Wikis come to the federal government. Excerpts from an article by Stephen Barr from the Washington Post
When President Bush challenged Congress to cut the number and cost of earmarks by half, the administration’s budget chiefs turned to their wiki.
That’s right, the Office of Management and Budget, where caution and precision rule, has embraced Wikipedia as a model, hosting an online place where federal officials can swap information and ideas outside traditional boundaries.
…With the wiki, federal agencies compiled a database of 13,496 earmarks in 10 weeks. In the old days, it would have taken six months to get the information to the OMB.
The budget wiki is not as freewheeling as Wikipedia, the sometimes-controversial online encyclopedia. It is the government, after all. For security, federal officials have to ask permission to join; it is not open to the public or Congress.
Still, the earmarks project underscores how technology is helping change the way the government works. The OMB and other agencies used the Web’s interconnectivity to more efficiently gather information and draw conclusions.
The wiki also created, in essence, a powerful insiders club, where members are encouraged to engage in collaboration before they arrive at business decisions.
The wiki was launched in December 2006 with the prosaic title “Budget Community.” By September 2007, the wiki had proved so popular that it was renamed “The MAX Federal Community” to incorporate other government-wide issues and agencies. The MAX in the name refers to the OMB’s technology system that agencies use to produce the president’s budget.
Tags: OMB
March 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
[…] once, the White House House is striking back against Congress in a way that serves our public interest. Equally surprising, they (or, more accurately the Office of Management and Budget) is using a […]