TwinTechs

Working with several Government organizations over the last few years I’ve noticed that Web 2.0 has not gone unnoticed by Government IT professionals, but due to certain restrictions such as section 508 compliance, browser adoption and standardization, etc, Web 2.0 was not a boom within Federal IT initiatives.  This does not mean that some Agencies are not embracing technologies such as Adobe Flex and Ajax (to be fair some Federal orgs are doing some very high tech RIA work), but the adoption rate was lower (or perhaps slower) than forecasted IMO.

This is a shame in some aspects.  Web 2.0 was not all about RIAs.  It also included social networks and applications delivered as a service (SaaS).  Social networks would serve not only to disseminate information and personalize Government to the private sector, but could also be leveraged to connect IT professionals involved in the eGov initiative as it is often the case in Government that many solutions are moving in parallel to one another across Agencies, as opposed to building off one another.  This can even occur when Agencies are working on cooperative initiatives.  Employing the SaaS model could help lower spending within administration and reduce R&D costs while freeing up budgets and internal IT resources to be applied to more pressing issues such as security programs and high tech border initiatives (just an example).

That being said, Web 3.0 could be an impressive paradigm for Government and inter-Agency cooperation.  Like Web 2.0, Web 3.0 means many things to many people.  One thought is a nebulous network of data available for dissemination both across secure channels and those open to the public domain.  Data can be pulled from this network and used in various technologies from desktop applications to mobile widgets.  Imagine if local law enforcement was able to instantly query the Social Security Agency’s database from their in-car HUD while (and here comes the magic) using data from Department of Homeland Security and FBI through secure channels within the same data query to cross check all available data for a suspicious individual (i.e. Service Orchestration).  This data could then be analyzed and massaged in real time specifically for the enforcement officer’s current use case.  This is all possible through the ‘webulous’ cloud of semantic data that will make up one aspect of Web 3.0.

The possibilities for inter-Agency communication via secure and open channels are unlimited.  Agencies will be able to remove previous restrictions by allowing real time querying of sensitive and non-privileged data through secure and public channels without a separate work effort for each organization and project needing data.  A semantic query language would allow the end user access to only the data they are allowed to see AND they will be able to assemble any data across that Agency while mashing it into data queried from other Federal, state and local organizations.

The most exciting news?  This technology is available today.  Contact me at Twin Technologies today to see what efficiencies your organization can gain from employing these methodologies.