Oxymoron = Social Networking + The Federal Government

After reading a couple of the articles about Informal Networks and Social Networks, I had to smile and say that I have only seen these techniques successful in Corporate America. Maybe I am wrong but from the agencies I have dealt with and speaking with other people that work within other Federal Government Agencies, the biggest complaints that I have heard are that the agencies work in a stove pipes (meaning they don't collaborate well or at all).

As a contractor for Defense and Government Contractor, I was able to see the benefits of Social Networking. Our company utilized the Customized Response Method described in the Harvard Business Review "A Practical Guide to Social Networks" by Cross, Liedtka, and Weiss [1] in our Research and Development Programs. The company was able to merge technologies and expertise by keeping everyone inside of the company abreast of what projects were being implemented and the company encouraged collaboration about suggestions on how to make the project/technology better. This was done through forms of internal newsletters as well as there were brown bag seminars that each project would give an information session about what their product/technology could provide.

Working as a Contractor for the Federal Government for the last nine years I have seen how Social Networking has failed. Some of the failure was due to Managements' lack of understanding of what the real goal of creating a Social Network within their departments as well as lack of knowledge at the management/leadership level about the teams that they are leading and also influences of the contractors working for the various programs within the government.

1. How do you overcome the hurdles that the government is faced with to build a successful Social Network?

Looking at the governments current make up, most of your upper management are usually older men who usually have served in the military and have been promoted to their current position usually by years of service in the government not necessarily their expertise in that field. This poses a problem because they tend to hire a lot of their friends or comrades who also don't necessarily have the experience or knowledge base needed to do the job well. So they end up hiring contractors, which sometimes done as a favor, to come in and tell them what they need to do to make their program successful. This is the blind leading the blind.

There is also the case that multiple contractors are hired to do the same type of work for different programs under the same office. The contractors tend to convince the government official representing their program that collaboration is not a good idea for fears that the quality of work that is being provided does not reflect what the contractor is charging the government. One thing that I noticed while contracting for the government was that there was no uniformity or baseline on how programs were implemented within the government. My question is how can this be fixed when most of the issues of why collaboration wont work lies with leadership.

If you look at how the government works most of the leadership that is in place is through a Who knows Who and not How Much you know.

Can this be Fixed?