to get the most valuable information fast, sorting information by what their peers find most valuable.

Principle #3 – Appropriate Calls to Action

The unique value of government 2.0 is engaging the voice of community members, but in the beginning it can be difficult to get people talking within a community.  There may be a lot of lurkers, but not a whole lot of people participating. Often, new users aren’t clear on what actions they could be taking – whether it be uploading a video or making a comment on a piece of content — so they end up doing nothing.  To get users participating from the inception of the community, and new users engaged from the day they join, there needs to be appropriate calls to action throughout the community.

A strong example of appropriate calls to action are found within FaceBook.  With each user`s status updates, there is the opportunity for their friends to indicate that they like the item, or to comment on that item.  It is clear to users what steps they can take with that content to participate, and this principle offers an immense amount of value to enterprises as they work to build thriving communities.

Principle #4 – Measurement Matters

To truly ensure the success of your government 2.0 initiatives, metrics need to be clearly defined and measured on an ongoing basis. Metrics are central to being able to plan and strategize efforts and activities in a project. This enables users and community managers to have tangible metrics so they can know what is working/what is not, who is participating/who is not,  and setting targets for growth of the project.  

Social networking sites are driven by metrics, numbers of friends, followers and so on.  Enterprises need to take these metrics much deeper to identify short, medium and long term goals, manage and nurture top contributors and determine what is most successful within the community.   A project without substantiated ROI is not a project for long, so measuring items like page information and overall community information can make a critical difference in the adoption and success of the community.

Watch this video by Andrew Chambers of Northern Lights (and formerly of the US Federal Reserve Bank) on how measurement matters in communities.

Next week I’ll tackle four more principles for communities and social networking  as part of Government 2.0.

Getting people to use Web 2.0 takes more than just having a great new tool – the buzz around social media is key to its success. And while access to GCpedia may be limited to public servants, discussion of it certainly is not. Most of the buzz around GCpedia is positive, but more importantly, a slice of the discussion offers TBS and users some very concrete ways to improve the Wiki in terms of what went right and what needs to change in the deployment of future Web 2.0 tools. That’s why the public service needs to pay attention to what people are saying about GCpedia – especially outside of its walls.

Here are the top 5 things to know about how GCpedia is discussed on the web:

1- Wikipedia’s take on its GC cousin – Oddly enough, the Wikipedia article on GCpedia is an orphan, as “few or no articles link to it.” It is also tagged as a stub – there isn’t much about GCpedia on its closest public analogue. As is Wikipedia’s aim, the language about GCpedia is neutral – so, one has to wonder why TBS hasn’t taken advantage of what is potentially a good, and at least a cheap and easy opportunity to tout the goals of GCpedia. (Who cares about GCpedia outside of the public service? Taxpayers, quite possibly,)

2 – GCpedia will save the public service!  – David Eaves makes the point that GCpedia is an excellent way to capture all of the tacit knowledge that will walk out the door when senior management  retires in droves. Used properly, GCpedia could serve as a wealth of go-to information for those who will advance to mid-level and senior positions. Government departments and agencies need to be willing to endure the temporary pain of dedicating staff to interviewing almost-retirees and posting the findings to GCpedia, to avoid a longer term consequence: losing the collective intelligence getting ready to exit the public service.

3 – GCpedia remains the domain of GCgeeks? – Peter Smith is worried about how well GCpedia lends itself to use by newbies. The level of technical knowledge necessary to using GCpedia is one of the reasons Eaves cites for why soon-to-be-retirees aren’t likely to post what they know themselves. Smith is right – the interface is confusing, and could easily intimidate anyone with techno-trepidation. What is the solution? One is likely more training than what is largely available thus far, especially if TBS is sold on the MediaWiki platform.

4 – Lots of talk on Twitter – Interestingly enough, many public servants have turned to Twitter to talk about GCpedia. This isn’t surprising, just important. Remember that Twitter may well be the easiest real-time resource for anyone who wants to take the pulse of the Web-2.0-crowd’s feeling about GCpedia.

5 – Mostly love, but some concerns, too – Overall, the talk about GCpedia is overwhelmingly positive. And where challenges are discussed on the Web, so are solutions, which gives GCpedia’s owners and users an opportunity to engage in in-depth and strategic discussions about the role of this communication channel. That discussion is vital if GCpedia is going to live up to its potential.

GTEC has confirmed Deputies from the Public Service Management Advisory Committee (PSMAC) to Keynote GTEC’s final conference day on the topic of High Performance Government (our 2010 theme).

The Deputies from PSMAC, and its predecessor, TBPAC, have been engaged in GTEC for three years. As a senior committee of deputies, TBPAC has oversight over technology in the federal government. The Deputies will participate in the keynote, but the wider committee has also been invited to participate in a luncheon at GTEC with Keynoter, Tom Ridge. The former Pennsylvania Governor and first head of Homeland Security after 9/11 will be keynoting GTEC on Tuesday, October 6 at the National Arts Centre.

The PSMAC Panel is scheduled as the morning Kickoff Keynote on Thursday, October 8 at the Westin Hotel. The Panelists are:

Chair: Michelle d’Auray, Secretary of the Treasury Board, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat

Panelists:
Carole Swan, President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Ian Shugart, Deputy Minister, Environment Canada
Neil Yeates, Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Immigration Canada

When the Deputies were engaged for the Keynote, Michele d’Auray (who incidentally was formerly the CIO of the GoC) asked me to define what we meant by High Performance Government and identify what the audience might be interested in hearing from the deputies. The following is what I provided to her. Regardless of if the deputies speak directly to these questions or not, I am sure the panel will be insightful and speak to what government could look like, in their view, in the future.

GTEC 2010 and the theme of “High Performing Governments”

Since it began 17 years ago, GTEC has always focused on serving Canadians better through information and technology. In the early years, creating high performing networks meant automating government processes and delivering more efficient services on-line.

Governments in Canada were early leaders in “e-government”: delivering services to Canadians on-line. Today, consumers are demanding open access to government services, data and processes because collaboration is becoming a common feature of their business lives and social networks. The relationship between citizens and their governments has changed.

While the world is becoming more open, governments are managing service delivery under the lens of public accountability and transparency. Are we at a crossroads, or can governments be open and collaborative while maintaining public accountability? If so, then what are the policy vehicles available to serve Canadians better within this new paradigm?

Looking forward, what are the key components of high performing public sector organizations? Most governments maintain their own performance management and accountability frameworks, but how will performance be measured by citizens who are increasingly connected and informed.

Hope you can make it! The Session is included with your conference pass.

While not the mainstream, despite what advocates would like to think, web2.0 technologies are occupying more and more of government workers’ attention!  The potential of these tools to help in communicating and sharing knowledge with colleagues, and in engaging partners and citizens across the firewall has gotten a large number of us enthusiastic and passionate about their use, and has prompted some executives to exclaim “there is no going back”.   At the same time there is an emerging question as to whether the knowledge created in these technologies is valued and captured as a government asset.

Knowledge management and Web2.0

Knowledge management types are generally interested in social media, seeing them and often describing them as knowledge management tools.  There are a few good reasons for this. 

First of all Web2.0 tools are open and allow for broad participation and contribution.   Government departments can tap into the collective knowledge and intelligence of their workers on a much larger scale and share knowledge, whether its forestry scientists mashing up maps to plot boreal forest research or GCpedia users ‘crowdsourcing’  an issue of common interest. 

Second, and I think more fundamentally Web2.0 tools aim at capturing thoughts, considerations, decisions and points of view as they evolve and change.  A good example is a wiki page on a new policy that not only contains the policy itself but also the discussion page which records the background discussion and exchange of ideas.  Extend this out and there may be Twitter feeds and blogs that provide ongoing input and commentary on the same policy.    

Taken collectively not only do you have the final result but also a rich source of information containing considerations, discussion, debate and decision, in other words the stuff of knowledge management.  Contrast that with traditional office tools that are focused on the creation of final documents and not on valuing the in-between or ‘transitory’ versions.  While knowledge managers may be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Web2.0 tools there is a significant challenge:

There is a little recognition given to the value of web2.0-created information and knowledge – few recognize, for instance, that a Twitter feed or a blog post would be considered a knowledge resource that needs to be preserved and managed as would any other record or document.  There are cases already of groups and individuals using the new tools and approaches to create communities and generate knowledge only at the end of the process to find that the results have not be considered as assets to be integrated into the government knowledge and information repositories.

Instances particularly worth noting are those where tools have been used to conduct conferences and internal consultations and at the end of the process it is not clear that the information and knowledge has been preserved.  In fact, in a few cases where external services have been used, rights to access this information may have been lost when the service is no longer under license.

While the government is taking steps to recognize the value of knowledge created through Web2.0 such as new policy instruments like the Government of Canada’s Directive on Recordkeeping, there is mindset that has to change.  What we should do first and foremost is recognize that we ARE creating valuable knowledge resources via these technologies and take steps to ensure that the resources be preserved as part of the government of Canada’s historical record.    

I read an interesting post on measuring the value of social media by Nick Charney at his blog CPS Renewal. I found his post thought provoking as usual and, as usual, I loved that Nick issued a challenge to readers (mostly government employees I am assuming) to send him stories about social media experiences in government.

Nick presents his conundrum as follows:

“The more time I spend examining the use of social media within government, the more I think that measuring the value it brings is a near impossible task.”

I don’t agree that the task is impossible at all. At NRCan – and I appreciate the fact that our SM experience is going into its third year – we celebrated SM “successes” at every opportunity. By “successes” I mean, the innovative and sustainable ways employees are using tools like the Wiki, blogs, NRTube, Delicious, RSS Feeds, etc. to improve collaboration and knowledge sharing across lines of business and to change the way they worked. We go to great lengths to profile the “value” that this new way of working brings to the department.

Nick goes on to state:

“…the more I reflect on the situation the more I realize that we can’t quantify the value because we still rely heavily on traditional empirical standards. Don’t get me wrong I am not advocating doing away with empirical approaches but rather simply stating that social media is still so new to government that it would be premature to expect to accurately capture its value in a spreadsheet.

Perhaps the spreadsheet is the wrong vehicle. I don’t think it’s premature at all to quantify the value of SM in government. But why would you want to? The SM tools speak for themselves – not through quantitative stats like page views and hits but as they are used to replace “traditional” approaches in the way we manage information. For the first time ever (well, certainly during my six years at NRCan) employees are truly in control of the information they create and share. I believe this is due mostly to the availability and ease of use of SM tools.

I suppose you could count the number of emails with Wiki links vs the number of emails with documents attached. You could count the number of videos viewed on NRTube. You could probably even count the number of NRCan employees with active Twitter accounts. But to what end?

If you are looking at this from a GC renewal perspective, then I suggest you look at the big picture. In my opinion, SM helps distribute decision-making and leadership amongst all users. I agree that this is probably easier to measure from a qualitative perspective. But if SM is contributing to GC renewal – it most certainly is at NRCan – then is that not measurement enough?

Nonetheless, count me in on your scheme Nick, I have a few NRCan SM stories to share.

Over the past several months we have used this space to share our thoughts on Gov 2.0 either by profiling the many initiatives NRCan is involved in or by taking you along on a personal rant just to make a point – which some might argue is the sole purpose of blogging.  In the spirit of collaboration, “we” (representing corporate) extended an invitation to a few business leaders at NRCan who are actively using collaborative technologies to engage and interact within their communities.

The following blog posting by Jennifer Hollington, a Director General in the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) and one of NRCan’s most prolific bloggers, elegantly demonstrates how she champions Gov 2.0 at NRCan.  This post first appeared in Café Jen (an NRCan blog) in February 2009.

A few months back, our ADM mentioned an idea for tapping into the knowledge of retired employees. He called it “Friends of the CFS”. It would be a network of retired staff, particularly scientists, whom current staff could contact with questions.

This brought to mind a passage from Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything:

[I]f you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A.G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.

Even if government contracting rules got in the way of the full implementation of P&G’s crowd sourcing approach in the public service, the idea of being able to take advantage of the skills, knowledge and experience of retired scientists and professionals is appealing.

So, as I sat typing up this post, I wondered whether I could find examples of how the GC is reaching out beyond its borders to engage bright minds in addressing their challenges. I’m not talking public opinion research, in which the government seeks input on a particular topic for a certain period of time. I’m talking about an ongoing relationship with the general public or a particular constituency for the purpose of collaboration.

I found quite a few examples of how various government departments and agencies are using Web 2.0 technologies, such as Twitter, RSS feeds, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. You can find a list of them at the Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki, started by consultant Mike Kujawaski. Though the technologies are new and their application in the Canadian government even newer, this wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted to find stories where government was interacting with people outside their organization.

The most impressive example I found of citizen engagement was Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s Citizen Voices Web site, featuring a blog (bloGG), including video installments (videobloGGs), and a forum.  Some blog entries carry her by-line while others are written by staff in her Office. On her September 3, 2008 post A New Season on Citizen Voices; she ends with this statement:

“To understand, we must listen. To act, we must include.”
The first comment to this post was made on September 30. The next one came almost 2 months later, on December 1 and began:

“This may not be the most appropriate means by which to contact you about our current parliamentary debacle. However, it is a means of contact – I apologize if it is totally inappropriate.”

What follows is quite amazing: more than 100 comments in the span of one week, centered on the political issues of proroguing Parliament.

Equally amazing is the Forums section of the site, enabling citizens to launch their own debates, rather than comment in response to an official post. Within a category called the Citizens Forum on the political situation, one person started a post entitled: “Devastated by your decision”, saying: “I had faith in our Governor General to see the wider view of these political matters. I am devastated by the decision to suspend parliament.” You have to admire the Governor General for embracing true citizen engagement, even when that engagement involves public criticism of her on her own site.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a public blog, written by a group of staffers in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The blog’s mission is to increase contact between the Office and Canadians interested in privacy issues. Readers can make comments on blogs posts, which — based on my quick review of the site — generates responses from the staffers or other readers.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, a GC crown corporation, set up Workscape, a discussion board on occupational health and safety. To date, almost 450 members have created just over 200 posts.

Some sites to support discussions among public servants are unofficial, residing outside the GC domain. One such site is Common Look and Feel .ca. Its stated purpose is “a community space where those who work for and on GC Web projects can come together to share, learn and create.” The site is designed to help members learn how to incorporate new technologies and social media into their sites, while complying with GC Web standards.

But after several hours of searching, I couldn’t find much more than this. Which leads me to my question: are you aware of examples within the GC where departments have reached out to former employees or the public to tap into their knowledge?

Teri Takai, the CIO of the State of California is no stranger to change and transformation.  She was brought to California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to implement a vision of higher performing government through the use of technology, to improve government services and provide access and transparency to the state’s citizens.  With a budget crisis, an aging technology infrastructure and a vast, decentralized state government, California’s IT program faces a myriad of challenges.   Takai’s focus on adapting to citizen demand while confronting the political and cultural challenges brings a unique perspective.

This week, the state announced a major IT reform push which includes shortening the timeframe for implementation from 3-5 years to 24-26 months.  We are posting the press release below as some background and context to Teri’s unique challenge in California.

Teri Takai’s background is certainly diverse.  Prior to her appointment in California, Takai served as Director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT) since 2003, where she also served as the state’s Chief Information Officer.  In this position, she restructured and consolidated Michigan’s resources by merging the state’s information technology into one centralized department to service 19 agencies and over 1,700 employees. Additionally, during her tenure at the MDIT, Takai led the state to being ranked number one four years in a row in digital government by the Center for Digital Government.

Before serving in state government, Takai worked for the Ford Motor Company for 30 years, where she led the development of the company’s information technology strategic plan.   She also held positions in technology at EDS and Federal-Mogul Corporation. In 2005, Takai was named “Public Official of the Year” by Governing magazine. She is Past-President of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers and currently serves as Practitioner Chair of the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government. 

Please read on for interesting context on Teri Takai’s reform agenda, which will certainly be part of the context to her GTEC Keynote on “High Performance Government” in October.

State Launches IT Reform Push

Lower costs and greater efficiency expected

For Immediate Release

August 11, 2009

Contact:
Jeffrey Young or Eric Lamoureux
916-376-5037

West Sacramento, Calif. – State officials and representatives of the information technology industry gathered today in West Sacramento to begin the task of reforming the state’s IT purchasing process. Late last month, the Governor enacted a series of process and legislative changes included within the 2009-10 budget, that when implemented will greatly shorten the time it takes to get an IT project done, generate project benefits earlier, avoid costs and aid in the modernization of the state’s technology environment.

Today’s forum with the IT companies that currently contract or hope to do business with the state included State Consumer Services Agency Secretary Fred Aguiar, State Chief Information Officer Teri Takai and Department of General Services’ Chief Procurement Officer Jim Butler. Hundreds of companies are expected to attend to voice their comments and feedback, implementing the Governor’s goal to be as efficient and as transparent as possible in this process. It is being webcast live at http://www.dgs.ca.gov/Webcast.htm and is available for viewing at http://media.dgs.ca.gov/itforum.

“The Governor has made it clear to us all that we must look to cut the time and cost involved with our large IT projects in California while working to ensure we benefit from the latest technological advancements,” said Jim Butler, the state’s chief procurement officer. “We must work to stop the multi-year procurement process. The Governor’s plan will cut our purchasing time from five years to one, while also cutting costs and enhancing our ability to collect more revenues.”

The new program makes changes in a number of areas. The most significant improvement being reducing the total time it takes to implement a large IT project. Under the new plan, the process would be reduced from 3-5 years to 24-26 months, avoiding a large amount of workforce costs. Additionally, the plan also incorporates changes to allow multi-stage phased procurements-these allow a small number of winning first round bidders to create pilot or prototype versions of the systems they have bid on. This, a normal part of the IT procurement process outside of state government that was formerly prohibited. The opportunity to evaluate working version of systems should greatly improve the final products.

The IT procurement process improvements will also engage the IT community ahead of the state releasing Request for Proposals on new projects. This will allow the IT industry to provide much better input to the bid documents the government produces. Other improvements streamline the appeals process, drop some burdensome reporting requirements, and reduce mandatory financial withholding requirements for IT vendors.

“These reforms will strengthen our existing laws and help the IT vendor community partner with us to build projects that will operate more efficiently and effectively,” said Teri Takai, California’s Chief Information Officer. “As we overhaul our aging technology infrastructure, California has a golden opportunity to achieve Governor Schwarzenegger’s vision to reform, rebuild and better serve all Californians.”

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If you have been following me on twitter (@kdentremont), you’ll  know that I essentially follow topic areas connected to the annual themes of GTEC and re-tweet articles and interesting thoughts from opinion leaders. It’s not a very creative use of Twiter, but it’s working for me.

Tim O’Reilly is an uber-tweeter in my book and he has pointed me to a number of ideas and thoughts that are helping clarify my view of Web 2.0.  Recently, he pointed me to a column he wrote for Forbes on how “Government 2.0 – The promise of Innovation” (http://bit.ly/QWwfG). 

I expect we’ll see at GTEC that Tim likes to ask questions based on his copious reading and constant search for information.  In the column, he examines the juxtaposition of what exists online in terms of applications, searches and user communities against the goals and values of government services.  Government 2.0, for O’Reilly, is really “government as a platform”…. for engaging the public in a national dialogue and delivering on some of the age old premises of our democracies in the US and Canada.  Pretty cool stuff.

As cynical as we all can be, it’s hard to deny that Web 2.0 technologies promise to not only aggregate demand for government services, but to actually help manage the inner workings of government IT operations.  So many tools already exist to create social the social networks that government managers desperately need to create demand for on-line services.  Banks and companies have figured out online transactions and perhaps even mastered some of the security challenges around identity management.

Regardless of the constraints to adopting these solutions within government, the world is changing and governments are facing pressure to “keep up with the Jones” where IT is concerned.  Consumer expectations are being set by industry leaders are able to move at breakneck pace and are, let’s face it, motivated by the commercial value of adopting the technologies that drive their businesses forward.

I understand the issues governments face.  IT sustainability, reuse, protection of information and identity management are all huge technology issues that collide with the current policy directions around cost containment and public accountability.  Still, the Web 2.0 world will not wait around for us to figure these challenges out.

The latest tweet from Tim that had me thinking was this one on Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Report: http://bit.ly/MM5Vx .  Gartner is pointing to major trends like Cloud Computing, greening data centres, virtualization and advances in mobility products, amongst other things, as trends that are growing at breakneck speed. These are signs of a technology landscape that is changing greatly and moving far away from the traditional models governments have been using.  At what point will these trends become part of the solutions to the woes of governments?  Is IT in government really a “problem” to fix, or is it the actually the “fix” for our current problems? Clearly, some of these concepts are shifting cost and business models around the world, and there is no reason to believe that they can’t do the same in the public sector. So if the debate is whether the IT community should be on the leading or trailing edge of next generation services and solving some of our current challenges, I say it’s the solution and we should be leading the charge.

At one point in the evolution of GTEC, the event was focused around leaders who blew open traditional models of service delivery by injecting new systems, processes and technologies into governments. Every signal I see points to an opportunity to leverage a huge wave of change, to change the way governments operate.  The IT Community was the pioneer and CIOs built an information highway in government long before it extended out to the rest of Canada.

The next wave of government 2.0 is a cultural challenge that requires governments to embrace new technologies just as they did in the early 90s when “e-government” was a wild idea.  If not the IT community, then who else in government has the know-how to start the discussion?

Keep talking and keep pushing.  IT is, and should be, the driver of positive change in government.