While Government 2.0 is in nascent stages, social networks that cater to the government have been around for some time.  Intellipedia and A-Space in the Intelligence domain are but two examples.  NASA also rocketed into social networking last June with Spacebook.

According to Federal Times, the US Government will be launching FedSpace, a new Facebook-like social networking platform for federal employees.  The site will have an employee directory and a search feature.  FedSpace will enable feds to collaborate with one another by allowing them to write blogs, create wikis and share files.

According to Tiffany Smith, a State Department official, federal employees in smaller agencies don’t have sufficient opportunities to interact with their colleagues.  FedSpace fills this lacuna by connecting employees across agency lines.  Smith said:

Together, we can use FedSpace to improve business processes that already exist, build effective relationships and collaborations across the federal government, and ultimately drive innovation and discovery in the 21st century.

This move validates what Creative Stride has been telling our federal and state clients in the Boston area—social networks must be embraced by government agencies, if they want to conduct business more efficiently.  This new development with FedSpace, however raises an important question.  Can a closed social network like FedSpace be effective by blocking itself from other services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?  Andrea Dimaio of the Garner Group provides an interesting perspective:

Good idea, but not great. While the desire for a safe and secure space is understandable, the problem is that one cannot draw boundaries for collaboration. Those who already use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GovLoop and other mainstream social media platforms in government do enjoy the ability to determine who they want to be in touch and share information with. In some cases, these are people outside government (ex-colleagues, contractors, academics, activists, and so forth). Providing employees with an internal collaboration space creates artificial boundaries to collaboration. Questions that will arise include: how can I import contacts from my other social media platforms? How can I create a group including contacts across different platforms? How can I mashup with data residing in external sites? and so forth.

While Dimaio sees this as an idea that will inhibit collaboration, there are some good arguments for creating a trusted network that is private.  Creative Stride’s government clients have been reluctant to embrace a content aggregation platform that is open and social because they must protect the privacy of their data.  While there are digital rights management strategies to classify content types as private, public, secret, copyrighted, etc., there are going to be cases when mistakes will be made with sensitive content leaking to the mainstream social networks.  A good example is the trouble caused by the leaking of TSA’s sensitive airport screening manual last December.  Since such errors are inevitable, it is best to create social networks for the government that are highly secure and require authentication, especially when the platform is likely to aggregate secret data.

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• 5 Ways Government Works Better With Social Media (mashable.com)
• ‘Facebook for Feds’ – U.S. Government to Launch Fedspace (socialtimes.com)