Hi Govloop Community,
I am a contractor for the FAA and wanted to find some information on other government agencies using social bookmarking tools. My internet search did not turn up much. Does anyone know of an agency that has implemented this tool? If so, can you tell me anything about it?
Much obliged!
Shannon Rock
Hi Shannon,
As a resource to our division’s constituents, we provide a helpful links page that directs users to other websites. The current page is simply a list of links in alphabetical order.
We’ve had some discussion about improving that resource and we are considering using a Delicious page. I think that would be useful for providing additional information about the links the users might visit. The issue we’ve run into is concerns about the branding of the Delicious page- Delicious only provides limited options for branding the page, so some people are concerned that users won’t recognize the information as coming from our office.
A couple of relevant organizations that are using Delicious are:
1. The United States Joint Forces Command Public Affairs’ page, http://delicious.com/USJFCOMPAO.
2. The Social Media Subcouncil’s page, http://delicious.com/social_media_subcouncil.
Hi Scott,
I appreciate the feedback. I have been looking into the social bookmarking tool in Lotus Connections and the free plugin with Confluence, the enterprise Wiki. The bind we’re in though is there are costs associated with the software (obviously) or there’s a security concern if it’s open source. I was just wondering how other agencies had handled these issues.
I appreciate you getting back to me! I will look into the other two organizations.
Have a good weekend,
Shannon
Hello Shannon,
I know DFAIT (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada) uses Lotus Connections internally. I personally don’t know anything about it but perhaps someone over there would be willing to share their experience and “lessons learned”. Here’s a list of their online presence in case you can’t reach them through their common channels (you’ll have to scroll to about 1/4th of the page).
Related note: DFAIT also manages the Connect2Canada website (“Canada’s Network in the United States”).
Another related note: Our organization might implement the Social Bookmarking Plugin for Confluence. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be anytime soon since we’re in the process of upgrading our Confluence installation from 2.10.2 to 3.0.1 but once we get there I’ll let you know what happens — if it’s still relevant to you, that is.
Thanks Stephane, I appreciate the information. And would welcome more if you get the Confluence social bookmarking plugin up and running. 🙂