Spacebook: government as a process

I often say that the intranet is a process, not a project. I did a slide 4 years ago that I used then quite often in workshops and still use today: "One slide worth a thousand words". I came across a printout of this slide a couple of months ago in the office of one of my clients where he had posted it on his wall.  He told me he referred to it often when "educating" his manager about intranets being more than technology and well-executed project plans.

 Government as a process was one of the tracks at Gov 2.0 Expo last week, and here is a link (YouTube) to a 5-minute presentation made by Emma Antunes, webmaster for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, last week at Gov 2.0 Expo.

I met Emma several years ago at a conference in California where I was presenting the results from the very first Global Intranet Strategies survey, which takes us back to the fall of 2006. It's exciting to remember back 3 years and see how fast intranets have evolved since then.
I still remember giving a workshop at that conference and showing participants some numbers from the 2006 survey about 2.0 experimentation and some of the people saying "not in my intranet!". There was quite a strong resistance from some of the intranet managers. I remember one of them being very worried about "losing control of his intranet". Note the "his".  Those were the days where some intranet managers still thought the intranets "belonged" to them! I have not come across that thinking in some time now, thank goodness.

If you sometimes get discouraged about your intranet evolving at a snail's pace, think back a few years and reflect on the progress you've made. Remember that it's a process you're dealing with - a gradual change - and not a self-contained project.

Comments

[Samuel Driessen]

Jane, thanks for pointing me to that slide again. It is a great slide! And thanks for the pointer to the talk. Very insightful and helpful.