There is a LOT of effort being spent by the United States government to increase transparency to the taxpayers. In general, there are some great efforts (such as data.gov and usa.gov), and I think we should continue pushing the edge of the envelope in citizen participation with government. However, I believe we have a MUCH bigger problem to solve to get us to 'Government 2.0' - encouraging/cajoling government agencies into collaborating amongst themselves first. Impossible you say? Maybe so, but without effort focused on this goal, no amount of external transparency will have lasting success. Is there a magic formula or tool to accomplish this?

Short answer: No. More detailed answer: No, but proper application of tools such as wikis, discussion forums, centralized document management, application lifecycle methodology, and social media features can provide a way forward. However, the key critical aspect at the end of the day is community (yes, why should this be a surprise, coming from the community management consultant? :)). Without an approach that factors in how the internal cultures and communities operate within the government, any hope of meaningful citizen participation is pretty much non-existent.

The recently announced Open Government Directive is the 'stick' being used to drive intra-agency collaborative efforts (as well as external transparency). However, most of the time, applying only the stick results in a 'checkbox' approach to any task - doing the bare minimum. Lena Trudeau hits the nail on the head in her recent blog post at Federal Computer Week when she writes:

"Collaboration is a path to achieving results. Rather than focusing on simply achieving compliance with the Open Government Directive by checking the box on collaboration, agencies have a great opportunity to identify a real problem and use collaboration to solve it."

Given that humans are not naturally altruistic, my oft-stated commentary on WIIFM also applies here - do agencies who agree to share data/technology and cooperate get bigger budgets, bonuses, or some other form of prestige by doing the right thing by the new Open Government Directive? It would be great if they did these things because it was better for the average citizen, but that's unlikely to happen. Identifying a tangible problem to solve, as well as what's in it for the respective agencies, can help provide the 'carrot' to help mitigate the sometimes detrimental effects of the 'stick'.

Without fostering 'communication' (read: community) among the various agencies, any chance of producing coherent and reasonable transparency to the taxpayers on the outside of the system is doomed to failure. I've often wondered if we are close to a tipping point in terms of government employees who grew up in a more 'collaborative' time, with the internet, open source, social media, and the ease of working with each other. Will the rigidity sometimes foisted upon (or required of) new 'govies' quash their innate desire to collaborate effectively?

One way to address this is to change the way problems are thought of and how people are incentivized to solve them. We need more people like Vivek Kundra (USA CIO) and General Jeffrey Sorenson (US Army CIO) (both fellow Fed 100 award winners for 2010) to sponsor projects like Apps for Democracy and Apps for Army, which, through small changes, start to tear chinks out of the traditional way that 'app development' and collaboration are thought of, both inside and outside of the government. They also start to encourage a level of cross-collaboration that fundamentally changes the way people within government talk to each other.

Focusing on cultural changes is something Andrea DeMaio commented on in a recent blog post on the Gartner Blog Network about how technology has become too much of the focus in Government 2.0:

"...it has always been easier to say 'let’s buy a new tool' than to reflect about deeper process and cultural changes. Finally, on a topic that is new to most people, with boundaries that are quite unclear, it is easier and somewhat more comfortable to be able to point to a new tool or a new functionality, something distinct from what one has been doing so far, as a way to tick a box in a compliance exercise."

Can we all see a theme here on the 'compliance exercise' bit? I agree with all of his points (even grudgingly realizing that there needs to be some strategic direction change not coming from the technologists). Honestly, I think we need to look to successful open source projects and their use of community, meritocracy, and cultural models that are largely tool agnostic (though some would argue that distributed vs. centralized version control is a holy war!) Successful open source and/or Agile development communities exhibit characteristics that generally encourage and reward internal collaboration and involvement of all stakeholders in the process (outside users are represented by requests for enhancements and community leaders)

All of this causes me to wonder - given the rise of the 'social media/collaborative' generation, how long do you think it will be before this 'new breed' starts to influence the way government interacts with itself? More importantly, will the government culture remain long after the current generation of govvies is gone, and will that get in the way of the new generation, or flat out discourage them from entering public service in the first place? If we hope to achieve even half of what we are being promised in a 'Gov2.0 Nirvana', we are going to have to solve the 'internal government 2.0' puzzle first. I'm very curious as to what you, the readers, think is necessary to spur the move to 'Government 2.0' within federal agencies. Please feel free to leave me your thoughts here...

The lack of access to source code and clear government usage rights have been major impediments undermining DoD wide software reuse initiatives.  Simply stated, no source code, no reuse.  In my view, the new guidance can be seen as an initial step in DoD acquisition reform that could enable large amounts of software to be shared and reused across the DoD.  The reuse and sharing of software is already enabled by the collaborative software development environment at Forge.mil, as operated by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).  Policies that increase the government's access to source code can only help to foster the success of such initiatives.

As tax payers, any policy that effectively enables software reuse, regardless of whether it is developed under open source license or not, should be received as a positive step.  The net result might be that the DoD actually stops paying and repaying for the same software to be developed over again.

With 'Government 2.0' receiving a disproportionate amount of coverage in the press lately (due in part to the new administration's focus on transparency - a good thing in my opinion), there have been a number of pundits who have asked, 'When will we know that we've reached Government 2.0, and how long is that going to take?'

I think that begs the question of exactly what constitutes Government 2.0, as well as sets an unrealistic expectation of a finite process that has a clear beginning and end. Clearly, any effort designed to fundamentally change within the Government such things as technology acquisition, transparency, or collaboration will not be a 'forklift revolution,' but an ongoing and constantly reviewed process. I think most intelligent and knowledgeable folks within government realize that successive approximations are the only realistic way to make this happen.

There has been good progress on some of these fronts (both for internal government & public collaboration) - notably data.gov, Intellipedia, A-Space, whitehouse.gov, and even Forge.mil. However, one of the recent approximations that I believe is critical to this effort has happened within the Department of Defense - a call to streamline the acquisition process for Information Technology. Currently, the IT acquisition process is the same one used for things like tanks and missiles, systems that require a large up-front investment in requirements analysis and a strict process to ensure they can perform the necessary mission before the 'crank is turned' and thousands of items are produced and delivered.

Software, as most of us know, doesn't operate that way, and in fact, needs to be able to adapt to changing technologies and requirements throughout the life cycle of deployed systems. The DoD will be fielding 10 systems in fiscal 2010 to be acquired under the new, more streamlined process, and if these are successful, there is a strong chance that the program could be expanded to add more systems in the future.

I should also note that there need to be approximations within approximations. I know this sounds silly, but the best example I can think of is cultural change in how IT and other software support systems are developed and fielded. A large change in the culture that we are attempting to engender with the Forge.mil effort is shared (and in many cases, 'open' within the DoD) collaboration. There are approximations within this cultural change effort aimed at getting people used to not developing in silos, looking for, and building reusable components, and accepting contributions from qualified members of the department outside of their immediate project team.

Once I fully realized the need for these approximations in my efforts as one of the Forge.mil community managers, it was easier to relax and treat this entire effort as a continuous process, not as a finite deliverable. I believe it is critical that the larger government community adopt this same approach as well - attempting to build out all parts of what Government 2.0 could or should be right away would be expensive, and doomed to a lackluster reception by those in the community who need it most. The new DoD acquisition plan seems to correctly recognize a need for 'course corrections' or 'approximations' as we move forward toward building a more participative technology infrastructure for government. I'm hopeful that it will become the model for other government agencies going forward - quite honestly, doing it any other way probably portends failure from both the technology and fiscal perspective.

As I thought about the title for this post, I realized I'd be taking my chances with it from a hype and buzzword perspective. If there were ever two concepts that are emblematic of where we are today in technology, it would have to be 'Community' and 'Government 2.0'.

Unfortunately, they are also two of the most overused and over-hyped phrases in our technology lexicon. However, given what I attempt to do everyday in my role as Forge.mil's community manager, I'm hoping I can cut through some of the hype and bring some practical ideas to this space. This is also an opportune time for me to get some of these thoughts down here, as I'm planning on giving a new, more community-focused presentation on Forge.mil to the folks at the Online Community 'Unconference' being hosted by ForumeOne Networks on June 10th, 2009 in Mountain View, CA.

Because of my engineering background, I love reuse, so, I've titled the talk 'Generals, Colonels & Community - Refactoring DoD Software Development'. Some readers of this blog will recognize the first part of that title from a previous post of mine on this subject. So, without giving away all of my presentation (I'd love to have folks come see it in person!), here is some of what I'll be covering from the 'What Have We Learned about Gov 2.0 Communities?' perspective:

• They are more risk averse than their corporate counterparts
• They're addicted to email - if the community platform doesn't reach into email, you're in trouble
• They require slightly more 'Stick' (top-down pressure) than 'Carrot' (grassroots)
• They tend to grow around efforts to extend tools (SharePoint, Lotus Domino, Red Hat Enterprise Linux), rather than their own technology
• They require more of a 'contact-sport' approach - face time and one-on-one explanations

The good news I've found in the short time I've been working in this space is that there are pockets of somewhat frustrated, but extremely passionate Open Source/Open Collaboration champions in this world. Those are the people that keep the momentum going, and as a community manager, you have to give them as much care and feeding as you can, since they are paddling upstream against a very strong cultural current.

I'll do a post-conference write up on what I learn from giving this talk, as I plan to utilize the cadre of community-minded folks in attendance as a sounding board to help me improve it. I hope to see some of you at the event - it should be a productive day listening and learning from some of the best community management minds in the field!

WOW! That's about all I can say about the experience I just went through at the DISA Partner Conference last week in Anaheim, CA. The Orange County city is known primarily for its local attractions (e.g. - Disneyland), but the biggest excitement I saw last week was the official unveiling of the Forge.mil system. Last week's conference was the culmination of a LOT of work by a geographically dispersed 'community' (more on that a little later), and it really did come off without a hitch.

I'd like to start off with my personal highlight of the conference - briefing Lt. General Pollett (DISA Director) in our booth at the show. As you can see from the picture below, he was extremely engaged while receiving this briefing, and he asked some great follow-up questions to cement his understanding of our mission and vision for the site:

In addition to General Pollett, we briefed several other senior leaders, including Colonel Bethea (DISA Chief of Staff), as well as many others who came by the Forge.mil booth to hear what all of the buzz was about. A lot of that was generated by mention of the system in keynote addresses, and the very focused and targeted public relations and outreach that the CollabNet and DISA teams did prior to the show - of course, the commemorative Forge.mil lanyard giveaway probably didn't hurt either. :) Suffice it to say, the booth was steadily busy during the whole show - so busy at times that we had to have people come back later, as all of the team personnel were often times completely tied up with walking folks through a demo of the site, or talking about key strategic points of the system (and even getting people to sign up!). The best part of booth duty (aside from briefing the seniors) was to hear other booth personnel from around DoD comment that we seemed to have not only the biggest buzz, but also the most effectively targeted message for the show. I know that I speak for the team when I say that was extremely gratifying to hear.

I did attend a couple of the excellent keynotes (including General Pollett and Lt. General Allen from the USMC), but a large portion of my time outside of the booth was spent in preparing for, and speaking at, the Forge.mil track sessions. Those sessions happened on Wednesday, and included Rob Vietmeyer (Forge.mil Project Director) with a recap/introduction of the platform, a panel discussion with Rob, myself, Aaron Lippold (internal DISA Forge.mil Community Manager), and Gary Welch from the OPTICKS open source project. There was also an excellent session covering a demo of a USAF test harness initiative that has integrated their system within SoftwareForge.mil. It was a great example to showcase how the CollabNet TeamForge platform enables Round-Trip Engineering.

The panel session had some pre-planned questions which gave the panel members a chance to expound on information from Rob's session, as well as cover topics such as Open Source development methodology, community building, and cultural hurdles that are present when trying to move any organization (especially a military one) into a more collaborative development effort. After the pre-planned questions were over, we opened it up to the audience, and answered several good questions on how to get started with the system, what the future holds, and how we plan to fight some of the 'antibodies' that tend to come up in large organizations. However, my favorite comment from the audience was a user who proclaimed 'First off, on behalf of the US taxpayers, you guys ROCK!' As a community manager, there is really no higher praise you can hope for - being able to provide a system and community that engenders such enthusiasm is pretty much why you do this job.

Personally, the other reason I do this job is because every once in a while, you get to work with a really outstanding group of people. I know I've made this point in previous blog posts, but I was really struck this past week with what a great example/parallel the Forge.mil team is to what we are trying to enable in the DoD community. This is a group of geographically-dispersed individuals (California, DC, Charleston) with varying specialities and backgrounds, that came together to form not only a team, but a true community, where input is accepted and expected, and project direction is driven from consensus. This occurred to me while we were all sitting at an Anaheim Angels game after the last day of booth duty, taking a much needed rest from the excitement and work of the show. Sitting with my colleagues, whom I've only known about 4 months, seemed as natural as if I'd known them all my life. The bonds that have been formed among the team are strong, and the personal relationships represented in that community are a key ingredient in the current and future success of Forge.mil. Experiencing this reminded me again why building a community around software development efforts is very powerful - this stuff is complex and challenging, and if you can harness the talent and energy of the right cross-section of people, you can do some pretty amazing things.

Finally, I'll leave you with some of the great press coverage that came out of last week's event - needless to say, there was awesome work done by both the CollabNet and DISA marketing/PR teams to enable this. Here is a sampling of the articles/blog posts/Twitter streams:

• Forge.mil Twitter Stream
• CollabNet Powers Forge.mil Launch
• Forge.mil - Key Part of DISA's Net-Centric Strategy
• Forge.mil Update and DISA Hacks Public Domain

All in all, this was an extremely successful show and launch, and I'm happy to have been a part of it - more updates to come as we continue launching new capabilities within Forge.mil this year. Stay tuned....

As I sit here in the offices of CollabNet on a Friday evening, wrapping up final tasks before heading to Anaheim next week for the DISA Partner Conference, I'm heartened by news that we received about an hour ago. The Forge.mil system has officially been granted IOC (Initial Operational Capability) status by DISA. This may not mean much to some of you reading this, but suffice it to say it is a huge step forward in fielding a set of collaborative environments to improve software development at the US Department of Defense.

We now are 'officially open for business' (with the initial 'SoftwareForge.mil' offering). This does not mean that the work is over however - it is only just beginning. We expect that after (or probably even during) the conference next week, we'll be getting a deluge of new users and project requests on SoftwareForge.mil. Additionally, we know there is pent-up demand for the ProjectForge.mil capability (the same toolset as SoftwareForge.mil, but specifically designed to allow private collaborative projects within DoD).

When we started development of what has become our IOC launch back in October of last year, I don't think any of us truly realized the huge interest we would be generating with this effort. As we prepare to present the Forge.mil story at the conference, including a panel session I'll be a part of, I'd like to thank our colleagues at DISA & Navy SPAWAR for guiding us through the complex process of launching the site while keeping an open mind to a new way of doing things. I know I've learned a ton about how software development in the government works, and I hope we've been able to bring a unique perspective on how Open Source collaborative projects can work in such an environment.

For those that may just be joining this blog thread on my Forge.mil updates, feel free to check out the slides and video replay of the 'Introduction to Forge.mil' webinar we did several weeks ago. It should give you a good overall feel for where we are trying to take this effort. We also welcome your comments, questions, and feedback on that direction as well.

And with that, I'm going to head off to pack, and hope to see some of you at the show. Oh, and yes, I'll be sneaking in some 'Mickey Time' at Disneyland the weekend after the conference... I couldn't go all the way down there and not pop in to see my favorite mouse and his cohorts!

I'll be tweeting from the show as well (you can follow me @guyma on Twitter), and will have a wrap-up blog post when I get back. I'll see the rest of you in a couple of weeks...

I'm on my way back to the San Francisco Bay Area from my trip to our nation's capital for both the 'Introduction to Forge.mil' webinar, as well as Government 2.0 Camp, a 'barcamp-style' 'unconference' focusing on collaboration and social media in the government sector. Side note - WiFi on Virgin America is completely awesome! Of course, the temptation is to always work instead of sleeping, but I know I've been more productive in the travel time on this trip than ever before!

So, first, let's cover the webinar - not only was I in town to speak during the event with Rob Vietmeyer (DISA's Forge.mil Project Director), but it was also a chance to physically meet other members of the DISA team and discuss things we'll need to do as we move toward the official launch of Forge.mil in mid-April. I'm happy to say that the webinar went off very smoothly (with the possible exception of trying to find a working VOIP-enabled headset to use on one of the computers at the DISA facility). The slides had come together nicely through several iterations, and the presentation handoff between myself and Rob went smoothly. There were a TON of good questions after the webinar, including everything from how to get started, to licensing and acquisition policy thoughts. Best of all, I didn't feel like I tripped over my tongue too much. :) The recording isn't quite ready to put up yet - but we do have slides available. We were very pleased to have 277 registrants and 162 attendees, which gave us a 58% attendance rate (I'm told anything over 50% is excellent).

The afternoon after the webinar was supposed to be a chance to work with Rob and his team. I did meet several team members, but unfortunately, Rob was called away to give a review/briefing to senior DISA leadership about the project progress. The good news about this was that the review went extremely well, and General Pollett (DISA Director) was very excited, and has asked for additional demos at future reviews!

After the webinar, I was prepared to just 'relax, listen and learn' at the Government 2.0 Camp conference the next day. Oh, how little did I know. ;) Not having ever been part of a 'barcamp' conference, I was a bit skeptical of the 'planned on the fly' agenda concept. The first morning started with the entire auditorium at the Duke Ellington School for The Arts introducing themselves and being given 3 words to describe their interests, or 10 words to propose a session. I used 'developer, collaboration, community' as my three tags and didn't propose any sessions.

My colleague Kevin Hourihane and I then decided to attend the morning session on 'A-Space' (best described as 'Facebook for Spies'). It was an interesting discussion, but at the end of the Q & A period, Gunnar Hellekson from Red Hat asked the presenter if the development system for A-Space would eventually be tied to Forge.mil. Needless to say, that caught our attention, and the ensuing 15 minute conversation brought a lot of questions about our system. In true barcamp fashion, someone asked if we were going to present on Forge.mil. Since I had my copy of the webinar slides, I agreed, and set up a time on day 2 to talk about it.

Despite the fact my session was up against the White House media team's talk (including Macon Phillips), there were about 10 folks who showed up to hear me give a condensed version of the webinar talk. I loved that this was very interactive (the webinar format makes it a little more difficult to interact, since you are doing it strictly via text chat), and I got several really good questions, especially around the acquisition process for software, and how adding government contractors into the mix of SoftwareForge.mil could prove cumbersome, especially in light of time and materials contracts that most software projects use. One contractor mentioned that his company would be thrilled to have more time on a contract to do more testing, or do a more complete engineering job (assuming they found a component on software.forge.mil to re-use for part of their project). However, that was not universally accepted by the other contractors in the room. This cultural issue is one that is going to have to be solved for effective re-use within major projects that the DoD bids out to contractors. The good news is that I came away from the session much more aware of some of the hurdles we'll face in building out the community with DoD contractors in the mix.

There were several interesting sessions I took part in during the conference, and I'd like to highlight two:

• What's the Big Deal?
• Building an Open Source/Federal collaboration (i.e. - 'Forge.gov')

The first one dealt with how governments could deal with outward-facing social media tools, and what policies they should have in place to deal with 'bad' content. I liked this session because it was a group of community managers (even if some didn't have the title), who realized that allowing social media in government (and even corporate) spaces is not a big deal if you have some sane procedures in place to deal with the occasional unprofessional comment/content. This echos what I've posted about in the past - you have to trust your interview process to hire people who are professionals that know how to properly utilize social media tools.

The second session above took place when the 'techies' got together to talk about Open Source Community and Federal collaboration, and these were extremely interesting, and quite informative. In a nutshell, the techies in the room wanted to know when (or if) a 'Forge.gov' site could be stood up to allow collaboration between the Federal (non-DoD) space and the greater Open Source world. I know that there are some discussions about this very thing going on between several companies (can't say more just yet), so I hope it comes to fruition. The main thing I cautioned the people assembled about was understanding that culture would have to shift to get the Federal IT folks (especially project managers) to embrace such an effort, especially around things like acquisition policy and information assurance (IA).

One final technical note on the conference - this was the first event I've been to in the 'Twitter Age'. There was a lot of live blogging going on, but far and away Twitter was the primary means of putting out information, links, thoughts & notes on the proceedings. Since Twitter 'streams' are preserved after an event is over, and time stamped, it makes it very easy to go back and view what happened during the event. Here are some 'streams' you can check out if you are interested:

• All Gov20Camp Tweets (LOTS of content)
• My Gov20Camp Tweets
• Forge.mil Gov20Camp Session Tweets

All in all, it was a very successful trip - now, if I could just get Virgin America to fly everywhere else I might need to travel, life would be perfect... :)

I'm sitting in beautiful Charleston, SC, where I just finished attending the Forge.mil release 1 review/release 2 planning meeting. There were some great discussions that occurred, since we had almost the entire deployment/development team here in the room (we 'eat our own dog food' by using the system to collaborate across geographies and DoD components normally, but some 'meatspace' time is always good too).

First off, I'd like to correct some erroneous information that has gotten out in recent press articles/blogs about Forge.mil. The correct URL for the site will be (eventually) http://www.forge.mil, NOT https://www.forgemil.com. The latter is our test site, which has since been locked down from public access to prevent confusion that came out in when Slashdot picked up Matt Asay's article on this. The former currently requires a DoD CAC card, or ECA certificate to access the site (available to DoD/miltary personnel, and government contractors). Before we go into our 'official' launch at the end of March/beginning of April, we'll open up www.forge.mil so it is easier for interested parties to see what the capabilities of the system are.

Second, let's clear up a misconception going around that the first capability we are delivering (Software.Forge.mil) is 'not Open Source', because it will sit behind a PKI-layer and not be available to the general Open Source population. Yes, strictly speaking, it isn't 'Open Source' in the traditional sense, but the reality is the DoD is attempting to utilize development models and methodologies from the Open Source world to help develop and deliver software more rapidly and in a collaborative fashion. The current plan is to limit this for internal DoD and contractor community use, but that could be re-evaluated at some point if it makes sense from the community standpoint.

Third, the software infrastructure used to deliver the capability is not SourceForge.net, but is actually the CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise product.

With those things out of the way, let's talk about the meeting. Basically, we got the team together partly to go over the accomplishments of release 1 (ok, and to celebrate this first release with the entire group, since we don't regularly see each other in person), and to work on plans for release 2 (the 'official' launch). The three elements we are targeting for release 2 are:

1. Build Community
2. Mature System Capability
3. Build Partnerships

The Forge.mil system is a 'platform' effort, which will eventually deliver the following capabilities to the DoD community:

1. Software.Forge.mil
2. Project.Forge.mil
3. Standards.Forge.mil
4. Certification.Forge.mil
5. Test.Forge.mil

Release 1 delivered the Limited Operational Availability (Beta) phase of Software.Forge.mil. Release 2 will be the official launch of Software.Forge.mil for internal DoD and contractor partner access.

We started yesterday with an overview of where we are to date, including some great stories I was able to share on community. Specifically, I created a 'Utility Library' project to host requests we were seeing for full blown projects on the site that didn't warrant that much overhead - usually, these are smaller 'code snippets', scripts, or self-contained libraries. After I created the project, I was able to recruit two users (the first two to contribute code) to become the project admins. I introduced them to each other (one from the Army, one from the Pentagon), and away they went. I removed myself from the admin list for that particular project, and they are now running it themselves, and onboarding new users and code for the project. It seems like such a little thing to those of us from an Open Source background, but this simple act is a HUGE deal for a government space that has traditionally not seen a lot of this kind of sharing.

We are also seeing a lot of excitement so far in this limited launch, with projects/programs literally pinging us every day to inquire about the system. We've put in a very lightweight governance/adjudication process for new projects on the site - the only thing it is there for is to make sure the project meets the terms and conditions (fully public/open within the DoD community), and that there aren't duplicate efforts going on. So far, we've been able to shepherd several groups together that either didn't know about each other, or hadn't been able to collaborate before.

Again, I know this sounds very mundane for those of us used to the way Open Source projects and methodologies work, but this is literally starting to 'change the world' for these folks in and around the DoD. I know there will be future challenges along the way, but this effort is very visible (even at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level), and the excitement and momentum is palpable!

Finally, I should take some time to mention the implementation team. It is made up for DISA personal, CollabNet consultants, and members of the Navy SPAWAR command. This meeting (the second of two face-to-face planning/review sessions) went very, very smoothly, with the members of the government community really starting to see the power of Agile development and collaboration. We started the build out of this project using Agile, and delivered this initial early-access capability in 90 days, which is practically unheard of in the DoD (or any government entity for that matter). This is a testament to a group of folks who are willing to blend the unique expertise and perspectives of traditional government development and procurement with Agile processes. I won't lie and say there haven't been challenges along the way, but, so far, each has been met with determination, and a team spirit that I've rarely seen in my career (in fact, I've only seen it at two previous career stops).

I'll continue to keep folks updated via this blog, as I think this is going to be a very exciting project, even if we just build the capability for internal DoD use only. The methodology and capability we are bringing to the table have a chance to fundamentally shift how software development is done in the department, and this can be a model for other government groups as well. Now I'm going to get on a plane back to California and get going on release 2...

I'm happy to report that after a lot of work (and a significant amount still to come), we've launched an early access version of the Forge.mil and software.forge.mil collaboration capability for internal Department of Defense testers only.

The launch is officially categorized as LOA (limited operational availability), and we have begun to onboard a limited number of hand-picked projects. The purpose of this LOA period is to work through the inevitable bumps in the road that come with not only the operational details of a new system, but also getting projects and users used to the notion of a more open development methodology. From listening to today's decision point meeting about the launch, it is clear we'll have to work on getting some folks up to speed on this way of project development, but the good news is they seem excited and energized by what this change can bring to software development in the DoD.

Operationally, I'm also excited by a lot of the good work done by the team to PKI-enable not only our web tools, but also several subversion clients. There is more work to do with these clients, and we have to smooth out the content and on-boarding pieces, but all in all, it was a good day.

Now we are going to regroup a bit and prepare for the next series of Agile sprints to the official launch of the service in April. I'll have more details on that as we get closer - for now, it's time to celebrate a job well done by all of the involved parties - DISA, SPAWAR, and the CollabNet crew!

As promised, here is a quick rundown of where we are on the DISA forge.mil project:

• Very good progress made on PKI-enabling the CollabNet SourceForge and SVN products
• Initial drafts of site look & feel and content complete
• Initial draft of 'Community Building Plan' complete and ready for review

There is still a lot of work to do between now and the LOA (limited operation availability) date at the end of the year, but things are moving along.  Most likely the LOA period will last a month or so to shake out both technical and social/community issues, but we hope to be well along our way in February of 2009.

The Forge.mil effort continues to get positive reviews both inside and outside of the DoD, including this recent article in the Defense Systems publication.

I'm learning a ton about what community means (and where the challenges are) to the DoD, and the single greatest weapon in my arsenal is the lowly question.  I've learned to ask a lot of them to adjust the process of defining this community.

Thanks for listening - I'll chime in with more updates as we progress toward site launch.

Update - Federal News Radio (WFED - 1500 AM out of Washington, DC) recently spoke with several influential government officials, including the CTO of DISA, who mentioned the forge.mil initiative.