The White House required all agencies to establish websites for sharing ideas using the free IdeaShare system. They are all now up and listed at http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/open/tool_agency_poc.shtml. Now is the time to share your ideas with your agency officials. Don’t be shy!
It’s great to see that, but I’m wondering if you might have an answer to my problem.
As a vet, I signed up at Openva.ideascale.com and have spent about 10 unsuccessful minutes trying to find where/how to submit an idea, so once I get that figured out, that will be an idea I will submit.
Finally found it! But then once I submitted an idea, the link is no longer there. Have submitted issue to ideascale!
Each agency runs its own version of Ideascale, so you need to establish a log in for each site. They send you a verification e-mail. Once you acknowledge this e-mail, you can vote on ideas and submit your own.
Yeah, I noticed that Terry (and complained about it to ideascale). I also find it disconcerting that each site states that they are open to ideas through March 19th. Wonder what it is that drives federal agencies to even think about limiting when they are willing to listen to their customers. It really brings into question whether they are listening at all.
I agree that this should be an on-going process, but I guess that they don’t want the ideas to get stale and I’m hoping that this is a pilot, that will be assessed to determine if it should be a permanent tool to solicit input from stakeholders. I guess we’ll have to make the most of it while we have it. There is power in numbers, so we need to spread the word.