The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is adopting IBM Lotus Connections to provide wikis, collaboration and instant messaging for its 3200 staff.

"ABS prides itself on a history of adopting cutting-edge software to bring speed and effectiveness to our organisation," said Dale Chatwin, Director, Knowledge Management Initiative, ABS.

"With Lotus Connections, ABS can use business-grade social software, straight out of the box."

The ABS has been a lotus user since 1992 to provide collaboration through the integration of portal, collaboration, mail, workflow, offline capabilities, document management and record keeping.

It will couple its existing Lotus Notes environment with Connections to introduce an integrated Web 2.0 social software platform. This will include blogs, wikis, secure file sharing, profiling and tagging capabilities, task management, and community spaces, along with email, chat and social data components.