In May 2011 local government gets its own social media site called KnowledgeHub. The idea is that local government can work more efficiently by sharing information and advice between departments and areas across the country.

The interface will have some Facebook like elements to put faces to names and to facilitate conversations. There is also an automatic recommendations element which will try to flag up information that may be relevant to the person based on past activity. Other resources on the site can get user ratings and comments so that others who look later will be guided to the best rated material.

Even though the May release is only a Beta (meaning the feature set is now fixed but there may be a few bugs still in the system) there are already 85,000 registered users. If things go as planned the critical mass of users should bring significant improvements to the services and efficiency of local government.

KnowledgeHub is being delivered by a company called PFIKS using their Collaborative Workspace Environment, (CWE) called Intelligus. The resulting system will be published as open source under the GNU General Public License, so that it can be used in other endeavours.

Functions of Intelligus are listed as

Administration and housekeeping
Secures access – permissions match the team’s management hierarchy
Centralised repository of all common documentation
Collapses multi-point communications into a joined up communications suite
Calendaring, task assignment and completion notification
Knowledge sharing and searching
Provides the compliance audit trail, team performance and project metrics
Customise the team Homepage Portal, blogs and wikis
Build a community, enthuse your team and foster the communal spirit

Make more than three points and your audience is likely to get confused and loose track. Make fewer than three and you begin to sound like a broken record.

And this works for everyone even US Presidents. In a recent article in Forbes.com TJ Walker gives examples of how Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton stuck to three points and these not only helped them win the elections but are still memorable today.

Ronald Reagan

1. Cut taxes.
2. Strengthen defense.
3. Balance the budget.

Bill Clinton

• Change versus the status quo.
• It’s the economy, stupid.
• Don’t forget healthcare.