ExecutiveBiz members have had the pleasure of interacting with a long line of IT thought leaders. One of note is Chris Rasmussen, a great advocate for information sharing and collaboration within the federal space and a master of the use of new tools to get groups working together on hard problems (read more about Chris here). Chris will speak with members again on 24 April 2008 at The New, New Internet.

Federal users are making increasing use of Web2.0 capabilities, and we look forward to hearing Chris’s views on where this is all going. We are already seeing that some of the nation’s hardest problems, like those the intelligence community must address, are being tackled with Web2.0 tools and techniques. One recent development is a YouTube-type capability for the intelligence world called “iVideo.” (see Federal Computer Week’s article on “YouTube for the intell community” for more info). iVideo is based on Adobe technologies, and provides users from around the globe the ability to securely upload video and other media for the use by others. We can expect the use of iVideo will grow dramatically, like the adoption of other advanced Web2.0 tools provided by the Office of the Director of National intelligence (ODNI).

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We’ve reported on the intersection of government and Web 2.0 technologies before on this blog. It’s an important and shifting landscape and nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in Washington D.C.

Most of the applications are born in the private sector. Wikipedia, for example, became widely used well before Intellipedia, the intelligence service’s equivalent information sharing website.

“Web 2.0 applications are being created on the private side of things,” Ramesh Ramakrishnan, division director at Citizant, a Chantilly-based government solutions provider, said. “We then look at how a particular tool can be applied to a variety of federal agencies.”

“So much of the federal government information is stacked in individual silos. But wikis are getting more popular from the standpoint of collaboration,” Ramakrishnan says, pointing out that the greatest benefit is that a wiki can turn a Web site into a knowledge repository, allowing interdepartmental collaboration.

Mashups, an application using data from more than one source, are among the best examples of government’s adoption of ‘Gov 2.0′. Citizant recently worked to develop enterprise mashups to create a National Housing Locator system for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Using the Google Maps API and the NHL database, an information data sharing tool was born. (see picture).

“HUD was looking at all the services it provides within its program areas and identified an office that did a lot of geocoding [assigning geographic identifiers],” Ramakrishnan said. “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel of geocoding. What better way than to take the geocoding already done from one office and use it as a service within all of HUD.

Essentially other users can leverage the existing program and applications by using it as service across the board, and so now, in this case, the geocoder becomes a service center of sorts and the housing locator platform is able to combine its data with an already existing map.

To be sure, there’s a menu of government-specific constraints with Web 2.0 applications. For example, on gov’t wikis, deciding who can and cannot edit or view a page could potentially be a matter of national security. Issues also abound with privacy issues and determining moderators, especially with social networking sites.

“Full cross pollination from private to gov’t is a long way off,” Ramakrishnan said. Citizant is currently working with employees in various gov’t agencies to establish an integrated platform model for Gov 2.0 solutions.
For more on this, check out our recent interview with Sean Dennehy, Chief of Intellipedia Development.

The development of Web 2.0 tools has allowed for anyone to walk onto the scene and join the online conversation. Social networking sites let users communicate and stay connected with friends and colleagues. Some of the most popular blogs, like Daily Kos, serve as a meeting ground for all sorts of liked-minded users. But what do you when the conversation turns to your company, your product, or even yourself?

Recently, too many business leaders have answered this question by employing a variety of less-than-ethical tactics. From shadowy anonymous user names to sneaking in questionable edits on Wikipedia, those who defend one’s self behind the curtain of anonymity need a digital reality check.

The New York Times has followed this phenomena closely in recent months, starting with the now infamous case of sock puppeteering from John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods on a Yahoo! Finance discussion board. Using the name “Rahodeb”, Mackey weighed in on everything from his company stock’s price to his own hair cut – all under the guise of an anonymous Yahoo! user.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, isn’t safe from these nefarious campaigns either. Employees at companies from Wal-Mart to Pepsi to the CIA have been exposed as editors to their own employers’ Wiki page – often with biased edits, as in the Exxon employ who was found “playing down [Exxon’s] impact on the area’s wildlife and casting a positive light on compensation payments the company had made to victims of the [Valdez Oil] spill,” the New York Times reported.

How are these supposedly anonymous posters getting caught? Well for one, the online conversations are more organized than they may appear at first glance. Frequent visitors of user groups, Yahoo! Finance for example, are likely to spot others who post with regularity. It doesn’t take long to spot the user group denizens, many of whom use their real names or at least include an email address. A frequent anonymous poster, with often biased comments, sets off red flags among the other users. Do this at your own peril.

Also, you can’t outwit technology. Websites are popping up almost daily dedicated to outing anonymity on the Internet. A computer science graduate student recently created a site that can track the edits to Wikipedia pages down to your specific IP address. Visit the site to see a collection of “salacious edits” ranging an ACLU employee editing the entry on the Pope to a church in Tulsa altering the entry covering the origin of the species.

Don’t let this warning scare you though. There are a number of excellent corporate bloggers posting under their real names that have developed quite a following. Sun Micro System’s Jonathan Swartz and GM’s Vice chairman Bob Luntz are two great C-levels blogs that come to mind.

As I’m sure the Whole Foods CEO would now agree: while it may require more forethought, it’s best to post transparently and collaboratively online.