1. Stars and Stripes
A means to a self-driven, leaner government
Slides in black intended for core project team members. Slides in white intended for executive staff and senior
management.
Signature features and wireframes have been withheld until candidacy advancement is confirmed. I would be
more than happy to provide this upon request. This slide deck is built following a minimal and viable approach,
intended to express vision, understanding of stakeholder context and needs, and how the product provides a
solution.
2. Vision
An intuitive online social collaboration tool that reduces redundancies and
fosters employee-led innovation while preserving feasible controls and
administration. Incentives and balances exist in a way that neither
undermines the chain of command, nor turns users away because of
complexity. 3 parts Quora, 2 parts Wikipedia, 1 part Twitter and 1 part
LinkedIn, all while retaining the spirit of a dot gov.
This will not be another COTS or abandoned document repository because
it will be well designed and contain features to keep employees returning.
The basis will be motivated around Daniel Pink’s philosophy that people
naturally seek autonomy, mastery and purpose, and the end result will be a
government self-driven to keep itself lean.
3. Success Criteria
● Contains an interface usable and accessible for all
employees, covering varying degrees of computer
application familiarity.
○ Will feature a user interface with minimal friction
(as few steps as possible to complete a task).
○ UI will reduce the learning curve for new users
with explanations written in simple prose, not
technical or euphemistic jargon.
○ Elements of the interface may resemble
commonly used social applications. This
consumer familiarity will also ease the learning
curve for users.
4. Success Criteria
● Contains functionality that will retain user
engagement through an incentive and reputation
system.
○ A profile and reputation system will ensure
employees will be recognized for their
participation, collaboration and new ideas.
○ Positively reputable contributions will have the
potential for exposure among peers and
management.
○ Product will contain feedback loops between
employee engagement, results, and recognition
in order to reinforce the objective of a leaner and
more valuable use of resources.
5. Success Criteria
● Engineered in an agile manner to promote code reuse, support
customizability & modularity, and lastly minimize refactoring and
rework with the goal of minimizing taxpayer costs.
○ Given a limited amount of resources, only those features that
improve efficiency and productivity the most will be completed
first.
○ Future viability will be considered so that the product can be
maintained and updated with regular releases.
○ Security and controllability will always be considered with respect
to every feature.
○ Behaviors and results must be measurable. Data and
transparency are conducive to accountability and public savings.
6. Success Criteria
● In recognition of organizational culture, advocacy
and participation by upper management is essential.
○ Implementation will include a pilot, or even
multiple pilots running parallel across different
divisions for feedback in order to improve the
product prior to widespread release. Exemplary
cases from the pilot(s) will also encourage
participation as new users explore features.
○ Pilot will not be expanded until public savings
from measured collaboration and innovation can
be demonstrated.
7. Success Criteria
Failure to obtain all of these bullet points will jeopardize
adoption, viability, and most importantly the mission of
the product: a smarter, leaner government.
8. Vision
An intuitive online social collaboration tool that reduces redundancies and
fosters employee-led innovation while preserving feasible controls and
administration. Incentives and balances exist in a way that neither
undermines the chain of command, nor turns users away because of
complexity. 3 parts Quora, 2 parts Wikipedia, 1 part Twitter and 1 part
LinkedIn, all while retaining the spirit of a dot gov.
This will not be another COTS or abandoned document repository because
it will be well designed and contain features to keep employees returning.
The basis will be motivated around Daniel Pink’s philosophy that people
naturally seek autonomy, mastery and purpose, and the end result will be a
government self-driven to keep itself lean.
9. Recipe for collaboration
3 parts Quora
Ask questions, provide answers
2 parts Wikipedia
An intuitive and familiar approach to information sharing
1 part Twitter
Tag (categorize) and follow content without hassle
1 part LinkedIn
Empower, connect, and incentivize employees for their
positive contributions
10. Collaboration and knowledge
sharing
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and institutional information
can be bottlenecked or hard to find.
Resources wasted if employees are doing the exact same
work as other employees, unknowingly.
Time can also be wasted if employees do not have an easy
means of finding documents, guides, processes and
protocols. [Scale statistics on costs withheld]
These are all costs to the taxpayer.
11. Collaboration and knowledge
sharing
Solution: give employees a space to demonstrate their
expertise, collaborate with one another, and recognize
them for their effort.
Vision: make it easy to search for and contribute to an
online discussion.
Ask questions, provide answers, jump into the discussion,
recognize collaborators, all without fear of reprimand.
12. Clean method of building and
sharing expertise
Simplicity and organizability are key.
Quality is a function of design, not the sheer number of
functions and niche features/use cases an application
contains.
Frictionless. Information should be easily accessible,
requiring as few steps as possible for users to get the
information they need.
13. Clean method of building and
sharing expertise
Vision:
Conflicting information, policies and redundancies are
inevitable. There must be an efficient means of resolve in
order to create a leaner government.
Self-driven and autonomous. Employees should feel
empowered, not forced to contribute. This is why Wikipedia
has been so successful.
We will work with stakeholders to identify potential
constraints, whether technical or cultural and create
accommodative solutions.
14. Structure data and information
easily
Information should be easy to search for, tag, follow,
categorize, and if necessary control if classified.
Collaboration should require the same, or less amount of
effort than picking up the phone and calling someone.
It should also require less effort than formally writing an e-
mail, wordsmithing it accordingly, and then potentially being
treated like an e-mail. Filed, secured, shuffled, or
potentially forgotten among all the other messages in the
inbox.
15. Build a presence, find peers like you,
and be recognized
Culture may entail a hierarchical chain-of-command,
sensitive to security, with an emphasis placed on
reputation, promotion, and control.
Reduce or remove silos. Make it easy for employees to
find and work with one another.
Make it easy to secure and submit information without
being confusing.
Recognize each other for commendable work. Work
that accomplishes the public mission should be
rewarded.
16. Requirements (based on website)
Connect employees through an intuitive online
collaboration platform.
Provide opportunities for online learning and skills sharing.
Offer dynamic libraries of case studies, guides, and "how
to" documents for employees looking to think out-of-the-box
without having to reinvent the wheel.
Realize we are not necessarily bound by these
requirements.
17. Connecting employees
First, provide a presence, or means to create an employee
profile.
Autonomy. Self-promote as much or as little as desired.
Mastery. Make it easy to showcase personal skills and
areas of expertise.
Purpose. Allow employees to express areas of interest,
desired growth, and what types of projects or work
motivates them.
19. Connecting employees
Second, make it easy to discover potential collaborators.
Start with org charts.
Require tagging/categorizing so that employees with
overlapping or similar roles actually have the ability to find
one another.
[Sample wireframe withheld]
20. Connecting employees
Third, make it easy to collaborate with one another.
Make communication and submitting information seemless.
While there may be a few corner cases where information
needs to be classified and controlled, the tool should NOT
double as another layer of management, another form to
complete, exist as another version of e-mail.
22. Connecting employees
Lastly, users should be able to receive and provide
feedback without the fear of being reprimanded.
[Key feature/distinction from likes/+1 withheld]
3 main personas, and sub-personas
23. Online learning and skills sharing
Personas/Users [hypothesized, to be validated]
Those that know everything. Within that category are:
-Seasoned. Keep information to themselves and may be
territorial.
-Movers. Respond to requests for information without
hesitation.
-Altruists. Provide information to anyone that might
remotely need it, willingly and happily.
24. Online learning and skills sharing
Personas/Users [hypothesized, to be validated]
Those with some knowledge of their job, that do not feel
like they've mastered their domain. Within the category
are:
-Motivated. Seeking promotion, want to master their job,
perform above and beyond.
-Acceptors. Do their job as told, if new stumbling blocks
occur, they do what is necessary within their means.
-Apathists. Bare minimum everything.
25. Online learning and skills sharing
Personas/Users [hypothesized, to be validated]
Those new to the job. Sub-personas overlap with
"motivated" and "acceptors"
26. Online learning and skills sharing
Create a space for all 3 personas, or levels of knowledge.
Incentivize those that know everything, to produce.
[Sample "expert" use case withheld]
Incentivize those new to the job to consume and inquire.
[Sample "rookie" use case withheld]
Incentivize everyone to participate and be comfortable with
the tool.
[Sample UI nudge withheld]
27. Democratize and incentivize
[Key features withheld]
Vision: create an opportunity for people to do their learning
online, become experts, and then become recognized for
their mastery.
28. Innovate without reinventing the
wheel.
To-be-validated: Is there a demand for altruists to create
libraries of information? Can this be incentivized so that
acceptors become altruists? What types of media, forms,
methods would they be receptive to using? What are the
barriers to entry?
Continuum of possibilities, from copying and pasting, to
creating a full-fledged library that reduces bureaucracy.
29. Innovate without reinventing the
wheel.
Easiest case: linking to a document or posting the raw
document.
Modest effort: Disseminating information from a policy,
guide, protocol, and distilling it in a way that is:
Easy to understand.
Allows the opportunity for clarification, comment, and
feedback.
Can be recognized by peers and management for quality,
savings, and contribution to the public.
30. Innovate without reinventing the
wheel.
More effort: Finding related information and consolidating it
appropriately, and in a way where the end result is more
beneficial than the original sum of its parts. Links related
information that overlaps with multiple areas. Very
dependent on institutional knowledge.
Most effort: Reconcile conflicting information or
redundancies, and undergo an internal process of
improving policies and reducing bureaucracy.
Each type of effort should be commensurately recognized
and potentially rewarded. If there is no incentive, it will not
be done.
31. Technological best practices:
borrowing from the private sector.
Usability.
Contains a sense of familiarity for the user, regardless of
background.
Explanation of all features. Does not just assume everyone
understands buttons, workflows and the ecosystem.
Reward for understanding how it works.
User interface (UI) nudges based on the type of user.
Think employee auto-enrollment in 401k, or recognition of
repetitive actions and responding with a question.
32. Technological best practices:
borrowing from the private sector.
Measurability.
Industry best practices advocate hypothesis testing,
collecting data, analyzing results, and implementing change
to improve the product. Incremental, not with long-awaited
releases.
Economics of product mechanics to be determined.
Example: continuous raising of White House online petition
threshold. Adoption is never perfectly predictable.
Engineering tradeoff with performance and costs, so
maintainability needs to be considered.
33. Technological best practices:
borrowing from the private sector.
Maintainability.
Sensitivity to information will determine admin moderation
required.
Importance of pilot(s): demonstration of
acceptable/common use-cases is effective in establishing
"culture" of the product's use.
A phased, defined, measured and analyzed approach will
enable smooth scalability.
34. How to accomplish the mission
Success will require advocacy from upper management to
influence rank and file to discover, buy in to, and adopt the
tool. If the product is built, and there is little or no
participation, the end-result will be a net cost, not net
saving to the public.
