Army morale chief to use Web tools to connect with soldiers, their families

The incoming head of a military division dedicated to supporting Army troops and their families plans to network through social media with soldiers' loved ones.

"I'm going to be Tweeting [and] blogging to be able to connect externally as well as internally throughout the command," said Brig. Gen. Reuben Jones, in an interview on Monday with Nextgov.

"If we can get them to be a friend," that presents a chance to help, added Jones, who starts on July 30 as commanding general of the Alexandria, Va.-based Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command. The command provides support and entertainment to soldiers, Army Department civilians, retirees, veterans and their families.

For his new job, Jones is learning terms such as Tweeting and "being on the blogs," he said, to connect with Army families and their support network through the broadcast text-messaging service Twitter. "Now that the department has opened access to go to some of those sites, it will be a tremendous opportunity to find those families and the people who support families," Jones said at a panel on personal and professional networking during Monday's Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The conference was sponsored by Government Executive Media Group.

Personal networking, panelists said, involves communicating with friends and professionals outside work -- or taking a new job outside one's agency -- to advance in a career.

"One of the things that I encourage all my officers to do is to seek opportunities outside the Department of the Army," said Jones, who has held many personnel-related military offices. "I get in return another person back."

The recent convergence of face-to-face networking and online social media now allows the government to provide more services with fewer resources, noted panelist Bill Eggers, director of Deloitte research public sector.

Eggers suggested that federal managers register for the growing number of internal social sites that agencies are offering as well as external sites that cater to the government community, such as GovLoop.com

Some government leaders, in fact, are requiring their employees to engage in online networking or interpersonal networking as part of their annual performance reviews.

For the 2009 annual review process, the performance of all intelligence personnel will be "evaluated on their ability to build and engage in collaborative networks," either online or in person, said panelist Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The IT networks primarily will include A-Space -- an adaptation of the social networking site MySpace for intelligence analysts -- and Intellipedia, an internal version of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that users can contribute to and edit.

Sanders added that an I-Space for the intelligence community is in development.