Meet the evangelists of interacting in gov 2.0 style

In the quest to find new ways for industry and government to interact in a positive, productive manner, two leaders at the General Services Administration have created a platform called, appropriately enough, Interact.

GSA’s Luis Medina, digital marketing manager, and Charley Schollaert, digital outreach manager, created the online community to give government and industry officials a place to share information and ideas in a 2.0 kind of way. They launched the site in 2010, and it now has 6,500 registered participants.

Interact offers a wealth of resources, including information on particular contracts, a calendar of upcoming GSA events and the chance to join groups dedicated to specific topics, such as small-business contracting, green acquisition and multiple-award schedules.

Medina and Schollaert met recently with Matthew Weigelt, senior writer at Federal Computer Week, to talk about why they created Interact and how it’s already reshaping the government/industry dialogue.

FCW: Why did you create Interact?

Schollaert:

And there are other commercial applications, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Some GSA offices have a presence on those platforms. Those applications do provide a lot of what Interact provides. But Interact is a government-owned, -designed and -managed platform, so basically there’s much more trust. It conforms to all the security and privacy terms.

For those interested in acquisition topics, they can feel much more assured that the environment is protecting their identity [and] their information when they engage in these types of discussions.

FCW: What does Interact offer?

Medina:

We wanted it to be scalable, open and, where it made business sense, make use of and cross-promote YouTube and others, like Apps.gov. We provide native and cross-promoted options.

Schollaert: You can easily build in links to external social media within the platform.

FCW: What was the genesis of the site?

Schollaert:

Medina: ...bureaucratese.

Schollaert: That’s the overriding philosophy.

FCW: How do you make sure the site stays up-to-date?

Schollaert:

Some communities went to Facebook or somewhere, where you could tell they were thinking, “Let’s just create something.” Then everything got stale. Nobody kept up the site.

We want to make sure all the groups, before they’ve started, are going to stay active and engaged.

Medina: You need dedicated resources. You can’t treat this as “another duty as assigned” or something you’ll get to whenever you get to it. It should be part of an integrated customer engagement strategy.

Interact is also about developing a living and breathing knowledge center that’s fed by our GSA experts.

FCW: What obstacles did you face?

Medina:

Schollaert: I love that stuff. I eat, sleep and breathe privacy.

Medina: And I happen to love security.

FCW: How have people responded to Interact?

Schollaert:

Even if they created an honest personal account — say, on Yahoo — and they posted something on Interact, they were concerned their legal department could track down their IP address and trace the comment back to them.

So there are those concerns of people exposing themselves in an environment like this with their name and connecting themselves to a comment. Some of that is irrational.

Medina: In the realm of risk aversion though, we’re looking to spur conversations. How do you make federal acquisition sexy in a way in which it will be — I call it POP — the point of passion? How do we get points of passion out there?

FCW: How have you attempted to address that aversion to risk?

Medina:

And that is, of course, always a challenge that goes beyond technology. It’s a culture change. The concern is: Am I going to get in trouble? Is my employee going to say something that would then come back to haunt me and land me on the Washington Post home page?

FCW: Do you sense a change in those attitudes?

Medina:

Recognizing that it’s hard then allowing ourselves the flexibility to say, “Hey, we can discuss this in an open way that might not always be 100 percent accurate or would be subject to interpretation.” But that’s what this is all about. It’s about us trying to flesh out some areas that need further clarity.

FCW: Which audience is the most active on the site?

Medina:

FCW: What advice do you have for other agencies?

Medina:

It wasn’t easy. It’s something that wouldn’t have come to pass if we would have waited for someone [else] to build it.