Science.gov’s Unique Collaboration

by Valerie Allen in Products and Content | Comments [4] Tags: one-stop-portal science.gov science.gov-alliance

Science.gov is a one-stop portal for federal government science information. Over 200 million pages of science information from 14 federal agencies may be searched through a single query. How far we have come in the past decade!

You may not be aware that Science.gov was developed and is governed by the Science.gov Alliance, a group of science information managers who began working together to overcome the stovepipes of agency information in 2001. This unusual collaboration has taken a bottom-up approach throughout the development and operation of the site. All participating agencies have an equal voice in the process; all agencies manage their own content through a decentralized content management model. In addition, agencies maintain their own databases which are searched by Science.gov in real-time.

I am pleased to note that the Science.gov Alliance and their “out of the box” techniques have served the science attentive citizen well for almost 7 years!

Valerie Allen

Comments:

Throughout my 39 years of service to the Federal government, I have seldom, if ever, encountered a successful bottom-up collaboration of so many Federal agencies voluntarily sharing overall responsibility for an operational system, like Science.gov. As operating agent for Science.gov, we at OSTI are grateful for the involvement and guidance from members of the Science.gov Alliance. Especially noteworthy is the leadership provided by Co-Chairs Eleanor Frierson (U. S. Department of Agriculture) and Tom Lahr (U. S. Geological Survey). We invite readers to let us know about other examples of bottom-up collaboration among Federal agencies sharing responsibility for an operational system.

Posted by Walt Warnick on September 14, 2009 at 04:03 PM EDT #

It would be useful to know how the 200 million pages break down among the 14 agencies. Is this discussed somewhere?

Posted by David Wojick on September 19, 2009 at 05:34 PM EDT #

I respect this way of approach to people. it is really grand efforts by government..

Posted by PLAVEB on October 12, 2009 at 01:53 AM EDT #

I also commend this effort to make science information and government's role more open and transparent.

Posted by HSA on November 04, 2009 at 12:22 AM EST #