The defense sector is all a-Twitter about this and other social media platforms, with many organizations restricting how and if their employees can access the tools during working hours.

Authors Maj. Daniel Ward, USAF; Maj. Gabe Mounce, USAF; and Carol Scheina discuss the impact of these restrictions in their article “Twitter Is Mission Critical.” The article generated a lot of conversation when it was presented in excerpted form last month, and you can read those comments here.

The complete version of Twitter is Mission Critical is in this month’s issue of SIGNAL Magazine. And it’s worth another look to see what else the authors had to say.

The Defense Department currently denies access to social networking sites from many unclassified department networks, isolating the defense work force from Twitter, one of the biggest engines of social, economic and technological change. This policy is outdated, the authors say.

They stress that blocking access to social media restricts warfighters’ ability to collaborate and innovate. Many defense employees are knowledge workers, which requires connections with people and exposure to emerging ideas. Social media enables all of these things.

Social media communities such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are self-selected and interest-driven. They are not limited to those who wear the same uniform, work on the same projects or have the same background. Social media extends beyond the military-industrial complex, encouraging collaboration and jointness.

Arguments against using Twitter include network security fears, bandwidth constraints and the perception that social media wastes time–none of which are strong enough reasons to preclude using these tools. The authors point out that blocked sites do not represent a unique threat; Twitter is not a bandwidth hog; and monitoring employee usage is a leadership issue.

It is time for the Defense Department to embrace the next evolution of technology–social media–and to acknowledge the change that is transforming the world, the authors argue. It cannot be ignored and should not be blocked.

You can read and comment on the full article here, or you can share your thoughts here at SIGNAL Scape.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, USA, chief information officer (CIO)/G-6 policy, and Maj. Gen. Nickolas Justice, USA, program executive officer, Command, Control and Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T), had a lot to say about innovation in the U.S. Army at the Gov 2.0 Summit last week.

Panel moderator Dr. Linton Wells, Transformation Chair and distinguished research professor at National Defense University, asked them why pursue innovation on the edge. Gen. Sorenson took the opportunity to explain challenges faced by the military in today’s enviroment. “If you look at warfare today, it has dramatically changed from when your father or grandfather fought it,” he said. “We have to function in environments that are asymmetrical, where the enemy is not in uniform and may be in front, behind, around you.” He made a distinction between strategic operations and tactical operations but noted that the two are no longer separate. “You now have tactical forces doing strategic operations,” he explained. “They have to have the best situational awareness at that front edge. The only way to do that is to make sure that data [they need to complete the mission] is available accessible and accurate.”

Gen. Justice had a different perspective on why innovation matters most on the front line. “It’s all about money,” he said. “If I can get my warfighters to solve my problems for me, then I don’t have to go back to the Pentagon to ask for the money to address these capabilities.”

Gen. Sorenson said that in his experience, he’d run across soldiers with intuitions or experience to discern what was needed. When that happens, he continued, “You get some magic.” He is always astonished to find that warfighters are “using systems in ways that were never imagined when we wrote the requirements for it.”

The generals acknowledged that security remains the stumbling block. “We have to ensure that soldiers can trust their network and that the information they are getting is verifiable,” said Gen. Sorenson. Warfighters must be able to trust in the information they get before they can engage, especially if hackers can tap in and change coordinates or instructions.

But, he added, AFRICOM sets a good example. Africa is not networked like Europe, Iraq, etc. “Social networking sites are a way to get messages out from an operational standpoint.”

And these platforms are changing the way military branches recruit. Facebook and Twitter in particular help potential recruits see that the Army is relevant as more people tell their stories using these media. Gen. Justice mentioned that chat rooms and other tools enabled by Army Knowledge Online (AKO) are popular as well.

In the meantime, Gen. Sorenson said, the Army is working together with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to put together a policy for the Defense Department that will establish how social networks will be used.

When Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, came on board at the Defense Department a couple of months ago, he got the directive from Sec. Gates to use social media to engage—not just push out messages. But within days of starting, Floyd found that most of those social media channels had been shut down, he explained at the Gov 2.0 Summit Thursday afternoon.

New policies were in order, and so the DoD examined reasons for making the platforms accessible. They talked to families, and found compelling evidence that the availability of social networking tools was a boon to troop morale. The anecdotes that made their way back to the Pentagon demonstrated  just how valuable social networks are for the troops. In one example, Floyd explained, one woman had shared how her husband was able to help his children with their homework while deployed, thanks to social media.

There were other benefits to troops, including the ability to update insurgency manuals and military blogs in real time, both proving to be tangibly beneficial to men and women in the field.

Floyd also explained some of the features on the new DoD website, defense.gov. It includes links to the DoD’s presence on social networks and offers an interactive component that allows users to send messages to the Defense Secretary.While users are encouraged to ask questions, Floyd said that they were more interested in policy suggestions from readers.

Although the department is finding that the social media landscape is rich with benefits, they are still concerned about risks. Operation security remains a huge concern, and that’s a key risk area. “People sometimes feel more secure talking to their friends, ironically,” said Floyd. Not so long ago, those kinds of communications came in the form of a letter home, where only a few people would see it. But now, he added, it’s there for the whole world to see.

The ultimate goal of government 2.0 should be a user-friendly government, whether that user is the citizen availing him or herself of services or the user is the government agency using these tools to collaborate and share information, said panelists at a discussion after lunch on Thursday at the Gov 2.0 Summit. For the defense and intelligence sectors, those internal capabilities are most attractive, but even behind the secure networks, challenges of culture still exist.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, USA, the U.S. Army chief information officer (CIO)/G-6, pointed out that communities of interest are forming around how best to approach the procedures needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly when warfighters discover that they are seeing some of the same things in Afghanistan that they saw in Iraq.

Gen. Sorenson also observed that with regard to public engagement, gov 2.0 platforms allow the military public affairs offices to “tell the story” better than it has in the past.

For the defense sector to move from need-to-know to need-to-share—a cultural shift that Gen. Sorenson stated has just begun— requires the elimination of legacy barriers. One area he’s seeing it in practice is in suicide prevention among warfighters: making the data more accessible whether it comes from a health office or a personnel office or anywhere else. To accomplish this, barriers between those offices must be flattened.

Michele Weslander Quaid, chief technology officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), noted that the intelligence community is working on making all data accessible and discoverable by appropriately cleared people. The new tools also allow a non-cleared person to directly request access.

With regard to the culture shift, Weslander Quaid made the observation that it was more important to identify the need before the technology to address that need. As she observed, “You have to find the people who have to collaborate anyway, then find the tools that allow them to collaborate better.”

From politics to national security to data transparency to important new public service applications, the Gov 2.0 Summit, co-produced by O’Reilly and TechWeb, covered a wide range of issues facing government as it tries to balance security, transparency and the new media environment.

The theme in the afternoon was the wide range of applications that can be built using geospatial technology. As Craig Mundie of Microsoft noted, GPS technology was available for quite some time before people started figuring out how they could use it. But once they did, geospatial applications have proliferated rapidly, many enabled by open APIs that allow people to create “mashups” that integrate data with a platform.

Jack Dangermond of ESRI demonstrated a Google Maps mashup that takes advantage of the Google Maps API and data from the government. In one example, they located all the long-term care facilities in proximity of the California wildfires. Other data sets could be loaded in a matter of seconds, making it much easier to find at-risk populations that are close to disaster areas. Dangermond noted that this process turns data into services, and invited the audience to imagine how the response to Hurricane Katrina might have been different were these tools in place.

Andrew Turner of FortiusOne discussed a web application that allows users to plot their bicycle routes through a community that’s been mapped with geospatial data on crime rates in that neighborhood. This is illustrative of ways that public safety can be better promoted through use of geospatial tools.

Robert Greenberg, of G&H International Services, Inc., discussed Virtual Alabama in the context of Homeland Security. (For more information about this project, see www.dhs.alabama.gov/virtual_alabama/.) What used to take weeks now takes hours, and allows crisis responders to get information that much more quickly. Another state program, VIPER, allowed responders access to data that served as an early-warning system for potential catastrophes. The two states started sharing their data, and seeing that success, the Department of Homeland Security embarked on Virtual America to become a nationwide initiative. At this time, there are more than 50 installations, some DHS, some state, some local, all stitched together. Greenberg noted that Recovery.gov is developing interactive maps that will be available in a few weeks, and observed the application “will revolutionize the way we respond to events across the country.”

The role for federal CIOs is changing, says Christopher Dorobek in Be a CIO, Not a CI-No, this month’s Incoming column. He gives props to the current administration for not just supporting information technology and e-government initiatives, but insisting on them, as evidenced by the appointment of key people to important positions and Obama’s own determination to not be PDA-less:

Two early and powerful actions have made clear the Obama link between information technology and governing. Perhaps one of the most powerful actions was when President Obama insisted—demanded—that he have a personal digital assistant. That single action spoke volumes about how core information technology is to the country’s new chief executive. It said that he understood the security concerns inherent with many technologies, but it also said that “no” was not an option.

Another action was the creation of a White House new media office and the appointment of the Obama campaign’s new media guru, Macon Phillips, as its leader. Creating the Obama CIO, the White House Office of New Media and the Obama chief technology officer (CTO) were not just semantic steps. The leaders of those organizations—Kundra, Phillips and CTO Aneesh Chopra, respectively—understand that their job is not about information technology. Their success or failure will depend on the government’s ability to carry out its mission. And, in a significant step, it links responsibility with authority.

These developments are signs that It’s not enough for the IT departments that CIO’s run just to keep the network up, anymore, Dorobek continues. And that is where the huge, uncomfortable shift is taking place:

… increasingly, they are being pressed to focus on tools that further enable agencies to carry out their missions and to become even more core to the mission. But too often, CIOs are not the enablers. Many information technology organizations become “no zones,” and the CIO becomes the CI-No. When personnel go to their information technology organization with an idea, they are told all the reasons they cannot do something. And that is particularly true with Web 2.0 applications because of security concerns.

So there’s been a lot of conversation about culture needing to change to get out of this “two-point-NO” mindset. We’ve heard the call for that change from admirals and generals at our own AFCEA events, to say nothing of the wider Government 2.0 conversation on the web and the digital governance movement afoot in public administration circles. Our question for you is how does that change happen? How can we shape the culture so that government IT leaders can say “yes” to technology more often?

Christopher Dorobek waxes nostalgic about his first e-mail account and how he didn’t get it at first in this month’s Incoming column, “The First Step Toward Collaboration Is to Stop E-Mailing.” And he wasn’t the only one, he writes:

As shocking as it may seem now, all types of questions arose in agencies about whether e-mail was necessary. The General Services Administration (GSA), under then-administrator David J. Barram, was one of the first agencies to ensure that each person in the organization had e-mail—on Flag Day 1996. The GSA press release headline read, “GSA Employees Join Super Information Highway through Intranet.”

Barram’s quote in the release, dated June 14, 1996, states that, “Using this tool called Internet, companies, governments and individuals around the world are inventing exciting new ways to do their work, improve service to their customers, and communicate with each other,” Barram said today. “I believe that use of the Internet will be a key competitiveness factor for GSA in the coming years and that GSA employees must begin to learn how this new resource can change the way we do business.”

Amusing as hindsight can be, Dorobek makes an excellent point when he says that e-mail really did revolutionize the way we communicate, but hasn’t done much toward the effort to collaborate. But since we’ve gotten in the habit of using e-mail to collaborate, for lack of better tools in the ’90s, we’re still using e-mail to collaborate even though better tools are out there. He continues:

My challenge to users is to think before sending an e-mail and ask the simple question: “Is this the best tool for what I am trying to accomplish?” In many cases, much better options are available. Blogs can be used for speaking to large groups of people, but they also create a place where a conversation can happen around topics. Wikis are collaborative workplaces where people can share information and ideas. And other capabilities are popping up every day.

Better tools for collaboration are available. It is time to thank e-mail and move on.

Indeed! Blogs, and wikis, and social bookmarking, and… what else? What we’re curious about here in SIGNAL’s offices are which tools are most effective in facilitating collaboration? It seems like new ones spring up every day, but this could be a valuable conversation in helping managers understand new collaboration tools.

In Christopher Dorobek’s latest Incoming column, he bids readers to have a look at What Would Google Do?, a book by Jeff Jarvis that examines how people can learn from the search engine giant. The lessons, he says, are particularly important for government managers to wrap their brains around:

The book taps into the idea that information is power, but that the real power of information comes in the sharing. Among the principles the book outlines are: give up control; get out of the way; and make mistakes well.

These three principles are useful particularly for government. They are almost directly applicable to government management, and applying them will be particularly challenging.

For giving up control, the book argues that Google does not try to be everything for everyone. To the contrary, it tries to link to everyone. Government agencies tend to want to control information. They become concerned about people misinterpreting the information that is presented. These days, people do not want to be controlled. Agencies still must perform their assessment of data and make it relevant to citizens, but they also must cede control and make data available to people in raw form.

Getting out of the way is related to giving up control, but too often agencies believe that they have to do everything. That is not true. A case in point is the District of Columbia’s remarkable Apps for Democracy program. Under former district Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, who was named the Obama administration’s chief information officer in March, the program gave up control by making government data available—and then held a contest for applications using that data.

…

To make mistakes well is one of the most difficult aspects for agencies—and currently the most disconcerting. Government is terrible at making mistakes. Nobody tolerates them—not Congress, not those involved with oversight, not even the media. This approach has created an ultraconservative culture that is intolerant of any change or innovation. What would Google do? Google would beta-test everything. Gmail is still in beta, for goodness’ sake. That is largely because the company still is making changes.

Read more, including additional examples, in the column What Would Google Government Look Like?, from the April 2009 issue of SIGNAL Magazine. And we’d like to hear from you on any of these topics. Can government learn to “make mistakes well?” Can it get a new perspective on controlling information? Will government get out of the way?

And, perhaps more importantly, if it indeed has to: How will it?

Referring to the today’s young adults as the “Google Generation,” Chris Anderson, editor in chief, Wired magazine, opened the FOSE conference by telling an audience of government and industry representatives that it’s time for the government to catch up. Citizens have come to expect not only information from government agencies but also the ability to interact quickly with government organizations via the Web. Agencies—as well as large companies—have been slow to respond to this demand, Anderson stated.

The public also expects government Web sites to be up to date and always available, he added. Today, government services are not Google-friendly or even Google-optimized, he said. This is a hindrance when citizens today have zoomed past searching for the information they need and moved on to expecting information to be delivered to them.

It’s not just the general public that expects these capabilities either. Young professionals entering the work force expect access to wikis, Google Apps, content management systems, comment systems, blogs, open databases and social networks on the job, he added. When they meet their first systems administrator who tells them access to these capabilities is denied, they quickly search for work-arounds.

Web 2.0 technologies have become so prevalent that they have spawned a new language. People are blogging and tweeting as part of everyday life and this extensive usage demands reliability. Using the example of Twitter, Anderson pointed out that it’s the new symbol of reliability. Less than two years old, Twitter struggled to provide reliable service to the point where the “Fail Whale,” the symbol that appeared when the service was down, is the icon for any and all failure for the Google Generation. After attention and hard work, Twitter improved its service to an amazing level, Anderson stated. In the entire month of December 2008, for example, the service was unavailable for only a total of 12 minutes.

This is the type of reliability government agencies need to aim for when employing Web 2.0 services. While this can take some time, standing in one place and refusing to jump on the interactive technologies bandwagon—because an agency has invested so much in 1990s technology it doesn’t want to buy new technology or because of privacy, security and procurement rules or because of an overall lack of urgency—is a mistake, Anderson said.

While some organizations may be hesitant to use Web 2.0 technologies due to cost, Anderson pointed out that many services are available for free. When moving forward with these new interactive technologies, agencies and companies should embrace the ideas of “fail fast,” the opposite of slow failure; hosted or cloud technology; nimble; experimental; beta; and “Sure!” They also should “fear” the words lengthy approval process, client server, long planning cycle, safe, sign off at all levels, “maybe next year” and sysadmin.

“For the Google Generation, there is an obligation to reach everyone, and everyone is different. They want their government their way,” Anderson said.

The FOSE conference is taking place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C., March 10-12.