The site you refer to is closed for new updates. Since this is the "first I'd heard about it" your column is either very dated or needs a disclaimer to put the discussion in the past.
I do think it is a great idea, and 'high time' - what I don't like is that it appears to be a forum for 'whipping dogs'. Attacks on people or policy that are just that - attacks do harm and no good. If the comments and suggestions were accepted, but not published in the open forum, we would still be 'heard' by the government, and yet the site would not be a forum for political junk.
I suggest that the site be re-opened for input and suggestions, a machine sort ideas and concepts and make a synopsis based on rules, and publish the synopsis, while routing the ideas to the appropriate people/offices.
With the current level of AI technology, where even medical billing is being done by machines, a citizen should be able to post an idea for something, have the site determine the category and the appropriate goverment official, acknowledge the individual and send him/her the contact information it chose. At that point, the citizen/author could do nothing (agree with the assignment) or ask for a correction.
Make in seamless - make it effortless, and make it make a real difference.!
Contests, open dialogues, partnerships with the private sector and a redesign of USA.gov (the official portal of the federal government) will bring Americans closer to their government, according to David McClure, associate administrator for the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. I recently spoke to McClure, a three-time winner of Federal Computer Week’s “Top Federal 100,” for his impact on government IT directions and improvements.
The name of your office just changed from Citizen Services and Communications to Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. What’s the significance of that?
This office has traditionally been focused on outreach to citizens via web and Internet contact points, and it has also housed the communications division. We have recently separated communications from citizen services and added innovative technology, where we will weave together Web 2.0 and social media to help encourage openness. We have a long track record with running websites to provide citizens with information, but we’re [becoming] more interactive.
I just watched on YouTube the winner of your first USA.gov video contest. What else are you doing to encourage citizen engagement?
One thing we’re doing is redesigning the USA.gov website. It’s the front door of the federal government on the Internet. You can get to agencies and services without specifically knowing the agency name. It’s 10 years old, so we’re creating a new look and feel, with a more interactive and real-time display.
We’ve empowered it with a brand new search engine that rivals that of Google. It uses some of the Microsoft Bing technology. It provides you the best search index of government sites that you can find.
What makes it such a powerful search engine?
The search engine understands the index of websites that exist inside government. A Google engine would drag through the entire Internet and might not be able to pull up the vast array of government specific topics. We’ve been able to increase the response rate 10 times. It’s probably the most comprehensive site search engine for government information.
Forty to 50 percent of people who come on USA.gov end up searching rather than clicking on a specific topic. We recognize that, so we’re trying to make sure it’s fast, efficient and simple. It’s a matter of simplifying things for citizens, because they don’t know how government is organized. They just hear about things like car auctions. Or instead of knowing which agency to go to, they type in “flu epidemic” or a specific outbreak.
What are the most common searches?
They have to do with jobs, taxes, Social Security, veteran benefits. We get a lot of health hits because of health outbreaks. Also, student loans and grants to small businesses. The top-10 list is pretty stable.
Can you talk about this trend in government of going to the American people to help solve problems and create solutions?
[In May] we ran the Open Government Dialogue, where citizens could interact with any agency in the government to submit ideas and give them feedback on openness and transparency. We are really trying to help achieve the administration’s agenda on Open Government.
Each agency was asked to put together a plan on how they were going to become more transparent and open with the public and how they were going to address innovation and creativity. It provided an open-ended funnel of ideas and suggestions. This was done with a simple technology that allowed for the ideas to be voted on, so the most important ideas rose to the top and were looked at by the agencies. At the end of the day, doing that kind of activity brings Americans closer to their government. That’s an outcome that can’t be overlooked.
What was the technology you used?
We chose a tool from IdeaScale and made it available to all the major cabinet departments and agencies. It was a no-cost solution made available to the government by that company. We were able to stand that tool up, government-wide, in less than 60 days. And it ran very successfully for five weeks. We were able to run a national dialogue for a few thousand dollars, as opposed to each agency acquiring their own product and then citizens getting online and having a completely different experience on each of the agencies’ websites. It saved us millions of dollars.
You’re also putting the public to work through contests, like the ChallengePost platform you’ll be making available to agencies in July.
Yes. Challenges and contests—like what we did with USA.gov. You launch a contest in which you’re looking for anyone to come up with an idea that could help you. You could have a prize, a small monetary amount. An agency may have a process problem, may be looking for an innovative solution, and there is an open competition for the best solution. We’re trying to create an environment where we recognize the government doesn’t have a monopoly on ideas or how to do things. We leverage expertise from the public and industry, and that ignites creativity.
How are you working with third parties to reduce the gap between public and private?
We’re looking for companies that are providing no-cost solutions for the government. The new area for us will be in innovative technology. We’re trying to encourage the commercial sector to be part of that. There are solutions commonly needed in government—financial management solutions, customer service solutions. We’re trying to leverage the speed by which these solutions can be created and shared.
Has there been sharing like this between agencies before?
There has been sharing, but the way things operate both privately as well as in the government is that each office, each unit, is in a stovepipe and will only think about their immediate needs and not think broadly. So it helps to see that and aggregate the solutions. It’s very new environment, an historic environment. There’s already been a payoff.
What’s the payoff?
Some of it is dollar savings. We’ve not built the same solution over and over and over again. We’re freeing up the government to focus its talent on business and service delivery and not running complex technology.
