Co-founder of a professional organisation known as Young Government Leaders, Steve Ressler aims to help government in the US move into the age of Web 2.0 with the launch of GovLoop.

Ressler told Government Technology (GT), the site will grow into a hub for the public-sector community in the US  – where government workers can exchange ideas and explore new opportunities.

“I saw a real need to have a place online where we could talk, connect and share ideas. So I started going to more conferences, meeting a lot of really interesting people. Age didn’t matter – they were across all ages, across all levels of government, state and local, some in academia and some were contractors. That’s how I got the idea for GovLoop,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to have a place where we could share ideas on various topics? [For example] I’m a new employee, how do I dress at work? What are the protocols?” Or I’m a local CIO in rural Kansas and I want to start a blog. Have any other government agencies done this?”

“You can share best practices back and forth. That’s the whole idea,” he said.

Ressler told GT the site is rapidly catching on and that it provides government employees in the US with a “vehicle to give them informal advice about what’s really going on. The type of informal advice no one is giving you”.
It’s a fine balance of government trying to learn to deal with Web 2.0, Ressler said.

 “We’re talking about Web 2.0 and the whole principle of Web 2.0 is being open, collaborative and creating. Those are things the government, historically, has not been good at. Government’s risk averse, so why would they put all their stuff out in the open? They’re not used to rapidly innovating. So it’s a fine balance of government trying to learn to deal with Web 2.0,” he said.