Gov2.0 Whitepaper US Version

Government 2.0
Social Software for US Government:
An IGLOO Perspective

September 2009

Social Software for Government
Contents

Contents ................................................................................................................ i
About IGLOO Software .......................................................................................... 2
Introduction .......................................................................................................... 3
The Internet Affect — Web 2.0 .............................................................................. 4
Robust Social Software & Online Communities ............................................... 4
Opportunities ........................................................................................................ 6
Key Business Drivers .............................................................................................. 7
Increasing Access to Information ..................................................................... 7
Ensuring Compliance .............................................................................................. 8
Improving Internal Operational Efficiencies .................................................... 8
Promoting External Collaboration (Ecosystems & Innovation
Clusters) ..................................................................................................... 9
Increasing Constituent Outreach & Communications ................................... 10
Increasing Global Responsiveness ................................................................. 11
The IGLOO Software Solution ...............................................................................12
A Fully Integrated Solution ................................................................................... 12
Guaranteed Security & Privacy ............................................................................. 12
Open Architecture ................................................................................................ 13
Software as a Service (SaaS) ................................................................................. 14
1. Lower Initial Costs ...................................................................................... 14
2. Faster Implementation ............................................................................... 14
3. Seamless Upgrades .................................................................................... 14
4. Guaranteed Uptimes .................................................................................. 14
Implementation—Hurdles & Roadblocks ..............................................................15
Security & Privacy .......................................................................................... 15
Organizational Structure ................................................................................ 15
Inter‐agency Collaboration ............................................................................ 16
Employee Demographics ............................................................................... 16
Budget ............................................................................................................ 17
Where to Start: The IGLOO Approach ...................................................................18
Phase 1: Planning & Ideation ......................................................................... 18
Phase 2: Design & Build ................................................................................ 18
Phase 3: Launch & Roll‐out ........................................................................... 19
Phase 4: Manage & Sustain ........................................................................... 19
Phase 5: Growth ............................................................................................ 19
Case Studies ......................................................................................................... 20
Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN) .................................................... 20
Mayor of Waterloo ......................................................................................... 20
Disaster Relief Rotarian Action Group (DRRAG) ............................................. 21
www.igloosoftware.com i
About IGLOO Software

IGLOO Software (IGLOO) is a software company that develops online community and social software solutions
for groups, teams and organizations of any size. Our community solutions combine leading edge Web 2.0
technology with on‐demand hosting (SaaS), consulting, e‐engagement and all of the community support services
necessary for sustainable and successful deployments.
Organizations use IGLOO communities internally to improve employee productivity (Workplace Communities) or
externally to foster relationships with members, customers, partners and suppliers (Marketplace Communities).
Our secure and integrated community platform was designed with Web 2.0 principles from the ground up to
help individuals and teams become more resourceful, productive and knowledgeable regardless of geographical
or hierarchical boundaries. All of our solutions are deployed using an on‐demand SaaS delivery model.
This paper outlines the tremendous value of social software within various levels of the US Government and
showcases how IGLOO’s online community and social software platform can help with overcoming the challenges
of deploying this new software medium.
www.igloosoftware.com 2
Introduction

The challenges that the US Government faces today demand new frameworks for engagement. The command‐
and‐control center system of governance is no longer viable. Instead of creating broad national policies,
government agencies are seeking to build, leverage and sustain regional and networked efforts.

Government 2.0 is a new web‐based framework for engagement, enabling government to transform the
economy and society through improved “bottom up” collaboration and constituent interaction. Using new
technologies such as social software, government can facilitate the realignment and transformation of its
structures, relationships, networks and delivery systems for addressing global challenges and innovation‐based
opportunities.

Social networking software is being increasingly used by individuals, organizations, activists, and agencies
worldwide. The government stands to benefit from using robust social software tools to support content
creation and dissemination, collaboration, economic development, community building and more. By facilitating
transactions and interactions between citizens, businesses, and other arms of government, social software can
reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and smoothly transition government into an online model of citizen service.
This framework of networked partnerships results in best practices for administration, politicians and above all
for citizens who benefit from an evolving system of collaboration, innovation and delivery.

This paper provides IGLOO’s perspective on the application of social software to government agencies and
organizations, with a focus on:
• Improving access to information, operational efficiencies and transparency
• Increasing outreach and constituent engagement
• Ensuring compliance and reducing risk
• Guaranteed security and privacy

The Internet Affect — Web 2.0

Over the last 10 years the Internet has changed our lives forever—both from a social and a business perspective.
Currently we are in a technology phase that the experts call Web 2.0 — a set of new and innovative tools that
take us beyond simple browsing, searching and publishing of static web sites. These new Web 2.0 tools enable
us to actively participate, publish and interact with others on the web quickly, easily and at little or no cost.
Users are the driving force behind Web 2.0 technology; cooperation not control lies at the heart of the Web 2.0
philosophy.

Web 2.0 technologies like social networking software are quickly changing how organizations, institutions
businesses and agencies innovate, collaborate and share knowledge. This is because these technologies connect
users and information in multi‐linear, dynamic and spontaneous ways. New user‐driven networked business
models, practices and processes are emerging where collaboration, contribution and sharing are promoted and
rewarded within an organization. This cultural shift is just starting to transform old hierarchical‐driven
organizations into interactive, vibrant online communities that are more agile, productive and competitive.
Organizations in government, healthcare and academia are rethinking old business models and evolving their
cultures to include Web 2.0 technology to compete in an emerging global knowledge economy.
Robust Social Software & Online Communities

Online social networking went mainstream in 2007, lead by the popularity of two consumer social networking
applications; myspace® and Facebook®. These sites tapped into one simple basic human need — a need to
connect and socialize with others. Out of this first social networking wave came the next wave, as the
technology has evolved and migrated from the consumer space into a new business category: robust social
software. Social software for business combines content management with collaboration and social networking
services in a secure and fully integrated online community platform. Whereas consumer based social networking
software has been open and insecure; new emerging business models for robust social software can offer tighter
security controls to support the most restricted information sharing models.

In order to be effective, online community and social software solutions must support the core elements
required by organizations today, including security, user‐based permission models, document and content
management, sub‐groups and sub‐communities, and more. In the government sector, it is even more critical
that Government 2.0 solutions comply with current information management policies by supporting full lifecycle
management of all information assets in electronic or physical format.
IGLOO’s social software for Government delivers effective solutions for government departments and agencies
looking for new and innovative ways to find information, share knowledge, experience and ideas, and to build
relationships across organizational and geographical boundaries. When implemented correctly, these solutions
can create tremendous corporate capacity by connecting, empowering and motivating any organization’s most
valuable asset: people.
Opportunities

Driven by today's emerging Internet technologies, a new kind of public sector is emerging. Recent initiatives such
as the Federal IT Dashboard, NASA's Cosmo Code and the Open Government Initiative all serve to highlight how
administrations are embracing the tenets behind open government. Open government directly involves citizens,
readily shares information and resources, and harnesses collaborative efforts. Recently, there has been a
growing requirement for the federal government to move toward becoming more open and transparent in their
dealings with constituents, including the secure dissemination of information.

The US Government can make effective use of robust social software to:

• Ensure compliance with the Government’s Information Management and Record Keeping policies.
• Capture and manage information in a secure environment with guaranteed authenticity and integrity.
• Overcome the tired rules that inhibit innovation with new models of web‐enabled collaboration that cut
across departmental silos to improve policy outcomes, reduce costs, and increase public value.
• Achieve breakthroughs in public service delivery and organizational effectiveness by deploying
government 2.0 technologies.
• Understand what today's global youth really expect of government and how they will behave as citizens,
future voters and consumers of public services.
• Differentiate employee recruitment programs to appeal to the incoming wave of Net Generation
workers.
• Reinvigorate democratic processes with technology‐enabled approaches to policy‐making, problem
solving, citizen engagement and stakeholder consultation.
• Solve enduring policy challenges with collaborative approaches to member‐defined areas of interest
such as climate change education, health care and national security.

Key Business Drivers

Let’s take a moment to examine the opportunities previously identified to demonstrate the potential benefits of
IGLOO’s social software solutions for the American Government.
Increasing Access to Information

The American government maintains a tremendous amount of data. Like any organization, the success of the
government administration, offices and agencies depends upon key content assets. These assets often lay lost or
buried in people’s desktop computers, laptops and email inboxes. When integrated with content management
and collaboration functionality, social software features can extend collaboration around an organization’s
intellectual capital, supporting all forms of information sharing and dissemination, including sharing lessons
learned and best practices, intelligence gathering and analysis, human resources documentation and processes,
office communications, and more.

IGLOO’s social software solution protects against knowledge leakage by delivering tighter controls over content,
reducing a government agency or department’s dependence on insecure email attachments. Powerful content
management features are entirely web‐based, fully scalable, easy to access, and integrate easily with internal
business systems to improve knowledge sharing between users. Key features include:
• Support for any file type, including engineering drawings, system reports, email messages, periodicals, or
rich media such as videos, slideshows, images, photos and podcasts.
• Version control, reservation and audit histories enable you to manage the history of any document; set
the number of versions to keep; lock versions for editing preventing overwrites; see profiles of users who
added versions.
• Access control consisting of up to five levels of permissions to prevent unauthorized access to
documents; assign permissions by role and group; control whether users can see documents, view their
contents, modify or delete documents.
• Auditing of all activity related to a specific document, wiki page or communication.
• Desktop integration provides users with a seamless experience – they can save documents from
Microsoft® Office and other popular desktop applications directly into their online community.
• Labels assigned as metadata which allows for information to be categorized and located more easily by
browsing and searching.
• Filtered search allows users to find any item in the community by type.

Ensuring Compliance

IGLOO Software has taken its robust online community and social software solution a step further to ensure that
all social media (blogs, wikis, forums, documents, etc.) complies with current government‐defined information
management and record keeping policies. IGLOO’s Open Source Platform integrates easily with your records
management compliance infrastructure to deliver a solution that offers full control for the complete lifecycle of
vital records, from creation through to archiving and final deletion. Using this solution, government agencies and
departments can effectively manage their records to ensure transparency and accountability of government
programs and services and reduce content management costs by deleting unimportant or out‐of‐date content.

Government departments can create, acquire, capture, manage and protect the integrity of information
resources of business value in the delivery of programs and services. The IGLOO solution for government
delivers all of the tools required to support departmental recordkeeping requirements, including:
• The implementation and maintenance of a web‐based secure and central repository for all information
resources.
• The ability to support taxonomies or classification structures through labels and metadata.
• The ability to search for items by application or data type.
• Monitor compliance processes through version control and auditing capabilities.
• Records management controls for all content types, including paper and electronic business documents,
emails, contracts, regulated documents, transactional content, rich media files and more.
• Records management functionality with support for retention periods, along with disposition processes
and activities.

IGLOO’s fully integrated solution for the American Government ensures compliance and reduces risk, allowing
government organizations to automate the retention and disposition of all content.

Improving Internal Operational Efficiencies

Robust social software can be used to promote and enable interagency and interdepartmental information
sharing and collaboration. This pertains to information at all levels—information used for defense purposes or
for economic development—along with communications within offices for Human Resources, contracting,
standard operating procedures, knowledge exchange and more. Government Human Resources (HR)
departments, for example, can leverage social software to increase employee retention, morale and productivity.
Rising costs, increased competition and the time required to hire and train new talent have made retaining top
performers a growing challenge. Robust social software tools can deliver extremely cost effective ways for
government HR departments to acquire the best talent, improve corporate communications and drive employee
engagement and well being. Using robust social software, HR management can securely coordinate, manage and
monitor employee processes, interactions and activities, including:
• Creating the connections employees require to find and utilize information to drive business results.
• Increase recruitment and onboarding programs by reaching into the current workforce on prospective
candidates.
• Deliver just‐in‐time learning based on readily available employee content, collaboration, and
interactions.
• More effectively manage organizational talent by creating a culture of collaboration and career
development.
Along with improving departmental communications and processes, social software fosters collaboration in
cross functional teams and encourages information sharing between departments. This results in the creation of
virtuous loops that build upon each other to improve internal processes. Social software presents additional
advantages that span departments, including revealing self‐organizing capabilities that currently lie dormant
within government organizations.

Promoting External Collaboration (Ecosystems & Innovation Clusters)

A major focus of government should be on cluster development in industries such as manufacturing, hi‐tech,
education, bio‐medicine and pharmaceuticals, arts and culture to facilitate urban vitality and employment. A
crucial element for successful innovation‐led economic development is the connection of "regional assets"
required in order to create competitiveness. To establish wealth creation, vital connections to knowledge,
expertise and competency must be established to nurture innovation in communities of practices.

The government can act as a catalyst of "industry cluster" and economic development by delivering, supporting
and refining the infrastructure required to connect knowledge with expertise and accelerate innovation. This
infrastructure takes the form of innovation networks.

An innovation network or cluster is a membership‐based online network or community that builds an expansive
or regional‐wide geographic advantage using a series of interconnected and free online resources (including
other regional innovation networks) in a specific industry or focused around a specific area of expertise.
The development of these regional innovation eco‐systems or “innovation clusters” has been espoused in the
America COMPETES Act and the National Innovation Act introduced by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Susan Collins.
Clearly, innovation has returned to the federal policy agenda.

The US Federal Government facilitates networked innovation through the development of new models of
collaboration. The goal is to bring together a wide variety of stakeholders, from government, academic
community, the private sector, information technology and investment companies to define the innovations
required to address challenges or opportunities. The government's role is to facilitate resources and governance.

Innovation networks or clusters serve to:

• Help companies become more innovative and competitive.
• Stimulate economic development and growth within markets and industries.
• Assist companies with activities including joint industry‐university research partnerships, technology
transfer, and more.
• Streamline operations through the exchange of best practices.

Please see the Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN) example below for a sample case study.

Increasing Constituent Outreach & Communications
Social software solutions for government have been designed to increase the value of public services for
constituents, employees and other public sector stakeholders at the State and Local levels of government.
As a platform for participatory civic infrastructure, IGLOO's e‐Government solutions provide constituents with:
• The ability to log on to the local government sites and be greeted with schedules for neighborhood
association meetings or the latest recreation classes that meet interests.
• Profiles of council members.
• Minutes from council meetings.
• Receive e‐mail notifications:
o each time a zoning change is made that could affect property values,
o a crime is committed in the neighbourhood, or
o a construction project begins that will affect a morning commute .
• Provide intelligent digital guides to identify and address issues, without linking to superfluous
information.

Please see the Mayor of Waterloo example below for a sample case study.
Increasing Global Responsiveness
Robust social software also presents the ability to coordinate agencies and organizations to improve coordination
around stabilization and reconstruction missions, connecting agencies, NGO’s and organizations to support
individuals in emergency situations or post disaster. A global network delivers a worldwide community for
organizations and individuals to participate in disaster preparedness, response recovery and community
rebuilding efforts of areas struck by disasters.

A range of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and searchable online member profiles can be used to enhance the
relief efforts of government agencies and NGO’s around the world. Social software gives organizations the
capacity to improve engagement in disaster relief outreach and provides a mechanism for action. By using social
software, the US Government can significantly increase the speed with which it coordinates relief efforts, funnels
donations and provides support for the implementing agencies on the ground.

Please see the Rotarian/DRRAG example below for a sample case study.
The IGLOO Software Solution

The biggest challenge for most organizations, including government when trying to achieve this level of external
collaboration is dealing with security issues. Allowing external stakeholders inside the corporate firewall is
usually a non‐starter. Collaborating and sharing using email is inefficient and unsecure. Finally, actually
developing or setting up a system and receiving IT sign‐off may take weeks or even months.

As you will discover, IGLOO’s online community and social software platform offers a powerful, integrated and
secure suite of knowledge sharing, collaboration and networking features in one single package. Your community
can be up in running in hours—not days, weeks or months. This is because all of our solutions are provided using
software as a service (SaaS) framework. There is no need to buy expensive hardware, software or waste time
installing and configuring an On‐Premise or Open Source Platform. Better yet, all of the community data is
protected and stored in a secure SAS70 Type II compliant data centre. Vital community data is backed up on a
daily basis—regardless if the information is in the form of a document, blog, forum or wiki page. And, your
community uptime is guaranteed at 99.5%, so it will be available whenever you need it, regardless of where you
are—in the office, on the road or in the office.

A Fully Integrated Solution

IGLOO’s robust social software solutions combine content management, collaboration and social networking
services into a fully integrated and multi‐lingual (English, Spanish and French) solution. Using IGLOO solutions,
government organizations can:

• Organize and manage content to promote secure knowledge exchange and protect intellectual property.
• Connect distributed teams, networks and a mobile workforce to streamline processes and increase
speed of execution.
• Nurture cross functional relationships to facilitate the free exchange of ideas and foster innovation for
competitive advantage.
Guaranteed Security & Privacy

While open membership‐based social networking sites have inherent weaknesses, government agencies can
implement robust social software solutions with built‐in membership sign in and authentication models that are
congruent with their security requirements.

With IGLOO, security begins with user authentication. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol ensures that only
authorized users can read, change, or manipulate information—as all of the information transmitted over the
web is encrypted. Every user who accesses an online community is given a unique user name and private
password. The system can force the user to change their password on regular intervals for added security. Every
object or asset, including confidential documents, reports, images, media files, discussions, wikis, comments and
more have specific authorization levels assigned for each user. Every group work space has an associated list of
members with assigned permission levels.

IGLOO’s data centre is PCI DSS, SAS70 and CICA 5970 (Type II) certified; this means all processes are rigorously
assessed by accredited third parties each year and consistently operate at the highest levels within the industry.
These accreditation audits include:
• Administration and Organization—a review of our security team as well as our overall corporate security
consciousness.
• Facilities—verify on a regular schedule the infrastructure and redundancy of our systems. This also
includes physical access and perimeter security at our facility.
• Backup and Recovery—the back‐up schedules and control measures taken to ensure all data is
recoverable and has off‐site duplicate back‐ups.

Open Architecture
IGLOO’s online community and social software solutions are built on an open, modular framework which
provides developers with a flexible set of tools for customizing and extending online communities—quickly,
easily and cost effectively.

This modular framework consists of four critical key components for solution development:
• A Theme Manager to create and manage the layout, design and branding of the community.
• A Global Configuration Panel to toggle application settings "on" or "off".
• A drag and drop Widget Manager to create and configure custom application widgets.
• A core set of Open API's for integrating with enterprise applications like ERP and CRM systems, as well as
cloud‐based applications like Google widgets and Salesforce.com.

Using a widget‐based architecture, developers can create custom content widgets sourced from almost any third
party application. Capitalizing on the open nature of social software, government organizations can create a
library of content widgets that can be dropped into any page within an online community. This modular
approach aligns the Web 2.0 philosophy; using lightweight applications which are fast to set up and easy to use.
Software as a Service (SaaS)

In many cases, the IGLOO online community and social software platform is actually more cost effective than
open source alternatives. This is because it is available on demand (SaaS), requiring no hardware or software
installations; no developers to build the solution; and little to no maintenance fees and a minimal investment in
technology staff and expertise.

By deploying your IGLOO online community solution as a service, you’ll benefit from:
1. Lower Initial Costs
• No expensive software and hardware start‐up costs.
• All hardware, software and networking infrastructure are typically included in the annual fee.
• Organizations are able to mitigate financial risk.

2. Faster Implementation
• A solution can be set up in a fraction of the time it would take organizations to implement an internal
solution.
• Free up valuable technical resources from developing and managing in‐house solutions.
• Make solutions available to customers, partners or suppliers without having them breach internal
network security.
3. Seamless Upgrades
• There is no need to worry about the cost and hassle of backups, operating systems updates, software
upgrades or applying the latest security patches to operating systems.
• Regular quarterly software upgrades, providing new features, functions and services.

4. Guaranteed Uptimes
• Proven, reliable, secure data network with 99.5% plus performance uptime –guaranteed.
• IT and technical experts maintain, upgrade and monitor every hosted solution.
Implementation—Hurdles & Roadblocks

Despite the promise of improved transparency and constituent engagement, there are concerns at numerous
levels of the US Government around adopting social software solutions. The first and foremost challenge is the
inherent conservative nature of government. This is reinforced by the highly structured organization of
government, which goes against the inherently unstructured nature of social software technologies. Due to its
spontaneous, open and viral nature, social software is also considered to be a security threat well before it is
regarded as a potential solution. Many proponents of social software in government argue that the risks of
ignoring this emerging technology outweigh the risks of not exploring its potential. What follows is a set of issues
or risks posed that serve as barriers to government organizations considering the adoption of social software.

Security & Privacy

Information sharing is required at all levels of government. The exchange of mission critical information within
the Department of Defense, for example, needs to be protected and leakages prevented at any cost. The impact
of the insecure exchange of information, or the exchange of inaccurate information, can have far reaching
implications and can mean the difference between life and death. For these reasons, and security breaches that
social networking sites including Facebook® and Twitter ® have recently experienced, the US Government is
reticent to embrace social software solutions. What’s more, despite their wide appeal, the US Government
requires that all information management tools comply with the end to end lifecycle management of all
information resources created, stored, managed and archived within government organizations.

Because insurgents and other terrorists groups are currently leveraging social networking software, it would
benefit the American Government to develop a deeper understanding of how these technologies are being
utilized and how information is being shared. New frameworks for sharing information can be explored and
introduced to maintain the fine balance between security and function.

Organizational Structure
`
Due to its bureaucratic nature, the US Government has not established consistent policies and procedures
concerning the use of social software applications. At different levels and departments of government, access to
certain social software applications is permitted on both professional and personal levels, at varying degrees. At
present, social software is only sporadically regarded by a minority as a legitimate application. Moreover, the
constant change reorganization at senior levels of government (often dependent upon shifts in administration) is
prohibitive to the implementation of social software.
Robust social software with support for the broad requirements of the US Government’s information
management and record keeping policies would enable departments and agencies to demonstrate compliance.
This would result in buy‐in at all levels and mandate the development and adherence to new policies and
procedures around the use of social software within government organizations.
Inter-agency Collaboration

The US Government is made up of a myriad of organizations and agencies that focus on everything ranging from
education and healthcare reform to national defense and military operations—at federal, state and local levels.
Often, the completion of tasks or implementation of programs is dependent on the efforts of some or many of
these agencies working together to achieve results. Often, interagency collaboration is hindered by established
“silos” of excellence which, at times, encourage individualism and disrupt effective coordination. To facilitate
effective collaboration, there is an active need for robust social software tools that have the ability to connect
users to multiple communities and sub‐communities with guaranteed levels of security, a permission‐based
model of access and support for sub‐groups.

IGLOO’s social software solutions for Government can help departments and agencies improve the reliability and
consistency of transformation across governments with a more thorough, standardized approach for program
and service alignment and business design that promotes design efficiency and reusability, as well as for
transformation project planning and implementation.

Americans expect affordable, accessible and responsive services. The strategic use of social software will enable
the Government to better meet these expectations.

Employee Demographics

The size of the American Government as a body is staggering. For this reason alone, maintaining consistency
across technology infrastructures is all but impossible. As well, a constant flux in personnel hampers the
consistent maintenance of standards for technology usage. Finally, the government, along with other industries
and businesses, is experiencing a generational gap in its workforce. As the Net Generation floods the workforce
and overtakes the Boomers in numbers, they will increasingly expect organizations to support the way they
work—and the way they connect on a personal level. This new workforce is accelerating the move to social
networking, including cell phone‐based blogging, multimedia sharing, location‐based socialization services,
chat—these are their primary work tools.

At present, the US Government is struggling to support the divergent ways that people work, while providing a
fulfilling and motivating work environment. They must simultaneously retain the talent and human capital they
have and open up to new ways of working for future generations. Regardless of the generational mix of the
workforce, the overarching requirement is the same: creating better connections to the expertise and resources
people need to effectively deliver services to constituents and stakeholders.

Budget
Due to the cyclical nature of government funding and the rigorous approval processes involved, the decisions
required to source and staff social software solutions can be complicated, disrupted or delayed. Flexible, fast and
easy to ramp up solutions are vital to the delivery of good, affordable constituent services.

Where to Start: The IGLOO Approach

As you have read, social software can offer tremendous value to any type of organization—especially
government departments and organizations. But in order for these new social software solutions to be
successful, they require a strategic plan. This plan must deal with the technology, operational and cultural
issues every organization faces as they implement new technologies and working behaviours. In many cases, the
adoption of social software requires changes in existing business models and bureaucratic culture.
So where do you start? To lay the groundwork for successful deployment, IGLOO over the past 5 years has been
creating and updating its Best Practice Playbook of proven implementation methodologies. These
methodologies can significantly help your government agency or organization to deploy a robust online
community and social software solution.
The Community Playbook covers the following critical
stages of a successful deployment:
1. Planning & Ideation
2. Design & Build
3. Launch & Rollout
4. Manage & Sustain
5. Growth

Phase 1: Planning & Ideation

The planning phase involves assessing and documenting the executive vision for the project, understanding the
project's alignment with organizational goals and stakeholder needs, defining a high level scope, assessing the
technical complexities and determining project duration and cost estimates.

Phase 2: Design & Build

The community design, or blueprint, should flow from the overall goals and objectives of the site, map to the
profile of the members and the engagement model selected. The success of the community depends solely on
the members and their activities. A well‐designed community will allow for future promotion of new features,
content, programs and services to attract new members and demonstrate that the community is continuously
evolving.
Phase 3: Launch & Roll-out

Launching the community should be considered a significant event because it introduces the community to
potential members, and announces that the community is ready for use. It is recommended that organizations
launch using the most important social software features prominently, including forums, wikis, or member
profiles. Additional features can then be added as the community requires them. Content is king as a key driver
to instill value and engage users, so focusing on content is crucial for success.

Phase 4: Manage & Sustain

Once a community is launched, it is vital to keep the momentum going. If a plan is not in place to "feed" the
community, participation levels may taper off and dissuade new members from joining if they do not see any
activity. Launching and growing a community is not a one‐time effort that has a beginning and an end. It is an
ongoing process that needs a plan to attract and retain members in order to sustain the community.

Phase 5: Growth

Growth presents approaches and processes that are vital to building a vibrant, durable and sustainable online
community.
Case Studies

Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN)

The Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN) is an
innovation cluster that connects manufacturers,
partners, government agencies, academic
institutions and other stakeholder groups to create
a more responsive and globally competitive
manufacturing community through improved
collaboration, knowledge sharing and leading edge
innovations. MIN membership is free to
manufacturers and offers them invaluable
resources to help them raise awareness; buy and
sell goods and services online; and facilitate
ongoing innovations through improved
partnerships and business relationships.

More info: www.waterloomin.com

Mayor of Waterloo

The Mayor’s Community has been developed to
open up an ongoing dialogue between Mayor of
Waterloo Brenda Halloran and her constituents.
The online community provides an online forum
where the Mayor can connect and interact with her
constituents to discuss pressing issues, share
council information, present the latest regional
news, highlight upcoming events and book the
Mayor's time for an onsite visit.

More info: www.mayorofwaterloo.ca

Disaster Relief Rotarian Action Group (DRRAG)

The Disaster Relief Rotarian Action Group (DRRAG)
is subsidiary group of Rotary International. Rotary
International is a worldwide organization of
business and professional leaders who provide
humanitarian services to help to build goodwill
and peace in the world. Rotary's global
membership is approximately 1.2 million men and
women who belong to more than 33,000 Rotary
clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical
areas.

The DRRAG online community securely connects
Rotarians using a collection of easy to use Web 2.0
tools. Members can participate, collaborate and
share in the community using blogs, wikis and
forums. Every member can create a searchable online profile outlining their interests, experiences and skills
which is accessible to every member in the community. When a disaster occurs, members from more than 200
countries can instantly tap into the DRRAG network to solicit support from other Rotary members, offer
volunteering support and access links to other international emergency management NGO's and governments.
The community also provides news updates from the field on specific relief efforts and a collection of invaluable
resources directed to the dozens of agencies that respond to global crises.

More info: www.drrag.org


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© Copyright 2009 IGLOO Inc. The copyright to these materials is owned, without reservation, by IGLOO. These materials may not be copied in whole or part without
the express, written permission of IGLOO. The information in this document is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada.

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About IGLOO Software

The Internet Affect — Web 2.0

Robust Social Software & Online Communities

Key Business Drivers

Increasing Access to Information

Increasing Global Responsiveness

The IGLOO Software Solution

Guaranteed Security & Privacy

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Implementation—Hurdles & Roadblocks

Where to Start: The IGLOO Approach

Phase 3: Launch & Roll-out

Disaster Relief Rotarian Action Group (DRRAG)

22 FREDERICK STREET, 6TH FLOOR

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