We’re working with Social Media leaders from all walks of the federal government to identify and solve our toughest challenges, and unmistakably improve the services and cost savings all our agencies critically need.

Justin Herman, the General Service Administration’s (GSA) social media manager

Glad to see this sort of thinking and creativity in government. It can be challenging in such an established bureaucracy system to change communication patterns and integrate new tools, but he has done some incredible work in this position. Among the social media accomplishments:

• Created the first federal-wide Social Media Community of Practice, which brings together more than 200 federal practitioners from over 40 agencies and offices for an exchange of ideas and information.
• Played a major role in GSA’s recent signing of the first federal agreement with Google+.
• Leading the government’s side of the online Federal Social Media Directory. Agencies have been required to start loading their information since May but it’s been slow. The directory is expected to go public later this year and will spell out what every agency is doing on Social Media and what’s on the drawing board.
• Implemented a regular Social Media Census for agencies to report their metrics and progress, which had never been tracked. That includes traffic numbers, what features are still to come and what they have learned from their customers who are able to comment at any time about the service.
• Created a Wiki for all federal agencies to share their best practices and see what others were doing. It’s better for agencies to share apps ideas than create silos of them, he said.

For more accomplishments and information about social media + the feds, check out this article. My cousin Andy is also quoted!