Idea Factory Goes DHS-Wide

Over at Wired Workplace, Brittany Ballenstedt reports that the Department of Homeland Security is expanding the IdeaFactory, a program piloted in the Transportation Security Administration to allow employees to submit and discuss suggestions for improving the agency, to cover all the DHS components. Larry Orluskie, a DHS spokesman, told Brittany that:

I like the idea that it's Web 2.0; it's interactive....It's not like some agencies that have an e-mail concept, where you send an e-mail or complete a form template on a Web page with your idea. IdeaFactory is interactive - you put in the idea and people vote on it and submit comments. It can even spin around and morph into another idea.

I agree that email inboxes can be a depressing place to send suggestions, especially if someone isn't monitoring them particularly closely, and a response is not guaranteed. But I think there has to be some genuine investment to make sure that the conversations IdeaFactory is meant to foster actually happen: you don't want queries to just sit out there.