At DoD’s National Defense University (NDU) I have started a research program called Social Software for Security, or S3. These technologies have many potential benefits to our military forces and associated civilians, including: (1) internal government information sharing, (2) creating and nurturing relationships with non-governmental entities, and (3) empowering people in post-disaster or post-war situations.
The general plan for S3 is four stages. One, inventory available technologies and their positive and negative attributes. Two, catalog case studies of applications to security affairs. Three, describe unique risks associated with social technologies. Four, recommend courses of action.
If this interests you, and particularly if you are using such technology within the government, please get in touch! I would like to form a social network for us, around this topic.
I’m very interested in your research in this area. I work for DoD in the Knowledge Management arena. We’re currently deploying collaboration tools to share information within the organization, and also to interact with our non-government partners.
We’ve been struggling with the follwoing:
How do we encourage the use of collaboration tools when we have long been taught to be skeptical of these technologies, especially by the Info Assurance folks?
How do we balance the need for secure collaboration within the organization, while yet having open collaboration with our partners?
How do we effectively use technology to work with NGAs in providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance? And how do we foster trust, so that NGAs feel comfortable using technologies that we “own”?
I’ve been following your Government 2.0 series on Mashable. While we’re looking for an alternative to the term “Government 2.0”, why don’t we also come up with a less-scary term for collaboration than “social networking”. Those two words are the kiss of death to any collaboration efforts within DoD. I’m curious to see whether the use of the word “Social” in S3 has a similar effect.