If you work for the Federal Government or work with the Federal Government in any capacity, you’ve probably heard more and more references to wikis. It therefore seemed timely to write a blog entry on what wikis are and why government departments are launching them.

A wiki is simply a web site that allows anyone to enter information without having to know a web programming language.  Most offer a simple interface, with features similar to MS Word, to create and format a page, and a discussion area for people to put in there comments.

The reasons that governments and many private sector organizations are interested in wikis include:

1) It is more efficient than email.  

If you’ve ever been part of an email string that has been sent out to a number of people for feedback, you’ll quickly understand this point.  Email is an effective media for consulting with one or with a very small number of people, however managing feedback becomes cumbersome if many people are consulted with. 

A wiki however, allows information like an agenda, a report, a briefing or a policy document to be posted in one place (the wiki).  It also enables many people to provide comments directly in the document or in the discussion area, if the document has been locked for changes. The advantage of this model is that all changes and comments are posted in one place for everyone to see and no one is forced to consolidate a number of changes and communicate them back to the group.

2) It facilitates knowledge management.

A wiki enables everyone within a department to easily share their knowledge and insight. It acts as a repository of knowledge and is captured in a format that makes knowledge building and sharing easier than traditional methods. This is particularly critical within government today because the baby-boomer generation is beginning to leave the workforce and with them goes valuable experience and knowledge. 

3) It is platform neutral.

Departments and agencies that work with other departments or stakeholders know that there can be issues exchanging documents if different software versions or operating systems are used (such as Lotus, Microsoft or Mac).  The web, however, is platform neutral, meaning that it uses a standard programming format that renders a document (on a wiki page) similarly regardless of the platform.  Therefore, placing information on a wiki rather than in a MS Word document can reduce compatibility issues.

4) It automatically captures all changes and allows change comparisons.

Wikis offer basic document-management features such as revision history and version comparison.   This allows users to track the changes that have been made to a document and revert back to previous versions or compare changes as required.

If you are interested in trying a wiki, the most popular public one is www.wikipedia.com; or, if you are working within the Government of Canada you’ll be able to access www.gcpedia.gc.ca. 

With government trying to figure out how to deploy the tools and applications of social networking – the likes of Facebook, wikis and such – it’s at least interesting to stumble across a suggestion that social networking itself could turn out to be just another fad.

A survey of 13,000 people in 17 countries by the research firm Synovate (www.synovate.com) found that fully 58 per cent of them were unfamiliar with social networking.

Plus: More than a third – 36 per cent – were losing interest in online social networking. That included 47 per cent of Canadians polled.

Steve Garton of Synovate acknowledged the universal truth that social networking is by and large keeping youth on board. But overall, he said, “It turns out social networking is not taking over the world. Well, not yet anyway.”

In the short term, the findings merely suggest that “not everyone is pokable,” as e-Marketer put it. At a higher level, though, they also point to a plain requirement for more research by the public sector on the potential of social networking applications: Can they become part of the fabric of routine community consultation, as some e-government apostles preach, or will they merely become a series of behind-the-scenes intranets for assorted tech types?

The shorthand on Web 2.0 in the public sector, you will doubtless know, is that it’s fine as far as it goes – but it’s really better suited to the administration of government rather than its public interface. All those wikis, whether driven by technology or policy or even program management, bear ample testimony to the argument.

There’s nothing wrong with that, though; in fact, as a recent Transport Canada study reminds, there’s some highly imaginative work going on in those back rooms,

Blog Research and Analysis takes a long look at the blogosphere and its possible utility in Transport Canada’s world. Managed by the department’s communications branch, the study blesses blogs on a number of fronts. Relevant bloggers should be tracked in media monitoring scans, for example, after consultation with departmental program experts.

Beyond that kind of obvious conclusion, though, the report calls on the department to enter the blogosphere itself. Blogs “put a human face on government,” it argues; they can “make government more open (and) build a profile for a leader.”

That said, the report also lays down five potential risks for public servants contemplating this brave new world. From the study:

·         Organizational blogs are bound to receive negative comments.

·         Once a blog is started, it must not be allowed to fade away.

·         Employee bloggers could, for example, post misinformation or defamatory remarks, or use inappropriate or disrespectful language.

·         Lazy moderators.

·         Legal liabilities.

There’s more, worth tracking down, online or off, if you’re up to another big step on the thousand-mile journey.

We at Open Text are committed to being champions of education and awareness – ensuring that our customers and prospects are armed with the right data to make informed decisions about technology and the implications these decisions will have on their internal processes.  Just a few weeks ago I delivered a seminar as part of the ARMA Canada National Conference in Fredericton, NB on the topic “What Do Records Managers Need to Know about Web 2.0?”   After the session, a familiar face came up and reached a hand out – “thank you”, she said.  “My boss keeps telling me to put our best practices manual up into a wiki, and until today I didn’t really know what a wiki was”.  

So how would you describe a wiki to a non-technical colleague?

In a recent conversation with Rob Koplowitz, Principal Analyst with Forrester Research, we talked about getting away from technology buzzwords when talking to non-technical application users. “Editable web pages” was a simple, useful description of wiki functionality.  At its simplest, a wiki is an easy-to-navigate, textual, browser-based, multi-author web page that can be open for wide public access, or more locked down for only authenticated authors and editors.  FAQ documents, best practices, meeting notes, status reports, team worklists and brainstorming sites:  all ideal content types that can be served with a wiki. 

The records and information managers in the audience that day were particularly interested in some of the unique features that most wiki platforms offer: 

• Full built-in auditing of content – who made the change, what day and time, what specific text was changed
• Documented discussion and collaboration on why changes and edits are made
• Easy navigation back to previous versions and original text
• Simple and intuitive topic hierarchies, pages and cross reference links or URLs to associated information

Example: Open Text Online Customer Community Wiki with tips and tricks for new members.

So think beyond Wikipedia.org – likely the only wiki a non-technical user will have used or seen.  Wikis in public sector business need to be built on a wiki platform that is suited to management, moderation, appropriate use guidelines and ultimately can be captured and preserved as a record or artifact as would any other electronic content created in the course of public business.

Sometimes we forget that government is usually ahead of the private sector in building programs and policies to protect its core intellectual assets and records.  Many businesses in North America only took content management and records retention seriously after 2001 when more laws and regulations were imposed to combat financial misdeeds and fraud.  Government understands the value of protecting content, safely destroying expired sensitive records, and preserving and disclosing information that has long term public value. It’s not new in public sector like it is for many commercial enterprises.  Compliance with National or Provincial Archives mandates, ATIP/FOI disclosures, protection of sensitive and personal information – all decades old requirements.

But somewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, technology burst through and changed the way many public sector information workers did their jobs.  Email, networks, personal desktop computers, everyone with their own word-processor – technology helped melt down traditional hierarchies and changed how content was created and distributed. It was possible and common for a document to live only in electronic form, never having a paper ‘original’.  Getting a handle on new work practices and new content forms took time – and not all departments or agencies have been able to bring information governance principles to electronic content. Yet, even as many of us still struggle with the volume of email, we still need to look ahead. 

Technology is about to burst through a second time.  And this time it will be with new content authoring tools inspired by the personal productivity tools many of us have learned in personal online activities – wikis, blogs, interactive discussion sites, instant messaging. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be exploring a few aspects of what we mean by the buzzword Web 2.0, and what is might mean inside public sector. What should we expect? And how do we learn from the lessons of email in the ‘90s and not get caught unready.

However, inside an agency, critical resources are often intangible: know-how, specialized knowledge, experience, and team culture. Planning for the projected retirement wave disruption needs to bring together human resources and the lines of the agency business most at risk, supported by records and knowledge management professionals within the organization. Establishing mentorship programs, collaborative work environments and a structured approach to the capture, protection and dissemination of legacy work are activities that need to happen today. Clear recommendations and best practices are emerging.

Agencies should look at the demographics and at the mechanisms and programs that can be put in place now to capture key competencies and critical work knowledge of employees who will soon be eligible to retire. When blending a work force of young and old workers, managers should consider different learning needs and prepare to customize programs.

The development of structured knowledge-gathering or exit interview sessions in advance of the departure of a scheduled retirement is key. Bringing junior staff into the process as part of corporate memory transfer is important for continuity and maintenance of long-term best practices. Creating context around the artifacts left behind – boxes, files, even ore and lab samples – better ensures the preservation of a career’s worth of research and work and salvages the agency’s investment.

At the same time, agencies must incorporate the new work styles of the 20-somethings who are working their way up the ladder: Agencies should expect their technology envelops to be pushed. Demands for rapid search, online access to agency content, collaborative chats, and Web or video conferencing are increasing to default channels of communication. The incoming generation is more wired, more mobile and more demanding of technology for productivity and networking. With the demands of this new online generation, government is presented with a new opportunity to take control of electronic knowledge assets.

The District of Columbia is proving that the use of Web 2.0 tools can bring greater transparency, efficiency and competition to a procurement – at virtually no cost. And the tools are simple enough that anyone with moderate internet skills would be able to implement them.

This week I had the pleasure to speak with Vivek Kundra, CTO of the District of Columbia. One of Mr. Kundra’s objectives is to review and apply popularized Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, YouTube videos, and Google Apps to a variety of government functions, including procurement.

The first test of these tools was the use of a free, open source MediaWiki (popularized by Wikipedia) for the District’s Evidence Warehouse project. The wiki contains the call documentation, video recordings of key events, the Q&A, and other key pieces of information. The content for this project can still be found at:

http://www.evidencewarehouse.ocp.dc.gov/index.php/Evidence_Warehouse

Given the positive wiki experience, the District evolved their projects into a Google Sites page. Google Sites allows you to create a group workspace without having to know any HTML code. You simply pick the functions that you would like to add to your website.

This allowed the District to add more sophisticated calendar functionality, document downloading, and a much improved user interface. Below is a site for the new Information Technology Staff Augmentation project.

http://sites.google.com/a/dc.gov/itsa-contract/Home

According to Mr. Kundra, undertaking projects in this manner has been positively received by all stakeholder groups as project transparency and efficiency has been improved. These tools not only reduce the number of paper-based information hand-offs required during a procurement, but also provide a single source for up-to-date content.