The OhMyGov! Interview: Mark Drapeau, Gov 2.0 Impresario

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The OhMyGov! Interview: Mark Drapeau, Gov 2.0 Impresario

By OhMyGov! Apr 29 2009, 02:54 AM

OhMyGov! recently caught up with Mark Drapeau, blogger, scientist, and social media man-about-town. We asked the National Defense University Twitterer-in-residence (not his official title) about his time at NDU, how the Obama Administration is embracing Gov 2.0, and what animal biology has to do with national defense and social media. Here's what he had to say:

For the uninitiated, what is “Government 2.0”?
Government 2.0 is the nickname given to the idea of Web 2.0 technologies being incorporated into government operations. Some people don't like having 'versions' of the Web or government as we do for software releases, but it's too catchy of a name to dispose of, even for non-geeks.

You were a successful biologist before being awarded a Science and Technology fellowship at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. What made you come over to the dark side of blogging?
While doing postdoctoral neuroscience research at NYU, I realized that I wanted to apply the skills I had learned as a scientist -- experimentation, critical thinking, technical writing, among others -- outside the laboratory. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, our largest general scientific society, has a terrific program for just that. The Fellowships establish and nurture critical links between federal decision-makers and scientific professionals to support public policy, and help to increase public understanding of science and technology. That fellowship brought me to Washington, D.C., and eventually through a series of interviews to an internal think tank at the Department of Defense.

What do they teach at the National Defense University?
National Defense University is funded by the DOD, and chartered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its mission is to prepare military and civilian leaders from the U.S. and other countries to better address national and international security challenges through multi-disciplinary educational programs, research, professional exchanges and outreach. A typical student is a Lt. Colonel rank in the Army, or the equivalent in the different military services and civilian ranks of the government.

Give us a taste of what you do at NDU.
One of the research components of NDU is the Center for Technology and National Security Policy, which examines the implications of technological innovation for U.S. national security policy and military planning. CTNSP combines scientific and technical assessments with analyses of current strategic and defense policy issues, taking on topics to bridge the gap. As a research fellow there, I've studied life sciences, energy, and social software as they relate to strategic national security policy.

During your fellowship you took an interest in social networking and realized the Department of Defense could benefit from tweeting and poking. How can DoD and other agencies reconcile the rift between security and socializing?
I once heard a senior DoD official say that the balance between security and sharing was like the balance between inhaling and exhaling. Security concerns are non-trivial, but if lack of sharing actually impedes mission success, you have an even bigger problem. So I think the concepts of the future are risk management and mission assurance. Sometimes an increased risk to security is acceptable if information sharing will increase the chance of completing a mission.

You say your fellowship expected you to “think big ideas” all day long. You came up with something called Social Software & Security. Give us an overview.
We call our CTNSP research program Social Software and Security, or S3 (we like acronyms). Our basic goals are to conduct an inventory of available social technologies around the world, track global government social software case studies, identify impediments to social software use in DoD, engage with private sector experts for informal advice, and provide our expertise and recommendations to senior decision-makers within DoD.

What is your greatest frustration with the government today?
It is very difficult to measure the 'success' of a new government initiative. There are no profits, employees have different incentives, and missions tend to be unique. Many, many challenges abound.

It seems that you are a jack of many trades—animal behavior biology, national defense, Twitter and social media, not to mention Internet heartthrob in about two years. What is the common denominator in these fields?
The core thing I have always studied is animal behavior. My doctoral dissertation was on insect sexual behavior, and I've studied how animals make simple choices, how the brain controls sleep patterns, and how social insects like bees evolved to be that way. Now that I'm mainly working outside the laboratory, I'm applying what I know about why and how animals behave to human behavior. I look at social software and the networks that arise from it through the lens of animal behavior -- it's just people talking to people, sharing information. But groups like that have rules and patterns and predictability and can be generalized across all networks to some degree. So, I sometimes tell the NDU students when I lecture why "the DoD should be studying ants."

Social software and national security operations don't seem like natural bedfellows. How should we be thinking about them together?
Security concerns with all computer software are a serious issue. A decreasing sense of privacy in society, combined with people voluntarily putting a lot of their personal information on sites like Facebook, combined with the proliferation of wireless connections, mobile web technology, and the like, makes all of these networks highly vulnerable. At the same time, security at the expense of sharing information that can prevent a terrorist attack or even get a critical update to a single soldier or submarine is unbalanced. We have to be concerned with mission assurance and be willing to take on more risk within some limits. There are an increasing number of situations where we need unity of effort without having unity of control—and social software can help. This applies to not only DoD but other government agencies at the federal, state, and local level, as well as foreign allies and other entities.

It's a common assumption across town that the Obama Administration is more open to Gov 2.0 initiatives that the Bush Administration. What does the record show so far?
One of the very first things President Obama did was release a memo about a more open government, with the themes of transparency, participation, and collaboration. There have been a number of initiatives that suggest they will make good on this, including having a more modern website with a blog, and events like 'Open For Questions' where tens of thousands of people voted millions of times on what the President should be asked. Finally, individual agencies are being encouraged to incorporate these values into their operations as well—remember, most of the government is not in the White House! Governments have many more restrictions than political campaigns do, but all the signs are positive.

In a 2007 article for the Washington Times, you said that it’s important to outsmart Al-Qaeda on the Internet. Beyond following Osama bin Laden on Twitter, what should we be doing?
If only it was so easy as to tweet @UBL, right? We need to use social software to network and share information better, as part of a larger communications strategy. Terrorist and criminal groups are very good at using new Internet technologies ranging from online banking to online video to accomplish their goals of spreading their information, virally and effectively. We could be doing more of that.

Between twittering, blogging, and saving the world one bee at a time, do you ever sleep? And do you dream in tweets?
I recently co-hosted a great event called Government 2.0 Camp as part of a larger initiative called Government 2.0 Club. Apparently, at one of the sessions someone asked how I get anything done, since I am seemingly tweeting all the time. But really, I've just incorporated it into my life—if I read something interesting, I tweet about it—it takes 10 seconds. I do work really hard, but I sleep about six hours a night.

What is the biggest drawback of social networking sites?
They have horrible customer service. Ironically, many of the founders of social networking sites are notoriously bad at socially networking with their users.

What is your favorite web 2.0 tool?
Twitter, because it has become much more than a tool where people can talk within a social network. If you maximize its power, the people you follow on Twitter can act as a filter for everything that's happening in the world. Reading my Twitter feed has largely replaced my emailing, IMing, texting, and RSS feed reading—people I trust and have come to know point me in the right direction. And many people are able to follow what I am doing, what I recommend reading, and so forth, and in that way I can be an influencer while I am also being influenced.

You’ve talked about the U.S. armed forces using “now” media to perform “low-intensity operations” that involve far more than combat. What do you mean exactly?
The United States needs to develop the capacity to conduct complex operations that require close civil-military planning and cooperation in the field. Complex operations consist of counterinsurgency; stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations; and irregular warfare. Using social software is part of a larger preparation for complex operations by catalyzing cooperation, coordination and synchronization among education, training, lessons learned, and research institutions and organizations.