GSA Hires Social Media Pro To Expand Citizen Engagement

By on March 13, 2012 at 5:48 PM

The General Services Administration confirmed today Justin Herman, a widely regarded specialist in interactive online and social media, will join GSA later this month as New Media Manager at GSA’s Center for Excellence in Digital Government. The move is also aimed at supporting GSA’s broader efforts to help federal agencies with their new media initiatives.

Herman will be responsible for “developing strategies for large-scale engagement initiatives, providing policy recommendations and implementation guidance, and coordinating web-based citizen engagement activities using collaborative tools,” according to a spokeswoman in GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. “He is very well respected and well known across government,” she said.

Herman’s duties will include taking on the job of promoting new media government-wide. He will also contribute to GSA’s HowTo.gov website, designed to help government workers deliver a better customer experience to citizens–as well as the department’s internal social media initiatives with Twitter, YouTube, and Challenge.gov.


Herman, 31, gained a reputation for developing open government practices as a consultant at the Phase One Consulting Group in Alexandria, Va. , serving among other assignments as an instructor for GSA’s Web University. Phase One includes a number of federal agencies among its clients, including:

  • Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Innovation and Open Government
  • United States Geological Survey Enterprise Web
  • Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Apps for the Environment’ competition
  • U.S. Forest Service data and engagement management

Herman told Breaking Gov that among his most significant accomplishment helping government agencies “was his efforts in supporting Apps for the Environment.”

“It’s not every day you get to help an agency solve a unique challenge that reaches fully across the strategic engagement spectrum,” he recalled in describing the Environmental Protection Agency’s Apps for the Environment competition. EPA’s first mobile app competition, “is one of the most popular challenges ever hosted on Challenge.gov if not one of the most effective, despite no cash prize offered as an incentive,” he said.

News of Herman’s move to GSA was first reported earlier today by the website, TechPresident.

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