"The rest of the federal government has similar requirements to do what we're trying to do to have commercial cloud vendors deliver these capabilities to them," said a DISA official.

Sherman plans "in just a couple weeks" to convene CIOs from Five Eyes allied nations to work on improved collaboration and information sharing.

FedScoop sat down at the USDS headquarters with a group of members embedded at various agencies who described how they use collaborative tools and why they believe they're so important in modernizing government operations.