Disgover.com, a relatively new social networking and collaboration tool, is throwing out that boring and time-consuming 20th century office meeting.
Gone is the urgency for face-to-face meetings, long distance conference calls, high-priority e-mail messages or communal gatherings at a high-end hotel in a posh locale, travel costs that are a drain on government budgets in these austere times.
It’s bringing together in a secure cooperative environment and a mix of people in and out of government.” – Larry Schlang
In its place is a new way to talk, brainstorm and collaborate online to create the best products for any agency.
“It’s really like having your own office, and people coming together as they need to,” said Larry Schlang, Disgover.com founder and CEO. “It’s bringing together in a secure cooperative environment and a mix of people in and out of government.”
Disgover.com’s secure website is designed for an online, interactive community to quickly connect a few individuals or a large group anywhere in the country within an agency, across agencies and with private vendors, too.
It uses Web 2.0, professional networking tools and the cloud computing technology that help members reach securely across the internet to meet colleagues and experts for a conversation that produces results.
Anyone authorized to use an agency’s Disgover.com site can put out a request on a blog or a message for ideas to solve a problem, and anyone on the network can respond. They can talk about the idea and vote on it, too. It’s a new kind of conference room, that’s for sure.
It’s been tested by various federal sites and is being used in various ways by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense Department agencies, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, DISA and Tri-Care, civilian agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and state and local agencies, including counties in Virginia and Maryland. So far, there are 15,000 government users on Disgover.com government sites, but many more are expected as more agencies incorporate the tool into their work space.
The security is tight. The site is embedded with protection that includes end-to-end encryption, data encryption, user validation and lots of tools around user and group priority. However, it warns users never to disclose or discuss classified or proprietary government information, data or policies on Disgover.com sites.
“We have never had a break-in,” said Schlang.
Standing Up Medical Records for Vets
Eighteen months ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department tapped into Disgover.com to plan a unified Electronic Health Record (iEHR) system where DOD medical records would be transitioned to the VA when a soldier is discharged and moved into the VA’s health system.
Disgover.com stood up a collaborative platform expected to be operational in the next year that will unify the DOD and VA”s separate systems.
“It’s hard for the government to do it quickly,” Schlang said. “And in government, it’s hard to stand up a collaboration site on your own network.”
Disgover.com created a set of 13 sub-groups to use the system, including the VA, the Pentagon, Army, Navy and Air Force as well as commercial organizations and contractors.
The sub-groups were able to post and manage 1,000 files. Disgover.com provided software support and helped manage the sub-groups. It included a broad range of social media tools, including blogs, Wikis, crowdsourcing and file sharing.
The VA has been rolling out Disgover.com in many other collaborative ways, too, including uniting members of the Office of Information Technology. It’s being used by more than 8,000 VA employees to talk to each other, brainstorm and bring an idea from the drawing board to the user.
It provides an easy collaborative work space, according to Dr. Paul Tibbits, the VA’s deputy CIO for Architecture, Strategy and Design Architecture. It makes it possible for deputy CIOs to write and distribute their blogs, a mandate for top IT executives from VA CIO Roger Baker.
And it gives Tibbits the tools to launch a blog at any time during a meeting to report in real time what’s going on and solicit immediate feedback.
VA personnel can also put reference materials online and look at other people’s work product. It makes work at the VA simpler and the success greater, Tibbits said.
“It’s very easy to set up this collaborative tool and invite people to use it,” Tibbits said. “Without it, you wind up in an email jungle.”
Disgover.com products and services are available on NASA’s SEWP IV (Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement) contracting vehicle and will soon be listed on the General Services Administration’s product schedule.