Agencies Share Information By Taking a Page From Wikipedia
From the Washington Post:
When President Bush challenged Congress to cut the number and cost of earmarks by half, the administration's budget chiefs turned to their wiki.That's right, the Office of Management and Budget, where caution and precision rule, has embraced Wikipedia as a model, hosting an online place where federal officials can swap information and ideas outside traditional boundaries.
After hearing the president's challenge last year, the budget officials knew that the White House would need a tally of the pet spending projects that Congress had inserted into the federal budget if they were to measure progress toward the president's goal.
With the wiki, federal agencies compiled a database of 13,496 earmarks in 10 weeks. In the old days, it would have taken six months to get the information to the OMB.
The budget wiki is not as freewheeling as Wikipedia, the sometimes-controversial online encyclopedia. It is the government, after all. For security, federal officials have to ask permission to join; it is not open to the public or Congress.
Still, the earmarks project underscores how technology is helping change the way the government works. The OMB and other agencies used the Web's interconnectivity to more efficiently gather information and draw conclusions.