Will I See You at the Gov 2.0 Expo?

Download our Gov 2.0 Capabilities Brochure

I’ll be at the Gov 2.0 Expo this week and I’m hoping that I’ll see you either there, or at one of the happy hours/tweet-ups that will surely be occurring.  If you’re the least bit interested in social media or the future of our government, I’d highly encourage you to register and come down for at least a few sessions. There are more than a hundred GREAT sessions taking place, but if you can’t get to all of them, consider participating in one of these ten hidden gems too.

If you are able to make it down to the Convention Center, make sure you stop by the Booz Allen booth on the Expo floor and say hello to me or to one of the many members of our team who will be attending the Expo as well.  Booz Allen is proud to be one of the Platinum Sponsors and I’m one of the members of the Program Committee – needless to say, everyone here at my firm believes very strongly in the principles of Gov 2.0 and has for some time now.  From our work with the Military Health System to U.S. Pacific Command’s All-Partners Access Network (APAN), Booz Allen has long advocated the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration with all of our clients.

Grant McLaughlin and Walton Smith, two of our Principals, recently gave a short preview of what they will be discussing at the “Innovations in Gov 2.0” session on Wednesday.

Here are some of the projects we’ll be highlighting over the next three days:

Military Health System (MHS)

To strengthen relationships with its nine million beneficiaries and numerous stakeholder communities, the Department of Defense Military Health System (MHS) partnered with Booz Allen Hamilton to leverage social media (MHS Social Media Hub) to help MHS address service members’ healthcare concerns, collaborate with stakeholders, support combat operations, and enhance its capacity to reach and influence diverse audiences.  If you’re interested in learning more about our work with MHS, find Don Jones at the Expo or read more here.

U.S. Pacific Command All-Partners Access Network (APAN)

Booz Allen is working with PACOM to create APAN, a secure platform to foster collaboration and communication between government agencies, international partners, and non-government agencies.  The U.S. Pacifc Command (PACOM) operates in the Pacifc Rim with numerous actors (military, civilian, government, non-government) who must all cooperate in crisis and disaster response situations, joint exercises with foreign militaries and other events where open information flow is essential to success.  APAN has file sharing applications, wikis, blogs and calendaring tools to coordinate schedules. The system also supports mobile applications and integrates public social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as sophisticated geospatial systems, such as Open Street, to create detailed maps of damaged areas. The system is designed to handle extremely secure communications, while also interacting with  the general public and disaster relief workers  and organizations. If you’re interested in learning more about APAN, talk to Walton Smith at the Expo or learn more on Bill Ives’ blog here.

U.S. Navy Chief of Information Office (CHINFO)

Booz Allen partnered with the Navy’s Emerging Media Directorate within CHINFO to develop a strategy for providing guidance to all Navy Commands on how to successfully integrate social media into their Public Affairs activities. We worked closely with the Navy Office of the Chief of Information (CHINFO) Emerging Media & Integration Team to develop a plan to:

• Integrate and optimize CHINFO’s use of social media as engagement tactic
• Achieve greater understanding of the use of social media among 300+ Public Affairs Officers
• Foster and align use of social media by commands and commanders (400,000+ Active Duty & Reserve personnel)
• Achieve recognition for the Navy as a military/government leader in social media

To learn more about what the Navy’s doing with social media, check out the Navy’s social media directory and SlideShare account. Or find Commander Scott McIlnay or Tracy Johnson at the Expo.

DHS First Responders Communities of Practice

Booz Allen is working with the DHS Science & Technology Directorate to build and manage the DHS First Responders Community of Practice – a platform that serves the nation’s 2.8 million emergency first responders (e.g., fire, emergency management, law enforcement). Launched in December 2009, the First Responders CoP is designed to decrease duplicate efforts across the various first responder communities and disciplines.  Users can connect with other first responders, create and join communities, create, share and edit documents, blogs, and discussions.  In addition, users can add “expertise tags” which allow them to easily find someone with specific expertise and view and connect to other users with similar expertise.

To learn more, make sure you attend Jose Vazquez’s presentation on Tuesday evening, or find Alexis Fabbri or Walton Smith on the Expo floor.

Meet our People

Stop by booth 309 (I think) to talk with our experts on privacy, cybersecurity, social media, Enterprise 2.0, identity and more.  Make sure that you follow all of our Booz Allen attendees on Twitter too!

Want to Work for Booz Allen?

Make sure you stop by our booth and find Annie Chae (@anniechae), one of our lead recruiters and one of my favorite people.  She’ll be able to answer all your questions about working for us.

Even if you have no interest in the work that we’re doing, make sure check out the full program schedule and try to come by and get to know some of the people who are driving this transformation in the way our government operates.