Thousands of civil servants belonging to all government organizations have built their own “intranet” using Pleio (“government square”, in Dutch) a platform that runs on the open source networking engine Elgg.

It all started in 2010, thanks to the work of a group of four founders, Davied van Berlo, Harrie Custers, Wim Essers and Marcel Ziemerink. Growth has been steady and now Pleio can count on some 75.000 users spread in about 800 subsites. The nice thing about the platform, in fact, is that it is modular: subscribers can collaborate on a group and then start a sub group to get in more depth with a smaller team. To learn a little more about this unique experience, I reached out for van Berlo, who kindly answered a few questions. Check the interview below.

Continue reading @forbes.com