USA.gov Gets Social
April 30, 2009
What a stunning announcement. Navigate to AllFacebook.com here and read the story “Facebook Signs Agreement with GSA”. At first glance, I thought “GSA” meant the Google Search Appliance. Ho hum. I have heard that the GOOG will be interested in the contract now held by other vendors when recompete time rolls around. Old news. But when I scanned the AllFacebook.com item I learned something quite remarkable. The US government has inked a deal with Facebook.com. The party to the deal is the US General Services Administration, one of the US government’s purchasing and administrative arms. These are big arms, too. Think World Wrestling Federation. The site with the Facebook.com deal is http://www.usa.gov (formerly FirstGov.gov).
Facebook.com is one of the social networking sites that boasts a pretty good retention rate. I have heard that about 65 to 70 percent of sign ups use the service. The Twitter critter retains only about 40 percent. Check my figures because I am operating on conference baloney today. Your taste in stats sandwiches may vary.
The story, written by Nick O’Neill, features a logo of USA.gov that say, “Government made easy.” Okay, how does Facebook.com fit in. The story quotes administration officials who said:
“USA.gov is breaking new ground by migrating to new media sites to provide a presence and to open up a dialog with the public. We know that many other agencies want to do the same, and having these agreements is an important first step.” Under the new administration and the leadership of a new CTO and CIO, government agencies will get access to many of the publicly available technologies that would have previously been impossible to include within projects. I know it’s silly but advertising a government job on Facebook would have taken so many hurdles previously that in the end it would not be worth it.
I don’t want to speculate on how the USA.gov site will leverage the Facebook.com service. I must go on record as honking, “The GSA is showing some teen spirit.” I do have some questions flapping around. I will capture one before it wings away: “What security provisions will be put in place to deal with the issues related to personal or sensitive information?”
Facebook.com is reasonably secure unless a careless person becomes careless with friend lists, user name and password, and what’s posted. A happy honk to Facebook.com for the deal. The security folks at the GSA will be popular in the near future I wager.
Stephen Arnold, April 30, 2009
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