Many bosses cringe when they see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, since they suspect those workers are slacking off.  But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

"It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.  Instead of posting thoughts about the new Avenged Sevenfold album or what's happening with Brangelina, analysts can use A-Space to share information and opinion about al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea.

Wondering what Achmedinijad is doing right now?  Want to catch the latest Bin Laden video?  A-Space!

It's a place where not only spies can meet but share data they've never been able to share before," Wertheimer said. "This is going to give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A-Space umbrella."  "One perfect example is if Osama bin Laden comes out with a new video. How is that video obtained? Where are the very sensitive secret sources we may have to put into a context that's not apparent to the rest of the world?" Wertheimer asked.

When you think about it,  this is the perfect scenario for the application of social networking and other web 2.0 technologies.  The spying game relies heavily on knowledge sharing, the free flow of information, and collaboration across far-flung agencies.

It's also the only social networking site where you'll find postings in the "What am I doing right now?" section like:

Agent 009 just took down a 3rd world dictator!

If Agent 037 tells you what she's doing right now she'll have to kill you!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_intelligence_community_A-Space

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor and made available to customers over a network.  Both hardware and software are owned by the provider and maintained at its datacenter.  In a true SaaS model, both are also shared by all clients, although user data is divided.  In addition, all customers are on the same version and instance of the application.  The software is typically leased, although it is sometimes licensed as if it was being bought. 

Over the past few years, a critical mass of adopters, better usability, enhancements to GUIs have all driven organizations both large and small to adopt the SaaS model.  Coincidentally, a number of large, well-established enterprise application giants have built up substantial SaaS businesses in recent years to compete with younger upstarts.

The four greatest value propositions driving SaaS adoption amongst HR technology buyers are:

1. Faster time-to-value through configurable applications.

2. Mitigated risk through minimal upfront costs and pay-as-you-go procurement.

3. Less reliance on support from internal IT departments that are too busy to help.

4. Economies of scale like any outsourcing model.

However, in order to realize these, you must first contractually agree with your SaaS providers on the particulars of how these opportunities will be realized.  I have learned from working with many clients that there are things to watch out for when engaging a SaaS provider.  Moreover, many have told me that they include written stipulations in their contracts to protect their interests such as:

1. Application Support.  Most companies get service level agreements (SLAs) on support related to the application running properly as well its availability, including response times, and notifications of outages and how soon after a failure you must be notified.

2. Agreement on what an active user is.  This is not unlike contracts related to behind-the-firewall implementations.  However, reports should be generated more efficiently given that this is how the SaaS provider runs its business.

3. Security.  Typically these requirements (e.g., intrusion tests, SAS 70 Type 2 Certificate) are covered pre-contract during the evaluation period.

4. Data back-up and recovery.  Similar to security bullet above.

5. Data ownership.  Ensure that your provider will enable you to easily migrate your data should you decide to move to a competitor or bring the solution in-question in-house.  SLAs related to data migration in such events are not uncommon.

6. Ownership of source code.  This may be covered through an escrow account.  Even financially sound companies get shut down from time-to-time.  And you never know when someone is going to win a patent infringement suit against your SaaS provider.

7. Integration non-SaaS systems.  Requirements related to frequency, data mapping, and file format are the biggest gotchas.

8. Growth.  Include and define provisions (i.e., milestones) for growth that will allow you to lower your average cost-per-user.

9. Training and Certification of Support Staff.  While ‘major release' is not a term often uttered by a SaaS provider, some are more significant than others.  We have seen clients require that all support personnel assigned to them be trained and certified on the latest version.

I have learned about these points through lessons learned by clients and service providers.  However, I know this list isn't exhaustive.  I'm curious as to what pearls of wisdom my KI colleagues can share based on their experience.  And I'm even more curious to hear from those of you who have been involved in a constructing or negotiating SaaS contract.  KI does not provide consulting related to either of these areas. 

Is Your Organization Habitable By Humans?

The immense popularity of the comic strip "Dilbert," "The Office" television series, and movies like "Office Space" reflect an undercurrent of cynicism that is present in many of the organizations we all work in. Creating a workplace that is "habitable by humans" - so to speak - is one aspect of HCM and even Talent Management that is seldom addressed. Within much of the work we here at Knowledge Infusion do, the HCM and Talent Management disciplines are most often seen through the lense of how talent can best be used to meet organizational goals. But if your organization is barely habitable by humans, how will you attract and retain high quality talent to help you achieve your business goals?

To help us undersand how to make our organizations "habitable by humans" we need look no further than Psychology 101. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs serves as an excellent template to measure whether our organizations are habitable by humans. It can serve as a Human Habitability Model for organizations. We can determine just how "habitable by humans" organizations are by taking a pop psychology approach to Maslow's groundbreaking work:

Making Your Organization Habitable By Humans: Maslow Revisited

1. Physiological needs: Food, Shelter, Comfort

These are the most basic human needs. In most modern organizations these needs translate into compensation.

• Are you paying your employees a living wage?

• Are you paying market based compensation rates?

• Is your total rewards package competitive?

• Is compensation fairly distributed?

2. Safety Needs: Security, Order

• Are expectations and goals clearly defined for your workforce?

• Are reasonable boundaries respected and honored?

• Is your workplace a meritocracy, where individual or group achievement is recognized or rewarded?

3. Need to Belong

• Does your organization have structures or systems in place that allow people to interact, exchange ideas, collaborate?

• If you are a virtual organization, do you have a virtual "water cooler" so people can share the daily chit-chat and other interaction required by humans?

• Do you have a culture or talent management brand that binds your workforce to an overarching concept of what the values of your organization are? Does this "brand" permeate all corners of your organization?

4. Esteem Needs

• Do you allow physical or virtual space within your organization where people can express their "individual brand" and share with others in the organization?

• Do you have processes in place to identify people's strengths and allow them to thrive within those areas rather than developing areas of weakness?

• Is respect for individual viewpoints implicit in your culture?

5. Self Actualization

• Is self-direction and career exploration encouraged within your talent management brand?

• Are individual differences and authenticity celebrated and encouraged in your culture?

• Is your organization structure flexible enough to allow individuals to set their own paths?

• Do you facilitate opportunities for people to engage in charitable activities?

Our experience at Knowledge Infusion has been that most organizations spend the majority of their effort shoring up level one - which is the most basic of human needs. The downside of focusing so much attention on compensation is you'll attract and retain only the most cynical employees.

While Talent Management technology is not the magic ingredient in making organizations more habitable, it's interesting to note how many of the more advanced levels can be enabled by these technologies. Technology can help organizations set, align and track goals; create collaborative spaces; reward employees based on merit; assess employees and guide them in career exploration; and help create and market an internal and external "talent brand."

Of the dozens of customers Knowledge Infusion has helped plan and execute their Talent Management initiatives, not one - ZERO - have chosen to use web services to integrate their Talent Management applications with their HRIS or other internal apllications. They all use flat-file feeds to pass data back and forth between HRIS databases and the vendor datacenters on a scheduled basis. Part of the reason for this is because although most vendors claim to support web-services, few try to convince clients of the value of this technology. On the customer side, many corporate IT departments are not convinced they can use web services to send data securely through their corporate firewalls to an external datacenter. This, despite the fact that companies like eBay and Amazon have conducted billions of dollars of business using web-services.

For the technically challenged among us, the term "web services" describes a standardized way of integrating web-based applications. Web services enable small chunks of data to be transmitted in real-time when a transaction is performed, rather than in a huge file with other transaction data on a scheduled basis. Web-services has been over-shadowed lately in the Web 2.0 world by social media (social networks, wikis, blogs), but folks, without web-services, Web 2.0 is much more static.

To put the use of web services in a talent management context, let's say your company wants to hire a candidate that has cleared the interview process. The hire can be executed in your onboarding system and instantaneously transmitted to your HRIS or other applications to begin all the tasks that are required to onboard an employee (schedule orientation, arrange equipment and office space, provide building and system access, etc...). By avoiding the usual 24 hour lag time for each time transaction data is transmitted between systems, the entire employee onboarding experience is improved. It could make a huge difference in the length of time it takes a new employee to become fully productive - not to mention creating a positive experience in general for the new employee when they show up on their first day and are all set to go.

We're curious why more vendors or their customers aren't taking advantage of web services. So if you're out there, whether you're a software provider or a customer, if you're using web-services through a corporate firewall for talent management processes, we would love to hear from you. Let us know what you're doing!