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...

To start things off, here's a locally interesting Government 2.0 story that kicked off 2008, where a local government official complains via email about a real estate blog's veracity, demands material be removed, and refuses to "respond via the blog" - thereby provoking, as we understand all too readily in the Internet Marketing and Social Media industry, a firestorm of comment and much broader exposure of his unfortunate position. Information Management, as an IT discipline to care about and pay attention to, includes not only the information you and your organization generate within your "domain", but also the information you, your organization, and everyone else generates on the Internet regarding your virtual domain.