FOSE Session: Web 2.0 for the Public Sector

April 2nd, 2008 by Louis DiMeglio

We’re attending a few sessions today for the conference portion of FOSE. The first is Web 2.0 Technologies: Real-World Applications for the Public Sector. The moderator is FCW’s Chris Dorobek, who is already blogging and very familiar with Web 2.0.

Speakers include Don Burke and Sean Dennehy from the CIA, Dr. Sharon Fratta-Hill from the USDA Graduate School, John Thompson from Buffalo State College, and Ed St. Lawrence from Xythos Software.

The session will include:

• An introduction to Web 2.0, including blogs, Wikis, mashups, podcasts, and other useful resources
• How government agencies are applying Web 2.0 technologies, including the FTC, Dept. of Defense, Dept. of State, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and NOAA
• How Web 2.0 can facilitate communication within public sector organizations
• Best practices for sharing content securely with other institutions and available collaboration tools

Our thoughts as we listen to the moderators will be shown in in BOLD ITALIC.

Chris provided an initial introduction to the session, stating that it WOULD be different and interactive, with a NO POWERPOINT rule.

Don Burke: Web 2.0 is not a single tool Blogs, wikis, social tagging, and others all work together to serve an individual niche.

Ed St. Lawrence: I’ll be talking to user adoption and technical challenges to our software moving to a Web 2.0 direction. Collaborative technologies and RSS are helping to create content through the web.

The first Web 2.0 conference was about four years ago, it’s taken time to get to the public mainstream.

Not everything that is reported to be Web 2.0 is really 2.0. It’s a nice word and sounds nice, but some applications claim to be, when they really are not. Is there going to be a Web 3.0? Probably.

Chris Dorobek is talking about Twitter, as a microblogging tool.

Not many people in the room are on Facebook or Twitter. Seems the federal space isn’t there yet.

Don Burke: Twitter allows you to be authentic.

Still haven’t heard how this relates to public sector, is this relevant to the federal space…

Chris Dorobek: The question I hear people asking, is why do I care? There is a lot of good stuff out there, but why does it matter?

Don Burke: A hallmark of Web 2.0 is ensuring that you don’t know what the recipient is interested in, because you may not know what they may be interested in or not.

John Thompson: Web 1.0 was pretty static, someone controlled the website, and it was limited and not open to the masses. It was almost like a library of information. Web 2.0 means that you go to the library, find a book you like, you share it with people, and you can even re-write it. You are collaboratively, in real-time, editing versions of information. You are contributing to content, changing the look and feel of the web. it’s much more in tune with the needs of the individual.

Sharon Fratta-Hill: In a learning environment, early on we were used to chatrooms - probably a precursor to blogs. Thinking about how we talk to each other and how we share information. The thing we were worried about when moving to another platform, was how to share videos with each other? How do we comment on them? We’ve moved to Adobe Connect, which is not truly 2.0, but the closest that we could get to simulate a learning environment. People can learn synchronously or asynchronously, which allows them to create their own content. It brings people together.

Hmm…this sounds like WebEx and in fact Connect is Adobe’s version of WebEx.

A lot of people use podcasts. And (luckily) most of the room knows what an RSS feed is.

Audience questions: Web 1.0 means you can browse. Web 2.0 is interactive. How do we involve our users in these applications?

Chris Dorobek: I define Web 2.0 as “all of us are smarter than one of us.”

Sean Dennehy: A professor of cultural anthropology, Michael Wesh, “The Machine is Us/Using Us” video is a 4 minute video that tells what Web 2.0 is.

A wiki is a place to aggregate content. Blogging is a place to have a voice, a place to share your thoughts and perspectives. Social tagging (del.iciou.us or Tag Connect) is a way of organizing content on the web which you can share with others and find anywhere. Leveraging the work f others. Tying that all together is RSS.

Chris Dorobek: The government may think it’s powerful because it has lots of information, but sharing it will make it less powerful. How have you dealt with that in intellipedia?

Don Burke: These tools are 10% technology and 90% culture. We’re trying to challenge and pull people into using platforms beyond e-mail and share drives. It boosts knowledge and power.

The next generations of subject matter experts are going to be out there. They’re going to have an Intellipedia page and let their ideas be out there.

Ed St. Lawrence: I teach graduate students who are education technology majors. Most of them have no clue about wikis or blogs etc. I’m not sure if this is an indication of our education systems, or of the media mis-reporting statistics. This proves that Web 2.0 is not indicative of an age gap, but more of a cultural thing.

It’s a mindset.

Just because it’s there, do we have to use it? It’s hard, it takes a lot of time, it’s not comfortable. There can be a lot of reluctance and resistance.

An audience member comments on the democratization of information with Web 2.0, comparing it to America’s move to democracy.

Chris Dorobek: Web 2.0 is a much more collaborative thing, showing that it’s much more than one person speaks and one person listens.

John Thompson: Speaking of Wikipedia, people are going to contribute less when they come from smaller companies. It can also be an issue of privacy.

Chris Dorobek: You can’t trust just one piece of information, you have to look at many and evaluate on your own.

Audience: I’m wondering about information vetting tools. It gives you that much more valuable information. At a certain point, automating that becomes a good solution. How do you deal with that?

Don Burke: Question - Everybody in the room uses Firefox. (hands raised confirmed) Why?

Audience: RSS. Security. Not from Microsoft.

Don Burke: It’s open source, it’s transparent.

Using Intellipedia as an example, if we put policies in an open platform, to debate it, we can figure out what it means. A lot of original documents contradict each other, so we need a place to define it. That’s where open source comes into play.

Audience: One of my dilemmas is what to do with a public-facing page. We’ve talked about internal pages, like wikis, but what about external. Is there a policy or way to get something in place?

Chris Dorobek: The concern is what? Comments on a blog?

Audience: The collaborative part. Also that you’re essentially a voice of the government. Is there a way to find out how to manage whether they have used appropriate information.

Ed St. Lawrence: This comes back to the question of just because you can do it, should you? And you should be prepared for the repercussions. Talk of policy means there is a lot to decide. For example, EPA has a blog. They’re doing a lot with Web 2.0 - videos, podcasts. It was the first public blog in the government.

But, you have to be prepared for some negative feedback. It’s one thing to consider.

Chris Dorobek: Rob Carey - Department of Navy just started a Federal blog. They don’t have a comment feature. They are figuring out ways to incorporate that in.

Audience: Though most of these questions, I hear fear. From public-facing web pages, erroneous, out of date material, or embarrassing information.

Please consider bringing on board a web content manager.

Webcontent.gov is a great resource for these questions.

Sounds like the federal government is somewhat interested, but wants to keep controlling the message.

Audience: Question for the panel: DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) - relates to single source content management. How can you organize and re-use it? The other thing is Connections - a site that has the same concept as DITA but is an effort in the educational community to try to offer free books for schools.

Ed St. Lawrence: What’s the concept of libraries if it’s all online? There are a lot of issues that are more fundamental than textbooks.

Sean Dennehy: If we stick in our old world, we will become increasingly irrelevant as the world changes. If it’s not accessible, it will be hard to reach.

I think THAT’S the bottom line.

Audience: I’m from the Department of the Interior: The ability for anyone to interact with a federal website seems to be inhibitive. How do we get those types of perspectives changed so we can get into Web 2.0.

Don Burke: Most of what we’re dealing with is from inside the enterprise. We haven’t been too successful with our external presence on the web. We’d like to make it more participatory. We often say, start small. Start with an RSS feed for your company’s or CIO’s speeches. Once that starts going, then allow comments. Maybe require a log-in. Put your toes in the water and get out there. Experiment.

Popularity: 51% [?]

April 2nd, 2008