Enhancing Intra- and Inter-Government Collaboration

The Challenge: It can be challenging to coordinate initiatives across federal agencies and different levels of government. What organizational changes, process improvements, and tools should we introduce that will improve collaboration within government?

What We’ve Heard from You: You’ve shared with us your initial reactions to our question of how to improve government collaboration. Some of you have pointed to examples of specific projects that are functioning well while others have pointed out a wide variety of strategies that must be tried. Now we want to hear your specific recommendations for next steps to enhance inter-governmental collaboration.

Drafting Directions: Review the comments from the Discussion blog as well as comments made by government employees and review the submissions in From the Inbox. Incorporating earlier input, you may write your own draft, or combine and edit those of others to create a new one.

Writing policy requires translating good ideas into clear, specific directions for practical implementation. Hence a good recommendation will be no more than 4 sentences and a set of recommendations will be no more than 1 page. To be of maximum use, a recommendation should address:

- Who is being directed to do something? (e.g. "All agencies must...")
- What is the institution being directed to do?
- Why is it important that they do so?
- How will success be measured?

Note that per the terms of use, your drafts are expected to be (among other things) civil and on-topic. We are depending upon you, the community, to help maintain the quality of this process, by reporting drafts which appear to violate these terms. Once reported a number of times, drafts will be submitted for moderator review. They will then be republished in their original place, republished as an "off-topic" draft, or archived off-line if it can not be republished.

Return to Open Government Directive, Phase Three: Drafting, or to the OSTP Blog.

The amount of excess and overlap in procedures should be addressed. The ends to which every purchase is justified, although derived to prevent past problems, is unnecessary. I am sure there is undue overlap within departments as well. If government were run with the aim of minimizing expense, rather than using up a budget so as not to lose it, maybe our deficit would not be so extraordinary. Its great that we are cutting spending some, but all that has been eliminated is a minute portion of the annual budget. One expense I would fully support is the hiring of at least one individual of eliminating excess and making government more efficient. Ironically, I heard the idea first as a joke, but I am not kidding in the least..

This has been suggested by many during thie OpenGov conversation, and I take no credit for the idea, but I get to start the thread here. The idea is to establish a network similar to OMB's MAX, FaceBook or GovLoop where all US government (Federal, State, et al) staff can establish their profile, professional info, work roles, etc., to provide the "person" basis for participation in other collaboration venues, the Wikis, Groups, Blogs, and others that will provide the enriched atmosphere for Collaboration within and among agencies.

There are obvious patterns in the Cloud, and whether GovBook is established in a dot gov infrastructure or as a restricted entity within the Computing Cloud is open. Building a functional Collaboration environment for staffers to share, network, and build ideas with others will be essential to making OpenGov a reality.

A GovBook type network has been suggested by many during thie OpenGov conversation, and I take no credit for the idea, but I get to start the thread here. The idea is to establish a network similar to OMB's MAX, FaceBook or GovLoop where all US government (Federal, State, et al) staff can establish their profile, professional info, work roles, etc., to provide the "person" basis for participation in other collaboration venues, the Wikis, Groups, Blogs, and others that will provide the enriched atmosphere for Collaboration within and among agencies.

There are obvious patterns in the Cloud, and whether GovBook is established in a dot gov infrastructure or as a restricted entity within the Computing Cloud is open. Building a functional Collaboration environment for staffers to share, network, and build ideas with others will be essential to making OpenGov a reality.

The CIO's Office, OMB, OSTP, GSA or the Office of New Media should take the lead for this project, with the guidance and advice of the CIO Council and Web Manager University.

A person's profile account in GovBook would be used for participation in all other types of projects, without the necessity for staffers to re-register, or provide the same information for new venues. It also provide the rich personal experience that has become a hallmark of Web 2.0, a person to person connection that is important in the workplace, whether that is brick and mortar or in a virtual office.

Vision Statement: Every government worker will have access to information, contextual knowledge, and the appropriate professional relationships that span across agencies to collaborate and solve complex national problems.

Knowledge Management encompasses a set of practices that improves the ability of individuals, teams, and organizations to capture, adapt, transfer and reuse knowledge assets, to consistently improve performance, and to innovate by creating new knowledge.

Knowledge Management Policy

It is the vision of the Initiative that knowledge management policy will be established governing the basic requirements and standards of effort and performance for the various resources, services and capabilities described in this vision document.

Federal Knowledge Management Center and the Chief Knowledge Officer

Our vision: in order to provide an integrated and effective implementation of knowledge management in government, Federal Knowledge Management Center will be established. The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) of the United States, appointed by the President, will head this Center. The center shall provide specialized services and products to help government organizations conceive, design, create, and administer their Knowledge Management initiatives. Knowledge management specialists will offer advisory and assessment services to Agencies.

The Center shall provide: (1) a repository of knowledge management best practices and case studies; (2) a demonstration facility for evaluating and implementing KM software tools and approaches, including social networking; (3) a website providing central access to these resources; and (4) ongoing proactive communications to build awareness of the importance of knowledge management, knowledge work competencies, and the value of collaboration.

Competencies and Performance

Our vision: Federal employees consistently apply the knowledge work competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors) appropriate to his or her job. Knowledge work competencies (especially collaboration and sharing of knowledge) and related performance measures are included as criteria for job selection, rewards, and incentives. Every Agency and organization of the US Federal Government shall have access to a common toolset of professional knowledge management practices, via the Federal KM Center.

Web Collaboration and Social Media

Web collaboration and social media a broad constellation of software tools and services -- has changed how we interact with information, and with one another. In our vision, Government will utilize these networking tools and software to better the lives of the citizens it serves, as well as to make government more effective. These efforts should be in keeping with existing eGovernment and collaboration directives.

Knowledge Retention

Knowledge retention is a major aspect of knowledge management, focusing on the challenge of workforce