GovLaunch - DOT IdeaHub for Employees
What do you think?
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Here's more from the DOT Blog:
Today, DOT is taking employee engagement and innovation to the next level with our new IdeaHub tool. While this is good for workers here, it's also good for the public. A more effective Department will be better able to fulfill its mission.
IdeaHub is an online community where employees can post ideas for their colleagues to comment and build upon. It's a collaborative website where all of our staff are free to participate. Now, we've got over 55,000 DOTers spread across the country, so an undertaking of this scope--unprecedented among Federal agencies--was not easy.
IdeaHub also gives us the opportunity to post 'challenges' to our workforce as a way of getting people to think about specific questions or problems. For example, our opening challenge asks: "How can DOT help you do your job more effectively?"
And, believe me, the ideas are already pouring in.
IdeaHub is easy to navigate, too. I took it for a spin myself yesterday!
But IdeaHub is not all fun-and-games. We expect this tool to encourage:
- Budget savings and increased productivity
- Increased engagement and workplace satisfaction
- Greater agility and collaboration within the Department
- Unfiltered information from our front lines
Tags: GovLaunch, collaboration, collaboration government, gov20, government 2.0, human resources, mostcomment, open government, opengov
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by GovLoop on -
My thoughts:
-I'm curious about design. Looks like different tech than normal IdeaScale.
-UI looks good
-Wondering how it was rolled out internally.
-Wondering if will always be up. Select contests, etc
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Permalink Reply by Lillian Christman on -
To respond to your question about the UI design -- IdeaHub was not built using IdeaScale. The user experience was custom designed to support DOT usage requirements.
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Permalink Reply by GovLoop on
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Oh yeah...cool to see GovLooper Jenn Gustetic in the picture of team doing the awesome work.
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Permalink Reply by Jenn Gustetic on -
thanks for the shout out Steve. It really has been a pleasure (and still is) working with the DOT team on a VERY agressive launch (4 months!) and now the immediate post-launch period figuring out how to make the ideation process run as smoothly and effectively as possible.
Stay tuned--I'm sure there will be a bunch a great stories that come out of this.
Jenn
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Permalink Reply by Todd Solomon on
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Totally psyched for this tool. Three cool things about DOT IdeaHub? 1) We have all of these different operating agencies at DOT, and IdeaHub allows us to designate ideas as being Department-wide or within an OA. 2) Response flexibility is great; local managers can pick up ideas they like whenever they want, and ideas that garner votes and activity will get reviewed by key Dept. officials. 3) We have no idea how the IdeaHub community will evolve; sure, DOT has processes in place, but this thing is going to grow the way it wants to. 55,000 people will make this community/forum their own!
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Permalink Reply by GovLoop on
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Very cool. I like your point on the community will decide how to grow it in their way.
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Permalink Reply by Karen Snyder on -
Lillian Christman is too modest - she was the User Experience designer for IdeaHub! I helped with QA testing on the tool and it is a very cool tool...lots of fun to use. Employees are already engaged and hundreds of ideas have already poured in.
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Permalink Reply by GovLoop on
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That's awesome. I mentioned it cause I thought it looked awesome :) Was it built from scratch or another technology?
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Permalink Reply by Lillian Christman on
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Thanks! It was built from scratch.
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Permalink Reply by Terrence (Terry) Hill PHR on -
Looks great! We tried to adopt TSA's IdeaFactory, which was launched in 2007, but have not been successful yet. It is a very similar system and was built in-house too. It's very similar to MyStarbucksIdeas and Dell's IdeaStorm. Very interactive and engaging. Kudos to DOT!
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Permalink Reply by Martha Garvey on -
Looks very inviting...and exciting. Can't wait for the results.
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Permalink Reply by transportgooru on -
I had a chance to see the Demo at the DOT Atrium yesterday for a brief moment. It was just fantastic. The system looks pretty awesome and was thoroughly impressed with the design/UI. Unfortunately, I couldn't personally experience the system from the comfort of my desk because we were told that at this point contractors like myself (even those with USDOT e-mail addresses) are not allowed on the system.
Given the great value and the success this tool has already enjoyed, I'm curious to know if there are plans to open up the access to contractors and other agency personnel (such as FEMA, DHS, etc) working with Department on various cross-cutting issues/projects?
A couple of other related questions: Can this same tool be leveraged to gain stakeholder input for a Program Advisory Committee that is advising the U.S.DOT? If yes, who would be the point person that the Director of the Program should approach for requesting to use this tool?
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