The Public Manager | WinTer 2010 11

by bill annibell

The Future State of Collaboration

The public sector must start planning now for collaboration needs of the future.

The title of the Bob Dylan classic “The Times They Are a-Changin" may be an appropriate theme to describe the expected shifts in collaboration portals not only within commercially focused organizations, but also within the public sector. A variety of factors—including innovation initiatives, branding requirements at a multitude of levels, and the need to create community-focused, externally facing portals to enable transparency—are diving these shifts. In addition, the increased demands that Generations X and Y end-users will place on IT moving forward as they transition into senior levels of public-sector management will affect future collaboration use and models. IT managers should begin planning now to meet the future demands and requirements of collaboration portals.

History People have been collaborating in some form or another forever. The concept is not new, nor has it changed all that much throughout history—at least until recently. Certainly, technology has changed how we communicate, but collaboration is a different story. Email is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that has undermined many collaboration projects within organizations. This is not to say that the existence of current collaboration portals is a fallacy. They do exist. Far too often, however, the collaborative portal’s original purpose has morphed into document repositories, and they have become an ineffective mechanism for driving broad content to end-users. The original intent of a truly dynamic, collaborative environment is often lost in a less-than-real-time user experience that fails to bring role-specific, pertinent data to the end-user.

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Traditionally, collaboration portals have been labeled intranets, portals, team sites, and so forth, where information could be shared among employees, contractors, team members, and even cross-agency (think extranet). Although these models have had varying levels of success, they often have been plagued by poor planning, design, and implementation, and therefore, poor adoption.

Innovation Although not all organizations are created equally, many have become increasingly aware they have been

living in the dark ages with regard to effective use of collaboration. Mechanisms for unleashing innovative ideas will take the forefront within future collaboration portals. As organizational innovation processes mature, the need for tools—both old and new—will become paramount. For example, wikis are tools, long in tradition, that are most often leveraged by multiple end-users for sharing and expounding on ideas. Demand for wikis will likely increase as organizations become more innovative in their collaboration approaches. In addition, crowdsourcing capabilities will be required so ideas from the masses—both externally and internally—can be captured and voted

on to ensure that only the best ideas bubble to the top. Crowdsourcing is an empowering technology and cannot be overlooked. Workers will demand it moving forward.

Brand Awareness Once upon a time, branding a collaboration portal was as easy as ensuring the logo was placed at the top of a webpage. As organizations within the public sector become more brand-aware, collaboration portal requirements will shift. Brand awareness will continue to be about identification, but it will also be

about managing both internal and external perception. For organizations to influence perception, content will need to be more dynamic, increasingly targeted, and measurable by useful analytics. Gone are the days of manually updating static pages. True content management functionality will become a necessity to ensure that focused, relevant, and role-specific information is delivered to internal and external users. This content will be measured and analyzed for usability and relevance to ensure perception is managed effectively. As content delivery becomes more focused, the internal, end-user brand will become the focal point of entry into future collaboration portals.

Personalized sites that offer business-focused Facebook and MySpace functionality will become the norm and the jump-off point to other parts of the portal. These sites will enable individuals to showcase their work and connect with like-minded individuals within the organization. With the advent of such sites, subject matter expertise will evolve organically and in a grassroots fashion. External users visiting public-sector sites will expect personalization as well. Visitors will look for ways to share profile information as externally facing portals develop and citizen engagement matures. This functionality will ensure content is finely focused and appropriately distributed as external end-users enter the portal.

Community and Transparency Today, collaboration often happens outside of firewalls, and future collaboration portals will be forced to address this requirement. Self-registering community portals will become more prevalent in the future, with interagency collaboration leading the charge. Many agencies will require the establishment of community portals with academia and the private sector to achieve their missions. Common collaborative tools will be required, including those that enable blogging, discussion forums, video, and persistent chat. Learning management system functionality, including whiteboards, audio and video conferencing, and desktop sharing will also be standard requirements. Integration with a variety of social media technologies, including the likes of YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter will become mandatory. The Open Government Directive has hastened transparency, and

as content delivery becomes more focused, the internal, end-user brand will become the focal point of entry into future collaboration portals. Personalized sites that offer business-focused Facebook and MySpace functionality will become the norm and the jump-off point to other parts of the portal.

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externally facing collaboration portals will conform or be left behind. These portals will be forced to evolve from unstructured data repositories, such as Data.gov, to ones that offer both structured and unstructured data services that can be accessed via web services and application-programming interfaces. End-users will demand tools that enable them to “mash-up” data within the portal itself. Analysis, integration, and reporting tools will need to be integrated into the collaboration portals to appease non-technical end-users. Semantic search will become the norm, so individuals can quickly and easily find what they are looking for regardless of whether they typed in the correct search term.

Generation Gap As Baby Boomers begin to retire from their senior government positions, they will be replaced by Generation X and Y workers, both of which seem to embrace change. Many claim that these generations—the creators of Twitter, Facebook, and Google—expect diversity, learn from video games, and communicate with peers via text messaging and instant messaging. They are quick to adapt to the latest technology and often look forward to see what technological advancements are on the horizon. They are well aware of their personal brands and the impact it has on their future. If a technology to make their jobs more efficient is not available to them, workers from these generations will find one and leverage it regardless of whether it is approved. Typically, they do not stand for status quo in the realm of technology, putting a significant strain on IT managers responsible for delivering such tools

to their impatient and growing user-base. A variety of public and private cloud-based technologies will be required to meet such demands. IT managers will have to respond to ever-changing requirements in a far more agile way than they may be used to.

The Future The future is now. The patience of public-sector collaboration portal users is growing increasingly short. Innovation, brand awareness, community building, and transparency are the driving forces behind the many expectations being placed on public-sector IT managers. As Generations X and Y assume senior leadership roles within the public sector, they will not only require changes, but also demand change regularly as technology evolves. IT managers must be prepared to respond far more quickly than ever before, which requires a flexible, agile model that is capable of adapting rapidly to an agency’s mission needs.

Bill Annibell is a director of technology and chief technology officer of Sapient Government Services. He has deployed a variety of collaborative technologies within the private and public sectors in the United States and abroad. Contact him at bannibell@sapient.com.

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