Culture, Not Tech, Is Barrier To Enterprise 2.0Culture, Not Tech, Is Barrier To Enterprise 2.0

Technology isn't the biggest obstacle to implementing Enterprise 2.0 -- rather it's overcoming cultural attachment to the old ways of doing things, said Walton Smith, an in-house authority on Enterprise 2.0 at government IT consultancy Booz Allen Hammilton. Employees have gotten accustomed to working with knowledge silos and using e-mail as the primary collaboration tool, and they will quite reasonably be reluctant to change business practices that have served them well for a long time."It's a total change of mindset. In the past, whoever owned the information has the power -- now, it's he who shares the information that has the power," Smith said.

Long-time employees, particularly middle managers who've helped an organization succeed for years, find that cultural change difficult to navigate, Smith said. These are people who've succeeded in their careers by becoming the go-to person for some subject -- an expert on SharePoint or service-oriented architectures, for example -- and they need to be convinced that they'll be even more successful if they share that information broadly using Enterprise 2. Instead of becoming the go-to person for SharePoint or SOA within their team, they'll get a reputation for expertise throughout the entire organization.

Intellipedia was an early success story for Booz Allen Hamilton and Enterprise 2.0 in government. The company helped intelligence agencies set up the wiki for sharing information. "People say if they can do it, anyone can," Smith said. Intelligence agencies had traditionally been the most siloed information organizations in government; now, they're sharing information through Intellipedia across multiple agencies and networks.

Update 4/24: Smith e-mailed a correction: "One point of clarification, while Booz Allen Hamilton is a thought leader in deploying Enterprise 2.0 initiatives across the government, we did not help build Intellipedia. We have several people that use and rely on Intellipedia to effectively share and create information. We have also worked closely with their leadership to share lessons learned and best practices to help improve other Gov 2.0 programs.

Enterprise 2.0 tools are becoming more popular in government agencies as they face increased pressure to do more with less -- work more efficiently and cut costs in a tight economy. Enterprise 2.0, which relies on tools that are open source or inexpensive, can help expedite those goals, Smith said.

The new presidential administration is driving Enterprise 2.0 in a couple of ways. Agencies are being pressed to be more transparent, and Enterprise 2.0 is ideal for achieving transparency, Smith aid. Also, the administration was highly successful using Facebook and other Web 2.0 technologies to raise funds during the campaign.

Booz Allen Hamilton doesn't just advise others to use Web 2.0 tools -- it also uses them internally. In August, Booz Allen Hamilton set up an internal wiki and discussion forum, called hello.bah.com, to enabled collaboration inside the company. It's now used by over a third of the firm.

The 21,000-person Booz Allen Hamilton now has 55% of its employees not working at company offices; instead, they work on-site at government agencies. Like most firms, the company uses Microsoft Outlook as its primary collaboration tool, with employees sending out e-mail messages when looking for information or collaboration. That works so long as you know everyone you need to talk to, but it doesn't scale, Smith said. It doesn't work if you need information from inside the company but don't know who might have that information.

How did Booz Allen Hamilton break the Outlook leash? "It's hard, because Outlook is so easy," Smith said. "It's useful. People use it for something we call 'do-you-know' e-mails." Employees get four or five of those a day, asking if anybody knows how to do some task. By aggregating information in blogs, wikis, and other Enterprise 2.0 tools, Booz Allen Hamilton hopes to make the do-you-know process more efficient.