Past and Future Collaborative Expedition Workshops    (40HS)

Collaborative Expedition Workshop #78, November 3, 2008, at NSF    (40HT)

Title: Potentials and Realities of Open Collaboration and Open Standards: Going Green Regionally, Virtually, and Beyond    (40HU)

A. Workshop Purpose    (40I1)

This workshop will explore the emerging cyberinfrastructure landscape for robust, collaborative organizing, that together with consistent metrics (i.e. carbon footprint modeling), and stakeholder-based dialogue capabilities will advance "Go Green" initiatives being established regionally, virtually, and beyond. Building on best practices from international environmental awareness communities to on-going state and local efforts, participants will have the opportunity to learn and contribute to this challenge of unprecedented scale, complexity, and significance to national health, economic well-being, and security.    (40OG)

As "reducing our carbon footprint" moves from slogan to global imperative, collaboration augmented by "silicon-based" collaborative work environments offers double dividends. The "physical" carbon-based movement of people, goods, and services exacts a much higher carbon cost, than the "virtual" silicon-based movement of people's artifacts and intents - including ideas, knowledge, and requests/ acknowledgements around goods and services available through the World Wide Web. As communities strategize on ways to reduce human impact on climate change, "virtual collaborations" are poised to amplify effectiveness and timely results, including greater "buy-in" than is obtained through traditional ways of organizing.    (40O8)

Participants will explore how simulated "practice & high-performance readiness hubs" can be built on credible commitments and foresight from multiple forms of expertise. Such commitments, expressed in open standards, enable coherent, yet comprehensive visual and auditory information flows. This collective communications and discernment capacity outperforms "command and control-only" organizing.    (40I2)

The impact of open standards for national readiness at both strategic and solution levels will be highlighted by examining the forces, timing, and artifacts by which transformative standards emerge. How can early lessons from intensive, rapid action, and high performance settings (i.e. emergency preparedness), anticipate and influence the pace in which similar transformative improvements in mission delivery of non-emergency public services (i.e. broad-based "go green" initiatives) can be realized, across levels of government?    (40I3)

This workshop will open up dialogue to facilitate "bootstrapping" among multiple communities and institutions whose individual and collective contributions to shared design challenges will shape our national experience of the practice of "green" cyberinfrastructure for years to come.    (40I4)

This workshop will provide an example of how to set conditions by which groups that may not have regular opportunities to share information outside of their agency boundaries and jurisdictions can be brought together. This will support the development of a broader vision among stakeholders engaged in environmental challenges, from local re-cycling and telecommuting to climate change mitigation strategies and beyond.    (40I5)

It is likely that how we design our cyberinfrastructure (including environmental stewardship and non-emergency knowledge-sharing environments that influence policy-making, innovation, and agility) will play a pivotal role in the continued vitality and creativity of our 21st century democracy.    (40I6)

In addition, this workshop will demonstrate an organizing process that can be employed anytime a purpose cuts across organizational boundaries. This is timely for workshop participants who have come to appreciate that building trusted relationships is the essence of eGovernment. How people design the organizing process for potentially “collaborative” settings, existing beyond traditional boundaries, can spell the difference between “multiplicative power” and “no power” arising to achieve high performance results that matter to all.    (40I7)

"It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow." Werner Heisenberg    (40I8)

"Creativity is a process that can be observed only at the intersection where individuals, domains, and fields intersect." Csikszentmihalyi, 1999    (40I9)

"Architecture is the thoughtful making of space." Louis Kahn    (40IA)

"Information is the currency of democracy." Thomas Jefferson    (40IB)

"Design is the currency of the 21st century." American Institute of Architects    (40IC)

Workshop planning provides an opportunity to experience shared stewardship around broad mission goals that include:    (40ID)

B. Draft Workshop Questions    (40II)

General Questions for Workshops in 2008    (40JA)

C. Agenda    (40JB)

9:00 a.m. - Check-in and Coffee    (40JC)

9:15 a.m. - Welcome and Introductions    (40JD)

SusanTurnbull, GSA and Co-chair, Emerging Technology Subcommittee and Co-Chair, Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT CG    (40JE)

RichardSpivack, NIST and Co-chair, Emerging Technology Subcommittee    (40JF)

9:30 a.m. - Who is Here and Who is Missing? What is your Sense of Purpose in Relation to the Overall Workshop Goals?    (40JG)

10:10 a.m. - Role and Implications of Open Collaboration and Open Standards for "Going Green"    (40JH)

10:55 a.m. - Building Stakeholder-centered Communities of Interest at Regional and Virtual Levels    (40JI)

11:00 a.m. - Break Out Sessions:    (40JJ)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_One (remote teleconference only)    (40JO)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_Two    (40JP)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_Three    (40JQ)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_Four    (40JR)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_Five    (40JS)

/Workshop_11_03_2008_BreakOutGroup_Six    (40JT)

12:00 - Report out from Break Out Sessions and Discussion    (40JU)

12:20 pm - Wrap-up    (40JV)

12:30 noon - 1:30 p.m. - Networking Lunch    (40JW)

D. Draft Resources    (40JX)

1. Federal, State, Local, and City Governments and Partnerships - Go Green    (40JY)

2. Other Federal initiatives    (40MK)

2. Non-profit Organizations    (40JZ)

3. For-profit Organizations    (40K0)

4. Recent Legislation    (40K1)

5. Transitioning to Virtual Organizations    (40K2)

6. Open Standards Toward the Greening of Cyberinfrastructures    (40KC)

E. Collaborative Expedition Workshop Series Background    (40KU)

Purpose and Audience: GSA's USA Services/ Intergovernmental leads monthly Collaborative Expedition workshops to advance the quality of citizen-government dialogue and collaborations at the crossroads of intergovernmental initiatives, Communities of Practice, Federal IT research and IT user agencies. The workshops seek to advance collaborative innovations in government and community services such as emergency preparedness, environmental monitoring, healthcare and law enforcement.    (40OC)

The workshops serve individuals from government, business, and non-government organizations to practice an emerging societal form, Intergovernmental Communities of Practice (CoPs), in light of the Citizen-Centric Government goal of the President’s Management Agenda and the Public Information Access provisions of the E-government Act of 2002.    (40OD)

Each workshop organizes participation around a common purpose, larger than any institution, including government. By learning how to appreciate multiple perspectives around potentials and realities of this larger “purpose”, subsequent actions by individuals representing many forms of expertise, can be better expressed in their home and collaborative settings. By centering around people and the "whole system" challenges they organize around, IT design and development processes can mature with less risk and greater national yield of breakthrough performance.    (40OE)

Joint workshop sponsors in addition to GSA, include the Emerging Technology Subcommittee of the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee and Coordinating Groups of the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development, including, Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development CG, High End Computing CG, High Confidence Software and Systems CG, Software Design and Productivity CG, and Human-Computer Interaction and Information Management CG. These organizations value this “frontier outpost” to open up quality conversations, augmented by information technology, to leverage the collaborative capacity of united, but diverse sectors of society, seeking to discover, frame, and act on national potentials.    (40OF)