I recently participated in a very interesting discussion about mechanisms and issues for leveraging external (i.e. outside the firewall) social networking tools in the Federal Government; for example, browsing and executing searches in Facebook, using Flickr for socializing and recieving comments on photographs, and participating in "open" blog discussions. While this isn't necessarily a new issue, and many agencies are gradually enabling "Government 2.0" for both their constituents and employees/contractors (more quickly in the Intelligence arena), the rapid growth and pressure to utilize these tools for mission purposes is unmistakable and requires more rapid, cross-government address (or at least really well thought-out and vetted models for experimentation, leverage, best practice development). Commercial businesses are generally ahead of the curve (from government) in addressing this need, and "Information Governance 2.0" is fast becoming an absol...

A new "Enterprise Data Management Policy" was signed this week within the Homeland Security Department - to those unconcerned with the business and technology of information management, this won't create a stir...but to those "fighting the good fight" across the Federal Government information-sharing and management parochial boundaries, it's a valuable new tool, at least 2 years in the making. In essence, the Directive, administered by the DHS CIO, outlines the department's policy with respect to sharing, contributing and leveraging wherever possible Enterprise data, and the Enterprise data management procedures and assets made available through the EDMO (Enterprise Data Management Office). Having lived through many of the difficulties associated with sharing and reusing data between Federal components, agencies and departments, with respect to policy differences, metadata and semantic disagreements, security classification issues, or simply reluctance ...