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IBM Wants Bureaucrats to Socialize More

by Dave Michels

The IBM Federal Community Cloud just got a little bit more socialable. Last week, IBM introduced a new set of social collaboration tools for Obama’s cloud. President Obama has been pushing a “Cloud First” initiative for Government IT projects. The decree came last November in an effort to consolidate or reduce some 2,100 data centers. The US Government, probably the biggest IT budget in all the land, wants to reduce its $80 billion IT spend- well at least its spend on equipment.

IBM is on it. Its new social software brings IBM’s hosted social and collaboration tools to the public sector. Including:

  • Blogs that allow staff to gather and prioritize community ideas, present their own ideas and learn from others.
  • Communities that allow people to exchange and share information with others through a web browser or IM.
  • File sharing and micro-blogs to facilitate collaboration with dynamic groups of co-workers, partners and customers.
  • Profiles to allow people to find and work with others who share common interests and expertise as well as expand their social networks.

At this time, the tools allow members of different parties to communicate, but the feature remains untested.

Sandy Carter, IBM’s vice president of Social Business and Collaboration Solutions, introduced the IBM SmartCloud for Social Collaboration for Government at the FedTalks event on Oct. 11. I have an upcoming interview with Charlie Hill, CTO at IBM, and I will ask more about this. IBM appears to positioning itself as the go to vendor for enterprise social collaboration.

See: IBM Announces FISMA Compliant Social Cloud – Will It Make Govt. Efficient?

See: US Government Adopts Cloud First Policy.