When you think of the government, you probably don’t think of forward thinking but apparently someone in the GSA is as they’ve officially signed an agreement with Facebook. The agreement is relatively basic but it lays the ground work for government agencies to use Facebook for any purpose. For example a government organization could decide that they want to use Facebook as a recruiting tool and 90 of the steps to posting the jobs will have been accomplished.
The government is a huge bureaucracy and being able to use even the most basic system can require a ton of agreements and there end up being too many hurdles for getting anything accomplished. The new agreement also includes AddThis, Blist, MySpace, and Slideshare as companies who’s products can be used in conjunction with new government projects.
Martha Dorris, acting associate administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Communications stated that “USA.gov is breaking new ground by migrating to new media sites to provide a presence and to open up a dialog with the public. We know that many other agencies want to do the same, and having these agreements is an important first step.”
Under the new administration and the leadership of a new CTO and CIO, government agencies will get access to many of the publicly available technologies that would have previously been impossible to include within projects. I know it’s silly but advertising a government job on Facebook would have taken so many hurdles previously that in the end it would not be worth it.
Thanks to this new agreement, government agencies will have access to a number of new media tools including Facebook.
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With Barack Obama already a huge player in socialmedia-as-political-strategy game, this move is not a huge step for this tech-savvy administration. Still, let’s hope this enables the cream to rise to the top (and not just those with the largest viral co-efficient)
I’m curious though: what bureaucratic hurdles does this agreement leap over? Writing up and signing contracts between private companies and public agencies?
Comment by Jonathan Hung — April 28, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
At AddThis, we're really excited about being able to work even more closely with federal agencies, to help make their content more shareable.
Comment by Justin Thorp — April 29, 2009 @ 6:53 am
Too bad this "tech-savvy administration" apparently doesn't have anyone who knows how to use PhotoShop. That might have saved scaring the bejeezus out of New York City.
Comment by MartzMimic — April 30, 2009 @ 6:32 pm