By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The General Services Administration has a new member of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications.

Federal News Radio has been telling you about the fact that Dave McClure was recently named associate administrator.

McClure recently talked more about how he’s settling in with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris on the Daily Debrief.

“i’m a government guy — even though I went over to the private sector. My role has always been in the government space — between industry and government. So, the timing is {such} that there’s tremendous opportunity to kind of advance the ball in the use of technology to improve the performance of government and certainly Citizens Services.”

McClure is not new to government, either.

He was part of the team that helped write the Clinger-Cohen Act, the law that created the role of the CIO in agencies.

He worked at the GAO, the Council for Excellence in Government, and most recently at Gartner.

McClure said improving how government works is one of his life goals, which is why he jumped at the chance to get back into that line of work.

“this was not a really tough decision for me. . . . It’s not like I’m walking into an organization that’s broken or needs to be fixed. Citizens Services has been doing a fantastic job with usa.gov, gobiernoUSA.gov, putting up some very good social networking tools, for agencies to use. . . . This is great from my perspective in that it’s not as though you’re going in and trying to start something. This job is about continuing the great stuff that’s already ongoing.”

Those ongoing projects include Web 2.0 technologies.

McClure said it is such an interesting time to join the federal government, especially when compared to his last stint.

“certainly trying to stay on top of {government 2.0} and trying to make sense for it in the government space, I think is a huge challenge. New media, citizen engagement — we’re moving from just putting things out and sharing things to engagement. Dialog participation. These are new areas for government in the online space that are constantly being pushed.”

The main challenge, he added, has to do with not only doing it correctly, including addressing privacy and security concerns, but making sure that the technology is used constructively.

It’s not simply about 2.0 technology, however. McClure said, in many ways, he will be overlooking an office that controls the visibility of the entire government for the public — the Contact Center in Pueblo, Colorado.

“the {center} itself plays a huge role in terms of providing phone contacts, printed materials. . . . There’s some very great work that’s been done by people here in Citizen Services on running that contact center . . . To make them cutting edge {and} multi-channel oriented.”

Part of his job is to keep great work like that of the Contact Center up and running.

“i’m walking into a lot of on-going activities that we need to keep alive and well. The new media area — certainly looking at standard terms of service agreements to provide agencies — is something that GSA is continuing to do that to help accelerate the adoption of some of the new media tools — and to simplify agencies’ ability to rapidly grab those tools and use them as effectively as possible.”

In addition, McClure said his office is specifically working on improving search and analytical capabilities.

“we’ve got lots of information that we’re making available to the public and being able to empower citizens to cut through that on their own with more intelligent search capabilities is constantly a battle in the Internet environment. So, we’ll be looking at that as a new area for us to really look at some leading edge stuff that {makes} the Internet experience as fruitful as possible. And, from an analytical standpoint, how to we package information in a way that’s digestible and consumable by citizens, rather than just inundating them?”

On top of all of this work, McClure said one of his overall goals is to not only be innovative and creative, but provide agencies with uniformity, as well.

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On the Web:

GSA — Dave McClure bio

GSA — Office of Citizen Services

Dorobek Insider — GSA names Dave McClure to lead the Office of Citizen Services

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