In Search of Excellence in Government

I'm here at our Excellence in Government conference, where we're zeroing in on two topics: managing the workforce of tomorrow and preparing for the impending presidential transition. Not surprisingly, those two subjects are generating a lot of discussion.

This morning, I got a chance to hear Roxie Merritt, the Defense Department's director of new media, and Alex Casanova, a senior technologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, talk about what they're doing online. The Pentagon is experimenting with all kinds of Web 2.0 techniques, and is reaching out directly to bloggers to bypass the mainstream media. CDC is big into Second Life, and has recently built a new island in the alternate universe.

At lunch, Jennifer Deal, author of Retiring the Generation Gap, gave a fascinating presentation about her research, which shows that the differences between generations aren't nearly as profound as people tend to think they are. As regular readers will no doubt guess, that was music to my ears.

If you missed today's conference, fear not. We'll be back again in July with another full-day session at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washingtonon "Program and Personal Leadership: Keys to Success in the Transition."