GovLoop (http://govloop.com), an online community created for and by government employees, announced today it has signed up its 10,000th member less than a year after launching. Dubbed by some as a "Facebook for Feds," GovLoop brings together government employees from the U.S. and other nations to discuss ideas, share best practices and create a community dedicated to the betterment of government.
A revolution is happening in government as the result of a new generation of government employees, the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, and the Obama administration's focus on transparency, participation, and collaboration. This revolution is often called "Government 2.0" and GovLoop is at the center of this movement. The social network was developed by Steve Ressler, a 28-year old federal employee from Tampa, Fla. who is also a co-founder of Young Government Leaders (http://youngovernmentleaders.org). Fed up with the silos that existed across government agencies, including artificial barriers between levels of government, rank and age, Ressler believed there had to be a better way to share information, so he launched GovLoop.com in June 2008.
I. INTRODUCTION
The globalization revolution is undeniably well underway. Some of the primary leaders of the revolution are the off-shoring outsourcers of the world in search of readily available talent at prices below what is available in the traditional geographical outsourcing centers. Certainly, U.S. companies seeking information technology resources--as well as those looking for human resources to support the ever-growing customer care requirements of their business--are at the forefront of the movement. Some of those companies are seeking their own solutions, but many have turned to business process outsourcing companies for assistance.
Business process outsourcing is, generally speaking, the contracting of a specific business task to a third party service provider. Processes that are best suited to be outsourced are those that a company requires but does not depend upon to maintain its position in the marketplace. There are two primary categories of business process outsourcing. One category is commonly referred to as "back office outsourcing" which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing. The other category is commonly referred to as "front office outsourcing" which includes customer-related services such as marketing, customer contact management, and technical support.
The globalization of business in general has resulted in the need for companies to be able to provide support to their customers in many different languages. At the same time, developments in technology have provided the ability for business process outsourcers to provide a cost effective global delivery platform. The convergence of the need for a portfolio of services to be sourced globally with the ability of business process outsourcers to do so on a cost effective basis has driven the outsourcers to geographic locations previously ignored by most business sectors. By many estimates, there are currently off-shore outsourcing vendors in more than 175 different
Dropbox's efforts are so potentially meaningful because the FTC states that, among its chief priorities for any federal rules, are clear, reader-friendly contractual language and privacy policies. While Google is fighting such efforts with lobbyists, Dropbox is giving an example of how to cut legalese from a contract and let users know exactly what they're signing up for.
Paul Greenberg explains it this way in CRM at the Speed of Light, Fourth Edition: Social CRM 2.0 Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers "It is a revolution in how we communicate, not how we do business....We are now living in the era of the social customer.
"We all know that Internet and communications technology is changing rapidly, creating huge opportunities for business innovation and individual self-expression.
Most people are probably not aware, however, that privacy law is not evolving nearly as quickly. It is time to update legal protections to reflect the impact the digital revolution is having on modern life.
Cloud computing -- a bit of tech-jargon meaning the use of remote servers to store and process data -- is a great example.
The movement of personal and proprietary data off desktop computers and into "the cloud", which is made up of server farms and broadband connections, is a major disruptive trend in computing.
Unless our laws change to account for cloud computing and other equally momentous technology developments, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure will become a relic of the past.
The federal law setting standards for government access to personal communications -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- was written more than two decades ago, before the Internet took off. "
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