In a previous blog, I mentioned that Intellipedia is a success story in the world of Government wikis. After 9/11, the Director of National Intelligence recognized that in order to deal with terrorist threats to the United States, the US’s 16 intelligence agencies need to share as much intelligence information as possible, rather than play things close to the chest – their traditional modus operandi. Intellipedia was established to encourage intelligence specialists from across all intelligence agencies to share insights on terrorism. By all accounts, it has been successful in opening inter-agency communication.

A problem with Intellipedia is that it is only open to players with US security clearances, so that it is out of the reach of most government employees. I have received a number of inquiries asking whether I was aware of other government-oriented social networking experiments that are accessible by ordinary citizens. Following are three examples of such experiments shared with me by readers:

http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage
This site is hosted by GSA Intergovernmental Solutions. It focuses on a number of communities of interests that are concerned with fairly narrow issues. It provides listings of resources that address the concerns of the members of these communities of interest. (This information was shared by Brian Green.)

http://webstandards.govt.nz/index.php/Home_page
This site is hosted by the New Zealand government. Its goal is to solicit inputs from the outside world to help strengthen the design of web pages produced by New Zealand government agencies. (This information was shared by David Zetland.)

www.futuremelbourne.com.au
This wiki site is hosted by the City of Melbourne (Australia) and its Future Melbourne Reference Group. Its objective is to stimulate insights into future directions that the City of Melbourne can pursue. The site reports that hot topics currently discussed address transportation improvements, tax reform, and improved water quality. (This information was shared by Dale, of the Future Melbourne team.)

Check out these sites. Clearly, government’s involvement in social networking is in a nascent stage. My sense is that as governments move into social networking, their early efforts will focus on information sharing. That is, they will likely be listings of information resources. Their first steps at establishing wikis will be more like chat rooms than full-fledged wikis. However, it is probable than within the next five years, governments at the national, state/provincial, and local levels will begin developing social networking sites that garner substantive inputs from the public that, ultimately, have an impact on how government conducts its business.

If you have information on additional government sites, please share it with us.