"If you’re a developer you’re already five steps ahead of everyone else. Scripting is the new literacy, and the ability to learn and execute on your ideas without relying on anybody else is going to be invaluable as you iterate and experiment on building something."

-Matt Mullenweg, The future of WordPress: Q&A with founder Matt Mullenweg, memeburn.com, July 8, 2011.

"The more I learn about Enterprise 2.0, the more inclined I am to encourage companies to throw caution to the wind: buy (or build) some well-designed lightweight tools that take advantage of emergence and game mechanics, find a few leaders willing to lead by example, and go live."

- Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0 the Indian Way,  AndrewMcAfee.org, April 7, 2011.

"Information technology should enable government to better serve the American people. But despite spending more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, the Federal Government has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT. Too often, Federal IT projects run over budget, behind schedule, or fail to deliver promised functionality. Many projects use “grand design” approaches that aim to deliver functionality every few years, rather than breaking projects into more manageable chunks and demanding new functionality every few quarters. In addition, the Federal Government too often relies on large, custom, proprietary systems when “light technologies” or shared services exist.

Government officials have been trying to adopt best practices for years – from the Raines Rules of the 1990s through the Clinger Cohen Act and the acquisition regulations that followed. But obstacles have always gotten in the way. This plan attempts to clear these obstacles, allowing agencies to leverage information technology to create a more efficient and effective government."

-Vivek Kundra, U.S. Chief Information Officer, 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management, December 9, 2010

People are increasingly interested in making healthy and environmentally friendly choices at work and at home, and your intranet can support this way of life. Use your intranet to engage and educate employees on greener lifestyles with our top ten tips.

Top Ten Tips for a Greener Intranet

Tip #1: Create a Green Community sub-site

Spearhead your campaign with a Green Community area of the intranet, and then add in collaborative apps like the ones below.

Tip #2: Suggestion box

• Give employees a voice to share ideas and feedback
• Encourage comments and “like” of ideas
• Start contests and give prizes
• Promote interest & others to join the conversations

Tip #3: Green Tip of the Day

Create a Green Tip of The Day widget… like “did you know that using a French press is the greenest way to make your daily cup of coffee?” or encourage staff to bring their lunches in reusable containers to reduce packaged waste

Tip #4: Community Initiatives

Register employees for community initiatives using the training application; management is done automatically by the app!

Tip #5: Documents and Policies

Post electronic brochures with attractive and friendly visuals. For example, create posters that show how to sort waste in kitchen recycling, compost and garbage bins.

Tip #6: Discussion Board

Encourage employees to post green topics for conversation … “Should the office add compost bins in the kitchen?”

Tip #7: Contest widget

Run environmentally friendly contests that have staying power:

"In a space currently dominated by proprietary technologies, managing the long-term preservation, provenance, and accessibility of digital content is often downplayed or ignored."

- Cheryl McKinnon, CMO of Nuxeo, From information overload to Dark Ages 2.0?, OpenSource.com, October 29, 2010.

"Suffice it to say, we’re in the middle of one of the most important computing shifts in history. And as has happened before with other major paradigm transitions, new businesses will emerge to define and dominate markets."

- Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net, 2011: The Enterprise Resets, TechCrunch, January 2, 2011.

Sheri Bigelow, Happiness Engineer at Automattic, gives tips on providing technical user support to WordPress bloggers. Her tips easily can crossover to other customer support tasks in the information technology field.

"Until we learn that, in an increasingly content-centric world, we cannot continue to base automation efforts exclusively on a technology-centric model, agencies will continue to invest millions of dollars in programs and have little to show for it."

-Barry Schaeffer, Federal IT program failures: It's the content, stupid, Federal Computer Week, September 23, 2010.

Humans have hunted from the earliest times. Maybe that’s why we often accept the burdensome quest for information. We’re accustomed to the chase—even fooled into thinking we’re doing something valuable. Yet time lost in pointless pursuit means something is sacrificed. In the case of college enrollment, a drawn-out chase can mean losing top candidates to other institutions and ending up with a mediocre catch.

During peak season, enrollment office employees frenetically pursue information and answers, compiling scattered documentation in the hope of making quick, prudent decisions. Admissions, student aid, registrar, scholarship committees and other areas each have separate forms requiring distinctive information.

Yet as each department collects what it needs, useful information that could be shared is often requested again…and again. Information that could move decisions forward sits idle, garnering little or no attention.

Regrettably, as processes are deferred, institutions risk losing top candidates to other institutions.

Make informed decisions, quickly

Whether we’re considering undergraduate or graduate admissions, student financial aid, scholarship applications, or faculty search, the overriding goal is to garner and retain top people. Even though roles and responsibilities differ among departments, most draw vital information from transcripts, applications, test scores, essays, and references. Often, specific data found on forms is valuable in multiple places. Unfortunately, departmental software systems that store this precious information create data silos, resulting in information that is unknowingly collected multiple times for varying purposes.

Gathering information several times—even if it’s done efficiently—wastes resources, results in redundancy, generates errors, and causes delays.

Why not re-use your information to satisfy current needs and anticipate what lies ahead? Enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) software, integrated meaningfully with your business systems, redefine efficiency. By centralizing and securing access to content, then pushing and pulling information wherever it’s needed according to your pre-set business rules, ECM and BPM free your staff to work efficiently and focus on the services for which they were hired.