Government 2.0 Club

Here are some notes I summarized from the presentation:

Virtual Worlds Discussion at Gov20Camp (tag #gov2VW)

Paulette Robinson, Bill May, Eric Hackathorn, Pam Broviak

This session discussed the outlook of virtual worlds for use by government. The following notes are those expressed by the presenters who were members of federal and local government:

Paulette Robinson began the discussion indicating that the use of Second Life by government agencies is difficult because it requires opening a wide range of ports. So the federal government is working on a project to develop a virtual world platform dedicated for use by government that will not require a CIO to open so many ports.

The USDA CIO has 15 people working with Paulette on this project. Ultimately this will provide the means for government to work together across agencies and will consist of a prototype server with e-authentication class 2. This security class requires users to gain access initially by showing an ID with a facial photo. After they have been authenticated, future access will not require them to show this ID.

At this time, the federal government is using Protosphere and Forterra to develop the prototype. They are also working on how to cost it when it is implemented across multiple agencies. Many in government are pushing for the ability to use virtual worlds, so they need to find a safe and secure place to meet their needs. Paulette also said they “will eventually have to go to cloud computing” because the system “must be able to dynamically contract with use.”

The CIOs council is currently working with Paulette on this. Their goal is to provide clients that are hosted and safe. The CIO will be able to download the client from the USDA and then post work. This “can serve as a model of how to use Web 2.0,” said Paulette.

Next Paulette discussed the Consortium of Virtual Worlds event in April. The event will include a showcase of 14 virtual worlds on the first day – this particular portion of the evenet will cost $25 to cover lunch and breakfast. The entire event will host sessions related to education, and augmented reality, along with many vendors. The cost for the entire event will be$150 for 2 days (covers meal cost).

Following are some of the questions from the audience:
Q: What do you see as an emerging platform?
A: Paulette indicated she prefers Protosphere based on what she does. Part of the reason for her preference is also political in that those providing the platform need to get what government contracting is all about.

She also added that she is trying to put together a development pool that will help to facilitate development of functionality. Open source is difficult for DOD to do.

On another issue she added “we need ways to work across agencies on thorny projects.” They chose to work with the CFO community on this project because of stimulus package funding and because of the transparency issues they need to meet to work together.
A strategic type of communication needs to be explored and used.

They also had Congressional researchers come through and her group briefed them on these issues and developments for Congress (there is a related CRS report – whitepaper).

Paulette ended by adding that the “USDA prototype won’t be just one type of world there. No one virtual world does everything.” Interoperability and metrics will also be issues

Bill May spoke and advised to “watch for Second Life to take a hard right turn. They are trying to move it to enterprise so it runs behind the firewall.”

Eric (Hackshaven in Second Life) Hackathorn showed a film he put together presenting ideas behind the use of virtual worlds.

Q: What are the advantages of virtual worlds as opposed to more traditional approaches such as video conferencing?
A: The group indicated informational bandwidth – virtual worlds immerse you more, once you get over the technical hurdle of the environment. Paulette added that presence causes trust and safety, and there is a sense of transference and a sense of others in the world. There are things you can do there you cannot do in “real life.”

Bill May indicated you have a sense of community and being there. Virtual worlds are a 3-D immersive collaborative space that mimics the way we process info and add context to the conversation. You remember movement and placement during the meeting just as you would in the offline world. Then this knowledge gets filed away in a different place than the memories created by the use of video conferencing.

Distance learning for education is boring and flat traditionally: the old way you met and talked before and after class in college cannot normally be experienced. But you can do this in a virtual world space. That stuff happens – students come back in and talk after a virtual class. But Bill added we are “still very early in the evolution of this space.”

Q: What is the context of productivity: if you are multitasking, how do you embed in the world?
Paulette explained that worlds are getting better with the productivity tools – some have desktop sharing and file sharing. Protosphere brings in a telepresence, and you can bring in almost any type of database. Persistence is a big issue in the workspace. The Intel community is doing some interesting things with this.

Q: What is this doing with inter-human behavior – sounds like this is allowing memory.
Paulette said “nothing replaces me standing next to Bill.”But these are intuitive devices. (This was followed by much good-natured laughing and teasing of Paulette).

Pam Broviak explained how people have begun to realize they have formed memories based on their interactions in virtual spaces. Several of those working in virtual worlds have commented how they return to areas in that space and have the feeling of reminiscing much in the same manner we do in the offline world.

Q: But what sells it to CIO?
Bill explained how virtual worlds offer the potential to create a place in cyberspace where kids form many countries could meet and build something. This can lead to them having a better cultural understanding and acceptance of each other. Also teachers can talk here about how they work with kids with certain challenges. He compared this to how they are doing this now with large amounts of money by sending people to other countries.

The key is that international discussions are possible so how do we use it and how does it mean. We can use this to cut across national borders and language barriers. There is also opportunity for:
• Travel
• Security
• Anonymity
• Tactile
• Sticky
• Language training
• Speaker programs
• Panel discussions
• NGOs can use virtual worlds
• Understanding of Islam through virtual worlds
• Anyone can get into places like Second Life for free

He added that the VA moved into Second Life because they found there was a group of veterans already there who had created a community.

RE: “open source is difficult for DOD to do.”

Check out the FORGE.MIL site http://www.disa.mil/forge/

It’s not completely open (requires authenticated access) but it is a step in the right direction.

From their site: Forge.mil is a family of services provided to support the DoD’s technology development community. The system currently enables the collaborative development and use of open source and DoD community source software. These initial software development capabilities are growing to support the full system life-cycle and enable continuous collaboration among all stakeholders including developers, testers, certifiers, operators, and users.

Just a couple of corrections.
In response to…
“The CIOs council is currently working with Paulette on this. Their goal is to provide clients that are hosted and safe. The CIO will be able to download the client from the USDA and then post work. This “can serve as a model of how to use Web 2.0,” said Paulette.”

Once the Prototype is a fully operational environment, we want to take the idea to the CIO Council and get their approval of our solution. This has not occurred yet. Paulette

Correction to statement below….

“Paulette indicated she prefers Protosphere based on what she does. Part of the reason for her preference is also political in that those providing the platform need to get what government contracting is all about.”

The two worlds that we are using for this proof of concept offer different strengths. I prefer Protosphere for our community of practice. It has done a nice job integrating social media tools which is a natural support for communities of practice. I prefer Forterra for training and simulations. It has a robust simulation environment that enables modeling of geospatial data (downtown DC is done well) as well as modeling authentic avatar faces. They are unique in that you can record the entire world making it ideal for multi-player exercises like COOP.
Paulette

Thanks for the clarification about open source. There has been some hesitancy in the government to use open source because of security. I personally like some of the open source software. Our Information Assurance group has been hesitant to let us use it. I am glad to hear that it is being encouraged by DISA.

Thanks Paulette for clarifying - there was so much to cover I barely could keep up with the notes!

Anyone who is interested in virtual worlds and how the government is experimenting with this web 2.0 technology, working through challenges, sharing best practices, etc., come to the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference (http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fedconsortium.html) April 23-24 with preconference virtual worlds demonstrations on April 22. Deadline for registration is April 17. If you are on Facebook, search for Federal Consortium for VIrtual Worlds group page. We have discussions located there. Follow on twitter @FCVW09.