The Social Intranet: Insights on Managing and Sharing Knowledge Internally

While much of the federal government lags behind, some agencies are pioneers in the internal use of social media tools.  What lessons and effective practices do they have to offer other agencies?

New Tools for Collaboration: The Experience of the U.S. Intelligence Community

The purpose of this report is to learn lessons by looking at the use of internal collaborative tools across the Intelligence Community. The initial rubric was tools, but the real focus is collaboration, for while the tools can enable, what ultimately matters are policies and practices interacting with organizational culture. It looks for good practices to emulate. The ultimate question is how and how much could, and should, collaborative tools foster integration across the Community.

The Persistence of Innovation in Government: A Guide for Innovative Public Servants

With this report, Professor Borins continues two decades of research analyzing winners of and applicants to the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government Awards. This report presents a comparison of the applications received by the program in the 1990s (1990 to 1994) with those received in 2010.

Collaboration Across Boundaries: Insights and Tips from Federal Senior Executives

This report, which continues the IBM Center’s long interest in collaboration, provides valuable insights into how federal senior executives view collaboration. Based on survey responses from over 300 members of the federal Senior Executive Service, O’Leary and Gerard found—to their mild surprise—that nearly all those surveyed report using collaboration as a management strategy.

Designing Collaborative Networks: Lessons Learned from Public Safety

This report offers practical advice to public managers and political leaders who are addressing complex public challenges through multi-organizational networks.  The use of collaborative networks of organizations has matured in the past decade.  However, the developers of collaborative networks face political, organizational, and technological challenges in a world accustomed to the traditional, hierarchical approach to problem-solving and accountability.

Using Wikis in Government: A Guide for Public Managers

Public leaders face the challenge of finding ways to bridge silos in their organizations. In this report, Dr. Mergel examines one tool that can help them do this—Wikis. Many of us are familiar with Wikipedia, which relies on thousands of active contributors who share their knowledge freely on a dazzling breadth of topics, with an accuracy rate rivaling that of traditional encyclopedias.

Environmental Collaboration: Lessons Learned About Cross-Boundary Collaborations

While they find that many of the elements necessary for effective collaborative ventures are critical — such as a clear purpose, dedicated staff, and the willingness to be flexible — they conclude that a bilateral collaborative venture is often more effective when it has a formal legal structures in place that enhance its legitimacy in the eyes of various stakeholders. Informal collaborations are often useful precursors to more formal efforts. These informal

The Promise of Collaborative Voluntary Partnerships: Lessons from the Federal Aviation Administration

Based on his extensive research on the three programs, Mills concludes that although the programs can be improved, they are making a worthwhile contribution to airline safety. Mills argues that collaborative voluntary partnerships should be viewed as a complement to agency regulatory activities rather than as a replacement for the traditional command-and-control approach to regulation.

Strategies for Supporting Frontline Collaboration: Lessons from Stewardship Contracting

Dr. Moseley shows how via a series of case studies examining the experiences of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service in implementing stewardship contracts.  She found that leaders in these agencies were able to change the behaviors of their hierarchically-driven culture by using four strategies to foster collaboration:  (1) creating time and space for collaboration, (2) changing agency rules to encourage collaboration, (3) providing staff incentives to collaborate, and (4) building the capacity to collaborate in both the agency as well as among stakeholders.

Designing and Managing Cross-Sector Collaboration: A Case Study in Reducing Traffic Congestion

In August 2007, five urban regions were selected by the USDOTSDOT to participate in a path-breaking federal transportation initiative. Known as the Urban Partnership program, the initiative funded a total of $1.1 billion in grants for integrated transit, highway pricing, technology, and telecommuting strategies aimed at reducing traffic congestion in major urban areas. The Minneapolis - St. Paul region was selected to receive one of the five grants.

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