- Share as much as we can to help industry help us deliver CG-LIMS
- Solicit input on acquisition strategy
- Provide a public forum for Questions and Answers
We’ll do all three of those things in a fair, transparent, and informal way. Once I get the thumbs up from project counsel, we’ll be specifically inviting industry to participate.
Until then, I welcome everyone on the team to get familiar with the wiki. It uses the same MediaWiki software as Intellipedia, but the interface is a little different. Some of the functions that are on the top of the page in Intellipedia are in a left side nav bar in GSA’s implementation.
I expect the bulk of the input and dialogue to happen on the Q&A page and the Whiteboard.
After the next PM IPT, I’ll migrate some or all of our strategy brainstorming page from Intellipedia to share and continue to edit publicly.
We’re using a platform that GSA is beta testing to support anyone with a .gov or .mil e-mail address who needs to use a blog, wiki, or bulletin board tool communicate with citizens to solve a problem. You can learn more about the initiative at http://citizen.apps.gov. A description of why government would use a wiki and a list of agencies who do is at http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/technology/wikis.shtml.
We have some top cover from GSA since we’re using their service. If we want to tie it to something that’s important to our Commandant, we could point to it as a timely way for us to “Strengthen our Partnerships” with industry. See para 3. C of his guiding principles: http://www.uscg.mil/announcements/alcoast/271-10_alcoast.txt
This forum will be one source of input for the group who will be chartered to re-examine the CG-LIMS strategy over the next three months. For anyone willing, I welcome input on the name of that group. Every study team needs a name. To get the gears turning, here’s what I have so far:
- LIMS Early Shipping Strategy (LESS) working group. Emphasizes notion that less is more.
- Full Acquisition Strategy Team (FAST)
- FISTy Acquisition Strategy Team (FAST). Emphasizes my commitment to find a way to deliver CG-LIMS that adheres to the Fast Inexpensive Simple Tiny (FIST) principles I’ve shared with the group over the past many months.
Please head over to the CGLIMS wiki, get a Log in, get familiar with how we’re going to use it as a collaboration space, and watch pages that can help you do your job. Since it’s a wiki, feel free to add / change / delete as you see fit to accomplish the mission.
For anyone who has used a forum like this for pre-RFP collaboration with industry, I welcome any input can provide or lessons learned to make this more useful for our team.
Thanks all!
Love the structure + innovation. I’d urge you to talk to Chris Hamm and Mary Davie of GSA for some best practices from their use of wiki on BetterBuy (if you haven’t already).
One feedback I’ve gotten from wikis and GovLoop generally to is:
-People want clear definition of what to do. So I’d make it really clear what you want people to do on the site and engage. Often it is not that clear
(For example, our GL live chat people wanted more definition – what is the exact structure, topics, how to engage, etc)
Thanks Steve —
Done! Same day I wrote this post I added a comment to Mary’s “Acquisition 2.0” group here on GovLoop (https://www.govloop.com/group/acquisition20) asking for those lessons.
I’ll reach out directly to Mary if I don’t hear from anyone else in the community.
I realize the wiki is new for some, both as a way of thinking about collaborating and as a way of using specific tools. I’m beginning to atleast see some interest — 896 hits on the front page, 29 people so far have signed up to edit / watch (in addition to people in our agency.)
Best,
Dan
Mary Davie pointed me to the Better Buy blog at http://betterbuyproject.org/blog as the best capture of lessons learned from GSA’s experiment using a wiki during the RFI/RFP process earlier this year.
It’s worth a read for anyone interested in doing something similar.
Three posts in particular were relevant for me:
Chris Hamm’s:
http://betterbuyproject.org/blog/2010/04/commentary-from-the-wiki-phase-of-the-betterbuy-pilot.html
Kevin Merritt’s:
http://betterbuyproject.org/blog/2010/05/betterbuy—one-step-toward-a-more-transparent-procurement-process.html
Anonymous Industry Perspective’s:
http://betterbuyproject.org/blog/2010/04/on-rfps-that-balance-transparency-with-privacy-obligations.html
I’m also pleased to report that last night we received our first contribution from outside the project office. After 2095 page views and 57 registered users someone was brave enough to break the ice. Yeah!