When the founders of a small software shop started on their open source, basement project in 1999, they never dreamed their work would be responsible for catching terrorists. But fast forward seven years, and that's exactly what their product does. 

In the aftermath of 9/11, when the intelligence community was being restructured to improve interagency collaboration, senior government leaders decided to create the first social network and information sharing platform, which became known as A-Space. The goal was innovative and eloquent in its simplicity: connect intelligence officers across the 16 disparate agencies so they could share information and tips seamlessly.

To create A-Space — short for Analyst Space — the Director of National Intelligence contracted ManTech International to lead the systems integration and project management piece of the contract. But the secret sauce behind the technology came from an up-and-coming social technology firm called Jive Software that had caught the interest of some venture capitalists two years earlier after amassing 1500 clients between 2001 and 2004. 

The launch of A-Space, which took place in September 2008, was highly anticipated and the site's success propelled Jive further into the world of government contracting. Using that momentum, the firm captured the attention, admiration, and ultimately, check book of the Air Force Medical Service, which hired Jive to build a Knowledge Exchange — the hub of 20,000 Department of Defense medical professionals.

Dave Hersh, CEO, and Jim Kovach, who heads up Jive's government practice, recently sat down with OhMyGov! to talk about Jive's history and momentum in government as a user and adopter of what they call their "social business software."

Genesis

In 1999, two programmers, Matt Tucker and Bill Lynch, began tinkering in their basements and ended up creating what was at the time a robust and innovative commenting forum. Realizing they were programmers and not businessmen, the duo recruited the help of their trusted friend Hersh, a business student, to take the helm as CEO and find a way to market their product. After a few successful years, Jive had amassed enough customers to obtain $15 million in additional financing from Sequoia Capital and expand development of their business and product. Apparently, as Web 2.0 was developing, "the private sector was inundated with small projects that needed focus and order and Jive saw this opportunity and developed an application to scale the discussion into a forum," Hersh said. Through support forums, businesses were realizing the return on investment and looked to Jive for a simple platform that could be customized for their needs, so Jive launched Clearspace in 2007, a social knowledge platform that took off.

As Clearspace evolved, it provided what Hersh describes as a richer tool for wikis, basic social networking, blogs, and forums. The software offers a customizable home page for each user, similar to Google's "iGoogle" feature.

The Rise of Gov 2.0

As a smaller company with competitors in the social networking space, Jive found their niche by integrating with other partners. For example, Jive provides social layers to existing platforms like Microsoft's Sharepoint. But it was Jive's partnership with ManTech and the success with A-Space that provided entry and a bigger presence in the emerging government Web 2.0 market, since coined "Gov 2.0."

Today, even NASA is using Jive's software in the lab environment for social networking to encourage collaborative innovating. And Hearsh and Kovach added that the Air Force knowledge system is "improving collaborations with their content management system."

"Jive ties the content to the conversation," said Hersh. "Ultimately, this is a new way to communicate and do business."

The firm is also making it easier for government customers to access Jive's plug-and-play products using an annual subscription model available on the General Services Administration's (GSA) schedule. The subscription costs $54 per user, said Kovach. Jive has also recently partnered with Carahsoft Technology Corp., a leading government IT solutions provider.

When asked why government and why now, Kovach said, "Every agency is doing something social and with the presidential memorandum on transparency, each agency is trying to understand and develop social technologies and are looking at industry for the best practices and the leaders in the space."

Going forward, Jive is looking to to manage the big conversation between agencies and federal employees, helping them bridge that conversation and influence internal and external policies, programs, and processes using social tools.

Is Gov 2.0 Worth the Hype?

Sure, Web 2.0 tools can dramatically increase collaboration, information sharing and engagement. But there are drawbacks to Gov 2.0. For instance, if each federal agency adopts its own unique social network from a vendor like Jive, many of the systems will be unable to communicate with one another — thereby increasing the communication barriers between agencies. Of course, Jive noted, anyone using their products will be able to communicate seamlessly with other Jive platforms, regardless of the customer.

At $54 per user, the technology seems attractively priced — until of course you begin to think about the size of some government agencies. Even at a medium-sized agency like the Department of Agriculture, with over 100,000 employees, Jive's subscription model would end up costing $5,400,000 per year, assuming all employees joined. This is a big chunk of change considering most developers can build a robust social network for under $250,000. It's even more expensive if you take into account the fact that a variety of open-source social networks, such as Ning and Elgg, are available for free, although they do come with scalability problems and would need customization.

Of course, if an agency is looking to experiment with social networking without committing much capital, Jive might be the right solution. By scoping small and letting the software gurus at Jive customize the solution for the agency, federal managers could determine with little capital if the platform is worth the fanfare, and if the employees will actually adopt use. Given the incredible growth of social networks and the fact that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is actually women aged 54-79 and not college kids that can't buy a drink, it is highly likely that deploying such a platform would yield significant and rapid buy-in from staff.

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