At first that seemed like an easy problem to fix; start encouraging them. But with what and how. I mean after that parent or teacher or president says, “Hey, you should check out working for the federal government,” then what? Where will that person look? What will s/he find? How will s/he be engaged?

What moves someone from consideration to motivation? And on the flip side, how does a particular government agency convince that now motivated person to pursue that one agency over any other? We can try to think of our government as one giant employer, one big happy team, but when workforces get thin agencies will absolutely be competing against each other for good employees. So how do you get yours?

Barr quotes Patricia McGinnis, president and chief executive of the Council for Excellence in Government, who dropped one hint as to how to move beyond encouragement to inspiration. She says 18-to-29-year olds are “more responsive to interactive communication and personal attention than people have realized.” Time to start realizing it people.

Social networks, live chat customer service, user-generated content, they all fall into that category of interactive communication and personal attention. Young Americans, certainly well-educated, tech-savvy young Americans (AKA prime job candidates for federal agencies) rely on interactive communication as much as other generations came to rely on the evening news or the morning paper. Remember when PR was getting mention in the op/ed section of the paper? Or maybe even a mention on the news? What a coup! It moves a bit faster now. It happens a little lower in the weeds now. It’s person to person, or may I suggest employee to potential employee.

Based on the survey results Barr references, it sounds like the federal workforce stands to benefit from at the least some encouraging words, from parents, teachers, and even Mr. or Mrs. President, to explore a career in federal service. Beyond that, it’s up to each agency to shoulder the load and move young Americans from curiosity to engagement. How will you do it? Well for starters you can check out a white paper written by some of my friends here at Mind & Media, “Recruiting the Next Generation of Government Using Web 2.0”.

“The experience of the development of the web by so many people collaborating across the globe has just been a fantastic experience,” he said.

“The experience of international collaboration continues. Also the spirit that really we have only started to explore the possibilities of [the web], that continues.”

Sir Tim predicted that the web’s ability to engender collaboration could one day see the web being used to help manage the planet.

From collaborative opportunity to planetary management — that kind of power begs participation.

Seth Godin dropped a great post on the topic recently, which got me thinking about that in terms of the federal agencies we work with. Specifically in terms of how those agencies recruit new workers. Do federal agencies have a story? Absolutely. And as organizations of public service, each agency was started with a story. In the most basic definition, they were formed to support some public need, and that is the beginning of the story.Heads up federal recruiters, your audience—your potential workforce—is impacted by your agency’s story as is stands today. Is the story good?

As Seth illustrates, if you start with a good story of who you are and what you do, then the work is focused and supports the story. It becomes cyclical and unified. His logic is good, but it assumes the workers are living the story, feeding that cycle. If workers are living in the weeds, doing the work day-by-day, but are not living the story, then the cycle can dissolve. Then what becomes of the story? Certainly the federal government has to turn up the heat on recruiting to fill a vacuum left by retiring baby boomers. But only looking outward can be a mistake. Simply shouting a story (is it the real story?) out the windows is hollow. Savvy recruits—children of Internet research and social networks—will discover the true story fast enough.

Recruiters need help from the agency leaders. How does the agency’s work and workers impact the story? What can you do to remind current employees of the beginning of the story and to encourage them to take part in the story? If the workers believe in the story, and work to support the story, then the recruits will hear it, loud and clear.

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The shortage of scientists and engineers is so acute that “we must . . . reform our education system and our immigration policies. If we don’t American companies simply will not have the talent to innovate and compete.”

Workforce shortcomings have even our most successful companies in a sweat, bringing business and government leaders together to accelerate solutions.

According to the abovementioned AP article by Jim Abrams:

Gates outlined four goals he said the country must pursue: improving educational opportunities in science and technology, revamping the visa system for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research and providing incentives for private-sector research and development.

In the midst of so much election-year immigration controversy, that’s bound to be a tough sell, but long-term U.S. workforce needs may end up trumping any short-term xenophobia. It points to a not-too-distant future filled with younger and/or foreign-born skilled workers who will need to be brought into the fold, trained, and put on a productive path as quickly as possible.

The software we use can’t share that hope. A ridiculous comparison, but I couldn’t help make it after the timing of two events: Only mere minutes after the demoralizing button pop I found myself reading yet another Federal Government RFP including yet another requirement for Windows 98 compatibility. Me, I can shed a pound or two. Windows 98 couldn’t be more obsolete. Buried next to it is Netscape Navigator.

Here’s the skinny on Windows 98:

The most recent edition of Windows 98 was released in mid-1999, so it’s coming up on being nine years old. To put that in perspective, Windows 98 is older than the birth of SCORM and Flash-based video.

Stats released in January of this year tout Windows 98 as holding a whopping .4 percent of the browser market. Even Linux claims 4.4 percent! We don’t have to cater to that bugger! Windows 98 was officially dropped from Microsoft support in summer of 2006, and finally, Windows 98 can’t run either the latest Microsoft browser or the media player. All that means it can be challenging to create cutting-edge web-based products when they MUST function on the Windows 98 dinosaur.

Sure, we can chalk up this archaic requirement to an RFP template being reused for the last 9 years. But let’s not forget that RFPs beget contracts. And contracts beget lawyers. Let’s do a favor to the developers and in turn to our audiences.

Dear RFP authors, please update the specs!

Federal Computer Week writer Florence Olsen offered this summary of his advice:

If you are a young federal employee with ambitions to become a government leader, do yourself a career favor: Don’t let any wild party pictures or other unprofessional-looking content taint your Facebook profile and, possibly, your career.

Olsen followed up by paraphrasing an additional Ward prediction that fledging Federal employees would do well to weigh:

Young feds often hear that many opportunities for advancement and leadership will open up in the federal government any time now as the large baby boom generation begins to retire in record numbers. But Ward told a different story. He said many senior employees who are eligible for retirement are not retiring, for various reasons.

This doesn’t mean that opportunities to advance won’t abound as Boomers step down, but it does mean that it’s not going to be as easy as you might hope. The search for standout talent is on, and posting a photo of yourself in your Tinkerbell Halloween costume might give the tie to another equally qualified candidate who doesn’t spend his or her time trying on tights and waving magic wands (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Ward is essentially acknowledging that Government agencies (i.e., employers) are not only familiar with the social networking phenomenon, they are actually paying attention to its implementation. If you’re job hunting in the Federal sector, it might be time to take down those frat party pics.

The State of Alaska is publishing information from the statewide accounting system on the web. This is part of a national trend for governments to develop websites that allow constituents to view financial information in searchable formats. Such websites are widely considered to improve transparency into the financial operations of government.

Residents of “The Last Frontier” doubtless enjoy being able to see what elected officials are doing with their tax dollars. The rest of us should have it so good.

An event sponsor, Survey U, offered up some stats related to what these kids want in their advertising. So if you want their attention, check this:

60% of respondents said being truthful is extremely important, while only 15% gave the same importance to being stylish, and only 8% felt it was extremely important to exude cool. That’s great news.

Say you’re recruiting for a federal agency; it will be much easier to talk honestly about a job offering or agency in general than it will be to try to inject style or coolness into public service.

Honest language is more evergreen, too. Imagine trying to write messaging that exuded cool. Sure, I know there is a massive ad industry trying to do that very thing day in and day out, but they don’t sleep. When you try to exude cool, you risk your message being oh so not cool by the time it hits the audience.

Style and cool are two things that move very quickly and are hard to nail just right. But honesty? Hopefully that comes pretty easily.

See, browsers are not like televisions. Different brands don’t all work the same. Imagine being a video producer and delivering your product to a broadcaster, then stopping by Circuit City for the big debut. Wouldn’t that be a surprise if one TV shifted the picture out of frame while another resized the image to bizarro dimensions, and a third finally displayed the video correctly. Well, you could just produce three versions of your show, right? One for each kind of TV. That’d be a hoot. We may not have to generate completely separate products, but web developers do wrestle with a similar scenario.

Despite the best efforts of organizations like the WC3, browsers just don’t all work the same way. They don’t display content the same way. Pieces move or resize or disappear completely. Depending on the goals of your organization, those differences can have large impact.

The latest stats show Internet Explorer 7 holding 21 percent of the market. IE6 holds 33 percent, Firefox 36 percent, and then a steep drop down to Safari, Mozilla, and Opera. Notice the name Netscape isn’t even tracked anymore! Depending on your goals and audience, you may need to test your websites/applications on all of those browsers (not to mention platforms like Mac or PC) to make sure everyone is seeing the same thing and enjoying the same experience.

So how do you decide how much time and effort to put into cross-browser and platform testing? That depends on what you’re doing. If you’re facing a closed audience with predictable systems, you may be able to cut down on testing. For example, a DoD agency targeting an internal audience can feel pretty good about things as long as they’re targeting Internet Explorer 6 (until Feb 12?) and Windows XP. Meanwhile, that same agency may have a public-facing website, one offering critical information or training, one that could reflect on their image and mission. In that case, how accommodating should it be? Is it OK to serve up content that may look wacky on a Mac because it holds such a small share of the market? I’m happy to say that’s not my call. But I could help you think through it. And would you believe it comes down to time and money? I know you’ve never heard that before.

I will say this: There are standards out there, and if we stick to those when building, our chances for success are good from square one. Further that, simply having the experience and awareness of cross-browser/platform issues is another big advantage. Finally, it’s about paying attention your audience and making educated decisions. My decision would be to dump IE6. One version of that browser is enough for all of us.