A few weeks ago the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies at the General Services Administration finally launched apps.gov NOW (in beta since August) a set of tools that federal employees can use to support their open government plans and engage citizens. The toolkit includes a blogging tool, two wiki tools, a challenge tool (to launch challenges and idea contests) and two discussion forum tools.
Here's how the system works:
- Sign up for a free, policy-compliant tools. (Federal agencies only)
- Agencies pick a product. They have blogs, a challenge tool, wikis and forums.
- Apps.gov will build it for the agency and send them an email when it's ready
- Agencies can select a theme, upload their logo, and add content.
The platform is still in beta and we're interested to see how agencies and users interact with the system.
