This is key. While the drive to do IT differently, more cheaply and more transparently is clearly emanating from the folks now holding the reigns of the government, this notion easily be lost somewhere deep in the opaque depths of the IT procurement process. If there is one thing that some government technology contractors have come to appreciate, it’s that building a system that is expensive, difficult to retire, and complicated can often serve to lock in years of future revenue. As one presenter put it, some companies consider building bad enterprise software “a competitive advantage”. In some cases, this has become the only way they know how to operate. Think of the billions in contracting vehicles now rendered useless by a government who only wants to buy lightweight, open source software built on flexible data exchange standards – software that many of its legacy contracts aren’t able to provide.

Some will adapt. Some won’t. But, this opens a tremendous opportunity for smaller, more agile firms that have concepts like OSS, sound UX design, and web services built into their DNA. At Government 2.0, people like Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs showed the feds that massive, data-intensive websites can be built quickly, and even crowd sourced to citizens who feel engaged by this approach. His Apps for Democracy project exemplifies this (in fact, Vivek Kundra sponsored this project when he was DC’s CIO). I’m confident that we’ll see the new administration work with IT vendors that can deliver projects that follow this model, big or small.

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While my interactions with Jeffrey were relatively limited from there on out, he was unwavering in his support and advocacy.  No matter how long it had been since a sale or a marketing event, he was gracious, appreciative, and genuinely interested in our continuing slog through the E2 adoption quagmire. In light of his tragic passing yesterday, we wanted to express our condolences and gratitude to his personal and professional family at home and Atlassian HQ.

Jeffrey, you will be sorely missed. We would not be where we are today without you and the dedicated people at Atlassian.

Thank you.

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It can, and agencies are starting to show how. NASA’s Nebula enables project teams to develop and deploy software to meet their needs, and can take advantage of the scalability Cloud platforms can provide. The GSA’s planned “app store” would allow government users to quickly purchase applications and infrastructure, have them delivered through the Cloud, and pay via a credit card. Agencies that want to make their internal Cloud platforms successful should keep the notion of customer centricity in mind; to be successful they’ll need to keep their private Cloud simple, and accessible to end users. Looking at Cloud computing solely from the lens of an IT director or CFO won’t make Cloud computing anything more significant than the infrastructure technologies that preceded it. By bringing users a step closer to the technology that can help solve their problems, Cloud Computing can be as transformative in government as it has been in the private sector.

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Today’s Morning Edition has a segment on Obama’s plan to appoint a government-wide Technology Czar / CTO. The story also describes his administration’s plans to make government information more accessible by citizens.

Will the next administration treat technology differently then what we’ve seen in the past? Will the push for added transparency provide opportunities for BE? Take a look at the contrast so far – both the Obama Transition Team and the GSA have websites designed to help enable the smooth transition of a presidential administration. The difference between the says a lot about Obama’s staff and aides will see the role of technology in government:

GSA Transition Website vs. Change.gov

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We’ve launched a contest on Facebook to gather the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ on how businesses can become more environmentally conscious in their operations. Facebook users can contribute their ideas and pass them along to their friends and the larger Facebook community to vote on by Nov. 15. (And yes, the winner gets a green prize!) – Buzz Marketing For Technology

Check it out:

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Share combines social media capabilities like blogs and wikis with powerful search and an intuitive interface. Best of all, it has SharePoint Protocol Support. To Word or PowerPoint, Alfresco looks like a SharePoint repository, allowing Office suite programs to use Alfresco as if were speaking to SharePoint This has some interesting implications for organizations that want to move away from MOSS or WSS to something that’s open source, flexible, and relatively inexpensive (or free, if you can forgo support).
With Share, Aflresco steps into the Enterprise 2.0 suite category, a market niche that is getting a lot of attention lately. But, Alfresco’s differentiators here – that it has powerful ECM underpinnings, that prior revisions have been tested in the enterprise, and those users that are used to being able to use SharePoint document libraries are still able to do so – set it apart from its competitors.

For anyone out there that is heading down the E2.0 suite path, download their quick installer and give it a whirl. It’s worth a close look.

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At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston earlier this week, vendors and their platforms took center stage as the nascent market for social computing software continued to heat up. Technology is a key enabler – BearingPoint’s own firm-wide wiki is a good example – but keeping a close eye on the workforce issues tied up in Enterprise 2.0 is important. After all, the Gen Y crowd is part of the reason wikis, blogs, and social networking turned corporate in the first place.

How can companies engage Gen Y and take advantage of their collaborative approach to work?

Don’t Stop Doing That

Believe it or not, your firm’s under-30 employees already brought an enterprise-class set of collaboration and social networking tools with them the first time they walked through the door. Their massive social networks, seemingly effortless adaption to new technologies, and innovative, collaborative approaches to corporate life need to be encouraged and fostered. Properly structuring the role of the IT department is crucial here – asking Gen Ys to throw their choices about technology away, and return to the knowledge worker mainstays of email, documents, folders and taxonomies, will leave them alienated and disengaged.

Respecting a Gen Y’s ways of communicating and collaborating is a step forward-looking managers need to consider taking. During the conference’s Next Generation Workforce panel, this became clear; and as one panelist put it, “Companies realized that encouraging diversity of race and gender in their organizations was valuable long ago – they will come to realize respecting the different ways their staffs choose to communicate is equally valuable.” Failing to do so – through aggressively blocking social media sites, IM and discouraging blogging will leave Gen Ys feeling as if you aren’t respecting their value, and drive them to organizations they think will. This is something that’s important to consider, as corporations begin to depend on Gen Ys to take over the roles of retiring boomers.

Process This

Twitter, Facebook, and Googleish search isn’t all that the next generation of your workforce expected when they joined your company.  Gen Y engagement was central to what panelists saw as the success of future organizations – these future leaders typically join organizations believing they can change the world, and build the same “community” at work that propelled them through college. But alas – under-30 employee satisfaction is typically higher than any age group during their first month on the job, but falls through the floor after just a year, ending up lower than all other employees.

What happens? Employees realize that they’ve run face first into a wall of bureaucracy and carefully engineered process.  Their intangible assets, like their social network, their ability to be efficient processors of information and generators of insight, can’t be effectively tapped by their employers.

Companies have spent years and billions of dollars investing in IT systems that support and improve business processes. Processes are often woven into the hierarchy of the organization. But Gen Y employees value flat organizational structures, free form collaboration, and strong community as the most effective ways to further their goals, not carefully orchestrated process.

Giving Gen Ys the flexibility to innovate in at work, be creative, and bypass traditional processes is critical to making them successful in your organization (and keeping them from jumping ship). Process efficiency is not the end all and be all of your company – take advantage of the opportunity that Gen Ys bring to become more innovative and collaborative – use these intangible assets as a way to push your organization forward. An independent research firm’s recent analysis shows that companies that can successfully monetize intangible knowledge assets can drive profitability. Companies that don’t can hit a wall when further process efficiency is no longer achievable, and innovation from disengaged employees is not forthcoming.

What’s Next?

It’s possible that the entry of Gen Y into the workforce will mark the end of process-centric IT and business, and the start of Enterprise 2.0 – companies oriented around collaboration and community, and the technologies that allow for that to occur. Companies that pick up on the value that Gen Y brings to an organization will be more competitive, and innovative, in the future

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