All news, All about Intellipedia!

Comments Welcome!

Posted by eMarv at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Partnership for Public Service will honor 30 finalists for Service to America Medals May 6 in Washington as part of Public Service Recognition Week. The finalists are contenders for nine medals, including Federal Employee of the Year, set to be presented Sept. 23.

Tags: intellipedia, donburke, sean dennehy, cia, homeland security medal

Posted by eMarv at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrea Baker recently about Intellipedia and all the great things she is doing.

We talked about:

• how she got started in the IC and Intellipedia and was recruited by Don Burke
• how Intellipedia makes blogs and a-space better
• a-space and that it is not a facebook for spies (yes, its for networking, but also sharing information, sharing rss feeds)
• a world without intellipedia?
• metrics
• the future of intellipdeia - she wants bots!
• volunteer gardeners
• focusing on management chain buy in
• DNI being supportive of Intellipedia
• Webcams in the Intelligence Community!
• how people were scared of computers, email and intellipedia
• second life sucking (ok, she didn't say that exactly...)
• discussing intellipedia on change.gov
• Obama's Intellipedia account

Listen in!

Download the interview!

BTW, here's Andrea's bio:
Andrea Baker served in the United States Army from 1994-1998 as a Signals Intelligence Analyst and an Arabic Linguist. Following her military service in the Army, Andrea became a career consultant for the Federal Government, supporting the CIA, DIA, NSA, NOAA, and the Pentagon. Andrea's background originally started in web design, graphics and web development and has transitioned from development and design over the years from multimedia design, technical lead, and project manager. In 2005, Andrea noticed the growing social web on the Internet and saw the future of how this could be applied to business and Government. Andrea joined Navstar, Inc. in 2006 as the Director of Technology. Under this role Andrea has helped their customers utilize Enterprise 2.0 tools effectively. She specializes in the user community advocacy and application developer liaison, through tools like wikis, blogs, and other social web tools.

About Navstar:
Navstar’s Mission is to provide Information Technology Services and Innovative Enterprise Consulting Solutions to our customers. We accomplish this by delivering quality services on time and within budget while meeting and exceeding our customer’s expectations.

Navstar highlights:

• Headquarters Falls Church, Virginia
• 48 Employees
• WBE Certification
• 6.5 million Revenue 2007
• Averaging 40% growth 4 years in a row
• Cleared Facility
• 2006, 2007 Washington Business Journal, listed as Top 25 Small Technology Companies
• Diversity Business Awards 2007, Top Woman Owned Businesses in Virginia ranked 14 out of 100 awardees

Tags: andreabaker, intellipedia, intelligence community, a-space, gardener, don burke, sean dennehy, wikipedia, webcam, collaboration, information sharing, change.gov, obama, second life, rss feed sharing

Posted by eMarv at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems like it was only a month or so that I wrote about Bureaupedia. Why Techipedia now? It's not like DOD didn't know. (I've added emphasis and comments to some excerpts below.)

Continue reading "Say it ain't so, John! - DOD jumps on wiki bandwagon - Techipedia! aahh!" »

Posted by eMarv at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I just saw Steve Radick's post about Bureaupedia and he was generally in agreement. Why duplicate efforts?

Check out his post (and at least comment on his post, if you don't comment on mine :):

Your Organizationopedia - Make it Stop!! | Social Media Strategery

Tags: buraeupedia, intellipedia, fbiwiki, steve radick, your organizationopedia

Posted by eMarv at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why oh why is the FBI creating its own wiki? Why waste taxpayer dollars again (remember Virtual Case File)? Why not just use Intellipedia? The FBI as well as the IC could benefit.

Here's an excerpt from the FCW article along with some color commentary:

Officials see Bureaupedia as a knowledge management tool that will let agents and analysts share their experiences to ensure that their accumulated insight remains after they retire. *It will be interesting to see how the FBI plans to extract tacit knowledge from retirees*. The project is a collaborative effort between FBI’s chief knowledge officer and chief technology officer. Why wasn't it a collaborative effort with the CIOs in other agencies? *I'm sure more than one would have mentioned Intellipedia*.

“An agent that retires after 30 years leaves with all of that — what we call a tacit knowledge — everything leaves with him,” said Zalmai Azmi, FBI’s chief information officer, who will be retiring in October. *I wonder if Mr. Azmi will be contributing to the wiki.* That includes “best practices, things that he did differently, things that he wishes he had done differently.” *I think that the "things that he wishes he had done differently" part would be especially interesting.*

The FBI’s new wiki uses the same open-source software as Wikipedia, and after the test period is complete, the agency will launch it on the FBI’s secure intranet, FBINet. *Again, why duplicate the effort? Intellipedia is already on Intelink which is already accessible to many agencies.*

...

An FBI spokesman said Bureaupedia will also let users link to articles in Intellipedia, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s wiki for the intelligence community. *Need I add anything else? :)*

read the rest of the article here: FBI creates knowledge wiki

I understand that many may argue that FBI is domestic and the IC is foreign intel, but I am sure there are ways that to avoid overstepping boundaries, both procedural and technological.

I just really dislike seeing duplication of efforts especially when something is already out there and it works!

Please share thoughts. Should the FBI have their own wiki? Maybe I should ask the FBI CIO himself... Anybody have his email address? :)

Tags: Bureaupedia, intellipedia, intelligencecommunity, IC, FBI, intelink, zalmai azmi, cio, dni, director of national intelligence, government IT

Posted by eMarv at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the great opportunity to speak with Chris Rasmussen, Social Software Knowledge Manager and Trainer, US Intelligence Community, or in other words, one of the pioneers of the Intellipedia and social media movement in the Intelligence Community and the United States government, in general. (His full bio is below.)

We spoke about how he became involved with Intellipedia, the past, present and potential future of Intellipedia, virtual worlds, global collaboration, open source intelligence, mashups (can I call it "intellimashing" :) and purple intelligence. Don't know what purple intelligence is? Well, then you should listen below:

Download the interview!

Chris Rasmussen Bio
Mr. Chris Rasmussen is a social software knowledge manager and trainer within the US Intelligence Community (IC).  Mr. Rasmussen believes that lightweight and inexpensive "social software" tools such as Intellipedia (wiki), blogs, tag|connect (social bookmarking service), widgets, mashups, etc. provide a transparent and effective way to exchange knowledge over the IC enterprise.  These tools, in agency-neutral space, have considerable advantages over exceedingly complex databases and applications often with opaque data access layers isolated within agency footprints.

Mr. Rasmussen is the founder and lead instructor of NGA Social Software 101, which teaches how to use Web 2.0 tools to create and aggregate transparent, agency-neutral, topical knowledge.  The training plan for this course has been modeled by many law enforcement, military, and intelligence organizations.

In addition to social software, Mr. Rasmussen argues for the increased use of podcasts/vodcasts and videogame-based learning for knowledge transfer across the IC enterprise.  Mr. Rasmussen is also an evangelist for the increased use of "open source intelligence"- that gleaned from public documents, databases, blogs, videos, radio broadcasts, newspapers and discussion boards-within the IC.

Mr. Rasmussen holds a BA in History and Masters in National Security Studies.  He was selected as one the "Federal 100" by Federal Computer Week in 2008.  This award is giving to top executives from government, industry and academia that had the greatest impact on the government information systems community.

A special thanks to NGA Public Affairs Office for putting this interview together.

By the way, comments and questions are my new best friends, so please post any comments you may have. Thanks for adding a new friend! :)

Tags: chrisrasmussen, intellipedia, nga, interview, intelligence community, purple intelligence, intellimashing, mashups, social media, collaboration, information sharing, virtual worlds, second life, ivideo, tagconnect, social software, wikipedia, open source intelligence, osint

Posted by eMarv at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

First saw this on TIME GOES BY | This Week in Elder News: 5 April 2008 which pointed to the FCW article: Panel: Age doesn't dictate Web 2.0 fluency

It's a 69 year old. For some, this could be surprising. For others that see the light, it probably isn't.

The thing about collaboration, for me at least, is that it is really cultural. Once people see that they are doing things for the greater good and that the world (or at least their world) will be a better place, many people see the light and they contribute. Age is irrelevant!

What do you think?

Tags: intellipedia, time goes by, collaboration, age is irrelevant, information sharing, FCW, elder news

Posted by eMarv at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is it news that Google sells to the Intelligence Community? Would it be news if Google sold servers or donated (for that matter) to a group that is looking to end world poverty?

Or are they just piggybacking on Intellipedia's success (not that Google needs it)?

Or could it be just opportunistic PR for Google. Personally, I think it's the latter since I doubt that Google only recently started pursuing government work. 

It also helps to have a CIA Intellipedia expert, like Sean Dennehy, comment about Intellipedia in the same article (though he does not necessarily endorse Google). It adds to Google's credibility (again not that they need it).  

Don't get me wrong, I like Google. I just wanted to point out their cleverness! :) Looks like their innovation does end in the server room! ;-)

Posted by eMarv at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This doesn't have anything to do with Intellipedia, but it could have implications on the future of the IC... and its probable use of Second Life, for example.

I came across this NASA MMO sources sought notice on FBO and thought it was interesting. I also found the NASA MMO website. (Download a PDF version of the RFI.)

Anyone interested in teaming up ? :)

Blogged with Flock

Tags: intellipedia, nasa mmo, fed biz opps, nasa, mmo, rfi, intelligence community future, virtual worlds, second life

Posted by eMarv at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just found this ad on computerjobs.com:

Would would apply?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: intellipedia, intellipedia job, SIPRNET, wikipedia

Posted by eMarv at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Looks like the Intelligence Community is trying to be a bit more transparent. Always positive! Anyway, thought this AFCEA class might be interesting for Intellipedia blog community members. Let me know how it goes if you decide to go. Or if you have any thoughts on the Intelligence Community's (the US or others) transparency, please share!

Dates: Dec-11-2007 - Dec-13-2007

Classification: Unclassified

Fees:
$1260 Industry/Contractor Rate
$1008 Government/Military Rate

Location: AFCEA Headquarters - Map and Directions

Note: Unclassified! Great for those who need to know how the many intelligence agencies are organized but who don't have a current clearance!

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The U.S. Intelligence Community is faced with new challenges. This top-down course provides an up-to-date understanding of the new and still changing structure and functions of the Intelligence Community and its components. The changing threats and challenges with which they must deal, as well as resources and processes used are covered. The course addresses intelligence programs and provides insight into relations between intelligence producers and policy, military and other consumers, as well as useful information about the interaction between U.S. Intelligence and industry.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND - INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT
This course is suitable for industry managers, designers and producers of security and intelligence systems and products, including software and special purpose products. The up-to-date coverage of the changing intelligence community is equally suitable for intelligence professionals proficient in their own services or specialties who have or expect to have responsibilities involving other agencies and services, overview functions or supervision of interfaces between various agency efforts. Past attendance has been divided about equally between students from the government and from industry.

COURSE OUTLINE: The U. S. Intelligence Community: Who Does What, With What, For What?

    Intelligence, Practice and Issues

        * Background of U.S. Intelligence
        * Definitions of Intelligence disciplines
        * Intelligence Process
        * Relationships between Intelligence and Policy
        * Intelligence Issues

    Components and Coordination of the Intelligence Community

        * Organization and Components of the U.S. Intelligence Community
        * The Role of the DCI
        * DNI Staff and Centers
        * Community Management
        * The National Intelligence Council
        * Intelligence Oversight and Management within the Executive Branch
        * Civilian Intelligence Organizations
        * Military Intelligence Components
        * Counterintelligence

    Intelligence Budget Structure

        * NIP (National Intelligence Program)
        * MIP (Military Intelligence Program)

    The Central Intelligence Agency

        * Structure and Functions of the Changing CIA
              o Relationships between CIA and Other Components of the Intelligence Community
        * Intelligence Collection, Analysis and Dissemination
        * CIA Support to Military Intelligence
        * CIA Support to the White House
        * Counterterrorism

    Military Intelligence

        * OSD Oversight
        * Structure and Functions of the Defense Intelligence Agency
        * Support for OSD, JCS, and Operational Commands
        * Military Intelligence: Organization, Roles and Missions
        * Impact and Trends Resulting from Changing World Situation and Operational Experiences

    Reconnaissance and Surveillance

        * National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
        * Airborne reconnaissance

    The National Security Agency and Central Security Service

        * Role in the Community
        * SIGINT, Infosec, Information Operations
        * US Cryptologic System

    National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)

        * Origins and Role in the Community
        *
        * Geospatial-intelligence Management US Commercial Imagery

    Federal Bureau of Investigation

        * FBI Organization and Functions
        * Intelligence Functions
        * Counter-Intelligence
        * Relationships with CIA and Other Components of the Intelligence Community

    Nuclear Intelligence and Role of Department of Energy

    Intelligence Community and the Congress

        * Functions of the Oversight Committees
        * Legislation Affecting the Intelligence Community
        * Trends

    Intelligence and Industry

        * Relationship Between Intelligence Components and the Private Sector
        * Intelligence Research and Development

Blogged with Flock

Tags: afcea, intelligence community, nga, nro, military intelligence, cia, dni, counterintelligence, fbi, nsa, sigint, osd, intelligence history, US intelligence

Posted by eMarv at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across a post on the MAZZ-INT blog on AFCEA's website. It appears that he went to the Analytic Transformation conference (that I really wanted to go to :) and from what he wrote, it appears that he has seen this before to some extent. Not the specific technologies that are being used in Intel 2.0 (e.g. Intellipedia and A-Space), but the thought processes behind them. And he notes the following at the end of his post:

Going back to the future, it is worth remembering those CMS [what some think of as the predecessor to the DNI] IC collaboration conferences showed, and the 9-11 and WMD commissions found, that IT tools and DCIDs don’t naturally lead to collaboration or intelligence sharing. The captain in Cool Hand Luke learning that he could not mandate communication should be a cautionary tale for the IC on this journey to transform analysis.

My advice to the IC is this: get the tools discussed in Chicago to transform analysis through collaboration and intelligence sharing in place quickly, but do not expect this behavior to be commonplace until the community leadership models it, values it, and incentivizes it.

In his post and words, I see skeptical optimism in his words. They are the words of someone who has seen and heard this before but is hopeful that this time it will be different.

So the real question to the entire community is: What is going to be different about this time around?

Anyone care to elaborate or speculate?

One note, based on Jesse Wilson's comments regarding General Cartwright, I think some leaders are already modeling and valuing "it." Now let's see if they incentivize it!

Posted by eMarv at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just came across Jesse Wilson's post addressing some of Intellipedia's criticisms. It is good to get more perspective from what appears to be a person that actually uses Intellipedia (since he states he works for the government and writes as if he actually has personally used it).

The 3 criticisms he addresses are: (1) seniors won’t use it; (2) it perpetuates bad information; and (3) its never really useable 

I think that 2nd and 3rd criticisms can be dispelled for the same reasons that Wikipedia works. The first criticism and Jesse's response is more interesting though. Check it out and let me know what you think?

I'll let you know what I think after some comments have been posted... 

One thing that will be curious to see is whether General Cartwright will bring his Command & Control blog to the Pentagon as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which Spook86 discusses in his "In From the Cold" Blog. Anyone know?

Posted by eMarv at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I referred to the INSA Analytic Tansformation conference in a previous post and a friend sent me a link to the INSA Analytic Transformation presentations in video. (Thanks friend!)

I haven't had a chance to watch them yet, but feel free to take a look at them and post your thoughts and comments (good or bad) here. 

The one that might be interesting is: A-Space: Bringing Web 2.0 to IC Collaboration by Robert Cardillo

I'm listening to it and one interesting stat is that 61% of employees at DIA have been at DIA under 5 years. Interesting!

Another quote (which is kinda scary, but true) is "we don't know what we know." 

One question that was presented was curious: "What tests have been done to demonstrate the utility of A-Space?" 

My answer: how can you really test a social network? You can test its features, but the most important part of social software is the people that will on the network. A social network could have the greatest features in the world, but if noone uses it, it's worthless.

another question presented to Mr. Cardillo: "Do you see a place for a Second Life-like concept in the IC?"

his answer: "That's where these people have these fictitious lives on the Net. I don't think so, I hope not."

my answer: He probably doesn't really know what it is so he may have been a little premature in stating that he doesn't think especially since Sean Dennehy, the CIA's Chief of Intellipedia development, recently was in FCW article:

Dennehy added that some users are asking for a virtual world for the intelligence community similar to Second Life.

“I think it is a no-brainer,” he said. “We could use it for training and other things.”

Hey if the CDC has Hygeia Philo, the virtual public health worker in the "virtual CDC" (in Second Life), why can't the IC have virtual workers?

An even better reason why the US Intelligence Community should be on Second Life is here. Scary... The US IC may need to speak with their Aussie counterparts...

Posted by eMarv at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Just saw this on InformationWeek's website where Dr. Wertheimer explains A-Space further:

In December, the DNI will launch A-Space, a portal that will eventually include everything from wikis, blogs, social networking and personalization to RSS feeds, collaborative Web-based word processing, mash-ups, and content tagging all built atop an underlying services-oriented architecture.

A-Space will begin life as a portal that includes a Web-based word processing tool akin to Google Docs, a wiki-based intelligence community encyclopedia known as Intellipedia [self-referencing link, I gotta get links somehow :) ] and access to three "huge, terabyte databases" of current raw intel for analysts to sift through. It'll be scaled for 10,000 users at day one. By the end of 2008, the DNI hopes to bring in other resources like intelligence blogs, social networking capabilities akin to a Facebook for spooks, secure Web-based e-mail, better search functionality, and much more.

So the reality is that true social networking capabilities will not be available until 2008. That's disappointing... More on this later (if I remember), I really need to get some sleep. (It's 4AM.)

BTW, I suggest that you read the entire article. One particularly curious thing I found: "The DNI has even been in talks with IBM about how to put 3-D gaming to work to do analytical problem solving."

Why only IBM, why aren't they talking to MMOGs?

Posted by eMarv at 02:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that blind friend requests are necessarily a bad thing (after all I do accept practically all friend requests on LinkedIn)... I'm pretty sure there probably won't be too many SPAM profiles on it...

Anyways, I must say that I have some mixed feelings about A-Space (maybe because I'm not on it...). On the positive note, I think it is great that the Intelligence Community is expanding its thinking on need to share/write to release vs need to know/write to captivity. I think that A-Space could really enable folks to come closer together online while they are disbursed throughout. And the more people know each, the easier it is for them to share information with their friends.

Actually thinking about this further, this could help enable the Intelligence Community to become more disbursed (so that many agencies do not have to be so close to DC), which in turn could have many other effects including movement of jobs away from DC and (since I'm in real estate, I have to think about real estate) a potentially greater flattening of real estate values in the DC area (maybe I'll write a post about this on the real estate blog). But I'm getting ahead of myself, back to A-Space...

Rethinking my original mixed feelings, I don't think there is anything incredibly negative about it. Sure, people will have to learn a new system, but guess what, this system has not been created for the backwards-thinkers that purely think that "Loose Lips Sink Ships" because in reality loose lips among friends with the same access and that are generally working together for a better world is a good thing. Other arguments against may be: "I already have soooo much to do, now you're giving me another place to check for stuff." My rebuff to that would be, firstly, (if A-Space is like outside social networks), it will not necessarily be a place to create content... ooops... I reread the FT.com article and noticed the following (probably from Dr. Wertheimer's comments):

A-Space will be equipped with web-based email and software that recommends areas of interest to the user just like Amazon suggests books to its customers. The site will also allow users to create and modify documents, and determine user privileges, in a similar fashion to Google Documents.

So actually this could be a competitor for Intellipedia, but I sure hope it isn't. I don't think folks need another place to create items of interest. So the "another place to check" argument could be valid. I wonder how they will address that...

Looking at the rest of the extract above, I think that the Amazon-like recommendations could be helpful. However, I think that the true value of a social network is in connecting people because others can find out about people they don't know through their interests, past experiences, etc and then connect with them.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the community adopts A-Space and what percentage of the community will actually create a profile on A-Space so that they can reach critical mass because a social network without a good percentage (maybe in the Intel Community, that's 50% or so) of members is worthless. All they would be doing is connecting with people they know.  

So we'll see what happens...

BTW, I think I'd like to attend the conference that Dr. Fingar referred to in the article:

In September, the DNI and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a public-private intelligence group, will hold a conference to enlist support and ideas from the private sector and academia.

Found it on the INSA site, costs $695 for non-government non-INSA members, 5-day conference held in Chicago (9/4-9/6), online and in DC (10/11). 

One final thought, I wonder what role the Program Manager of the Information Sharing Environment played, if any, in the implementation of A-Space and for that matter Intellipedia and the IC del.icio.us equivalent. It says on their website that they are "responsible for information across the federal government..." But they haven't had a press release since April 2007.

BTW, I first found out about A-Space on the TechDirt Blog. And saw the article they referenced on FT.com.

Posted by eMarv at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Briefing on ‘The Intellipedians’ The social software movement within the U.S. Intelligence Community

from the Federal Computer Week website:
In this Web audio-slide presentation, Chris Rasmussen, Knowledge Management Officer, Intellipedia, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, talks about what it’s like to work as an Intellipedian, the rules they live by, and how the new tools are helping transform the ways of the intelligence-processing for good. Rasmussen made this presentation at FCW’s recent Spring Government CIO Summit, in Ft. Myers, Fla.

comments:
This is a very interesting presentation from one of the forward-thinkers in the government. It shows what some folks in the government are really doing to collaborate and create a better government and in reality a better place to live for all of us.

BTW, I do hope that General Clapper has signed into Intellipedia so that he doesn't get his Intellipedia shovel taken away... ;-)

Great work Intellipedians!

UPDATE June 2008: You may also be interested in our exclusive interview with Chris Rasmussen. Enjoy!

Posted by eMarv at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Blogs and wikis are the PRESENT and the near future!

I think that eventually voice recording, search and retreival will play a larger part of our lives. We are already starting to see it with podcasts, but as it becomes easier and easier to post, search and retrieve voice, we will start seeing more and more podcasts or vlogs (voice logs) instead of regular old web 2.0 blogs. :) Maybe web 3.0 or 4.0 is where voice rules. We'll see. I wonder how voice could work with wikis though... Imagine hearing an article from multiple people. It wouldn't be pretty... ;-)

While I'm pondering, something else that I think will be the future of spying (which I have previously mentioned) is virtual worlds like Second Life. I actually think that virtual worlds will eventually (in 10 years or so) become a part of all of our lives.

But I digress (maybe because I haven't posted to any of the blogs in a while, busy on vacation and trying to buy as-is investment property :), what does this have to do with Intellipedia? Nothing exactly, but it does have to do with improving the Intel Community.

My hope is that eventually all "good" (I know, I know, what's good?) intel organizations around the world will work together. So I leave you with this question, what can we do to enable that kind of collaboration?

BTW, here's the link to the ZDNet Government Blog post. 

Posted by eMarv at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found another thought-provoking post by Juan Freire today (while vacationing in Panama, physically in Albrook Mall in front of Gelarti where I happened to come across a wireless connection :) called: Innovación en las agencias de inteligencia: EEUU vs. España or Intelligence agency innovation: USA vs. Spain

the key paragraph is the last one which states:

O sea, el CNI está dando los mismos pasos que las agencias estadounidenses dieron hace ya varias décadas. Buscan en la universidad española el desarrollo de herramientas informáticas y sistemas de gestión de la información. Pero la universidad en España es el “mundo 1.0” por excelencia tanto por el tipo de herramientas que se utilizan como por los modelos de colaboración con los que trabajan y, especialmente, por su comprensión del mundo que nos rodea. Puede ser anecdótico, pero el artículo presenta como uno de los grandes objetivos de la colaboración entre universidades y CNI la edición de una revista semestral sobre inteligencia, por supuesto en papel!!!. Desconozco cuales son los objetivos prioritarios de nuestros espías pero harían bien en “perder” un poco de tiempo en espiar a sus colegas americanos, o al menos en leer el NY Times (ya que blogs y wikis seguramente no sean fuentes demasiado fiables).

translation:

In other words, the CNI (Spanish Intel Agency) is taking the same steps that the US Intelligence Agencies took several decades ago. They are looking to the Spanish University for information tools and systems... But the University of Spain is "world 1.0" in excellence as well as for the types of tools they use like their collaboration methods and especially for their understanding of the world around us. It may be ironic, but the article presents the paper magazine issued every semester as one of the great collaboration objective!!! [Juan] is unaware of [their] spies objectives, but they would do well by saving a little time by spying on their US colleagues or at least reading the NY Times (since blogs and wikis surely can't be trusted).

All I can say is I agree! Actually wouldn't it get us to Intel 3.0, if we (all "good" intel agencies) could all work together? What a concept? ;-)  

Posted by eMarv at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just came across the first of Juan Freire's blog entries on Intellipedia. (He actually has three.) He touches on some issues like the inefficiencies of intelligence organizations, "especially North American ones" and the fact that politicians offer "more of the same":

...mayores recursos y mayores poderes de control y coerción para el estado como único modo de lucha contra el terrorismo global, a costa de la libertad,  privacidad e impuestos de los ciudadano.

(my poor translation... :)

...more resources and more state control as the only solution against the global war on terror at the cost of citizens' freedom, privacy and taxes.

Interesting and I don't disagree with what he says, but something else that caught my attention was the lone comment (as of Dec 12, 2006):

Sin embargo pareece una evidente contradicción que el servicio secreto se abra. Lo que sí puede estar pasando es que cada vez les sea más difícil ser "secretos". Nuevos tiempos, profesiones que mueren y profesiones que nacen.
Habrá que estar atento a cómo evolucionan las películas de James Bond ;-)

translation:

Regardless, it appears to be a contradiction that the secret service becomes open. What can really be happening is that it is becoming more diffcult to have secret information. New times, professions come and go. We'll have to see how the James Bond movies evolve ;-)

It is an interesting paradox. Do you think that the intelligence community is opening so much so that maybe eventually in 20-30-50 years, the community as we know it will no longer be agency driven and really be a community of people from all over the world?

I think it is very likely... 

Posted by eMarv at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw a reference to Intellipedia on Dvorak Uncensored and thought it was interesting. The first thing that caught my eye and one of the reasons why I categorize the Dvorak blog post as mixed feedback (on Intellipedia) is because of the blog post title: "Will the Feds succeed in keeping hackers out of Intellipedia?" By writing this title, I think the author already assumes that Intellipedia will be cracked. (Whether that is true or not, I don't know, but I'd like to think that it is not possible to crack Intellipedia from the outside.) Now I know that doesn't say much about the usefulness of Intellipedia, but they chose to look the potentially negative aspects as opposed to the positive...

Well anyway, what do you think? Can Intellipedia be cracked?

Also, when you read through the post, make sure to read the comments. There are some interesting ones...

One other thing that I thought was interesting observation in the blog post was the following paragraph:

Of course, the evocative remark is Wertheimer worrying about American citizens learning what intelligence [sic] experts really tell the hacks in the White House and Congress. No fear — otherwise!

The author is referring to Dr. Wertheimer's comment:

“We’re taking a risk,” acknowledged Michael Wertheimer, the intelligence community’s chief technical officer. “There’s a risk it’s going to show up in the media, that it’ll be leaked.” 

The only issue that I have with the author's comment above is that if US citizens can read it so can anyone else in the world so I wouldn't say that Dr. Wertheimer is necessarily only worried about things getting leaked the people of the US...

Thoughts? 

Posted by eMarv at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

David Silver mentions in his blog that he will be attending the association of college and research libraries (ACRL) conference as an invited speaker. In his abstract (which you can read in its entirety on his blog post, he mentions:

With help from sites like theworldisnotflat.com, dosomethingamazing.com, intellipedia, and librarything, this talk seeks to open discussions around the intersections among social software, student learning, and academic libraries.

It'd be interesting to see how he refers to Intellipedia since it is not available to the public. (Though there is some pretty good information on the Wikipedia article.) What do you think?

BTW, if anyone goes to this and gets to listen to David's speech, feel free to drop me an email with some notes on what he said. (Thanks!) 

Posted by eMarv at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Lanka Business Online website (which according to the website "is the first and only business news organisation to leverage the potential of new age media in Sri Lanka") has a reference to Intellipedia from AFP. It pretty much says the same thing as others with one exception. They have commentary by James Lewis of the CSIS, who says the following (with some of my comments along the way...):

Despite the security concerns, Intellipedia represented a useful way around the more than 30 separate, incompatible computer networks that bog down communication between spy agencies, said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank.

Personally I don't see how Intellipedia could be more of a security concern than a phone... but that's just me. Also, using the past tense to refer to Intellipedia sounds like Intellipedia is dead, but I doubt that it is... (or maybe I'm just being picky... :) 

Undertaken less than six years since Wikipedia itself was launched, the project was adopted unusually quickly by a set of government agencies often known for moving too slowly, he said.

"Unusually quickly..." I must agree, especially for the government! ;-)

"For the intelligence community, this is warp speed," Lewis said, adding that the spy agencies were likely ahead of other US government departments in their embrace of Wiki software.

It must be true. I haven't heard of any other government agencies (US or otherwise) that have embraced wikis. Have you? 

While intelligence agencies had made progress in pooling information, dramatic reform was still required to improve the way espionage was carried out, Lewis told AFP.

"It's a good step but there's a need to go further," Lewis said.

I wonder what more Mr. Lewis thinks should happen... (BTW, I'm not saying that more shouldn't happen...) What do you think?

Posted by eMarv at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Check out Bill Ives comments: "The wikipedia article has much more but I put in this long quote as I think this could be a great wiki application."

Excellent! (BTW, he also references this blog, but we don't claim to have ALL the news about Intellipedia. :)

It seems that most of the stuff I'm finding is generally positive. Anyone out there found any negative comments about it? Feel free to forward anything to me.

Posted by eMarv at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by eMarv at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bruce Schneier posted a short but positive reference to Intellipedia. While his comment was short (a good idea"), the comments for his viewers were interesting. Check em' out!

The comment that most interested me was made by Sammy the Surfer where he mentioned: "So how about a version of this for us regular folk with unclassified but still useful information?"

I had been thinking about that for a while and actually acquired a domain name for it: sharedIntel.com

Right now, it hasn't taken off anywhere, but who knows... 

So what do you think about his readers' comments and about having an open (unclassified, of course) to the public Intellipedia-like wiki?

Posted by eMarv at 01:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by eMarv at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought this blog entry was interesting just from the title when I first saw it on technorati. Then I actually saw the post and well... just go there and feel free to comment here on what you think.

So now that you've seen it, what do you think? 

Posted by eMarv at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just saw the La CIA copia Wikipedia, nasce Intellipedia blog post by Marco Bardazzi,  the U.S. correspondent for ANSA news agency. Check it out if you are interested in an Italian translation of the news articles.

Sidebar: It would be really interesting to see what their actual opinions about Intellipedia are.
If anyone finds articles or blogs with opinions about Intellipedia, feel free to pass them along to me.

Posted by eMarv at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

I just saw this Yale Daily News article by Michael Seringhaus, a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics: ‘Intellipedia’? CIA jumps on wiki wagon

Below are some quotes and comments:

Here's the positive:

At a basic level, the new system makes sense. With 16 different agencies, shared goals and many areas of overlap, the intelligence community could likely profit from a comprehensive, communally updated information depository. Ideally, such a system would automate information collation and offer a pre-synthesized crock pot of high-test tattle. Preparing the National Intelligence Estimate would then become simply a matter of bulk-dumping the wiki's contents to a file and whisking it to the president.

And now for some not exactly positive quotes: 

...I doubt Intellipedia will nurture or reward dissenting voices within the intelligence establishment anytime soon. If it doesn't, we've just affixed a multi-agency rubber stamp to the work of the same warmongering misinformation artists who designed and implemented the Iraq war. Jolly good.

Even if we are satisfied with the motives of intelligence staff, the Intellipedia system still raises security concerns. Is it wise to publish sensitive documents en masse to a digital network, and then make them available to thousands of workers from assorted agencies?

The Transportation Security Authority and national laboratories can now access Intellipedia. There is talk of inviting Britain, Canada and Australia to contribute, and even of granting access to China, allegedly so doctors there can comment on avian flu. All this seems like a recipe for trouble. Then again, I've always secretly hoped to see airport baggage handlers and rural Chinese doctors weigh in on American strategic defense policy, so why not? Let the media leaks begin.

Eric Haseltine, chief scientist for the Director of National Intelligence, recently bragged: "We are using wikis, we are using blogs, we are using chat, we are using instant messaging." Impressive haul, Eric: the Four Horsemen of Internet time-wasting, right there. Just add Facebook and you'll have a full house.

It is gratifying to note that Mark Foley's very public loss to instant messenger-fueled temptation last month seemingly has not curbed government enthusiasm for fun Internet distraction.

In a sense, Intellipedia is a sobering reminder of just how ho-hum the intelligence community really is. We glamorize the business: Spies are patriotic charmers with high-tech gadgets, and analysts are devoted and omniscient eggheads with advanced computers and top-secret software. It's deflating, then, when the CIA squeals over publicly available open-source hand-me-downs like a child on Christmas morning. Yeah, wikis are cool. We know. We use them.

Sigh. Does this mean there's no laser watch?

Sigh. The world is not always really not like how Hollywood presents it... (Digression: Though sometimes Hollywood does tell true stories. I just saw "Catch a Fire." An eye-opening story and excellent movie!)

Posted by eMarv at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Check out the Vietnamese blog post!

Actually there's not too much to see there, it is basically an extract from the San Francisco chronicle article, but you have to admit that Vietnamese letters look pretty cool! :) 

You may also want to check out the Marginal Revolution blog entry on Intellipedia which the above blog post refers to. The author, Alex Tabarrok, mentions that he wrote a blog post about a Decentral Intelligence Agency in 2004 and he suggested the use of blogs and wikis back then. It is also good to hear that Alex Tabarrok is delighted to hear about Intellipedia. Positive news is good!

What do you think about a Decentral Intelligence Agency?

Posted by eMarv at 04:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's the link: An unusual investment in wikis: Intellipedia

The thing I found interesting was the bolded text (my emphasis) below:

In a classic Web 2.0-era move, an "unofficial Intellipedia blog" has been launched. Similarly, there is a Wikipedia entry, of course.

Wow! I didn't know there were "classic" Web 2.0-era moves already, but I guess there are with the amount of private equity Web2.0 activity.

Thanks for the link Liberal Education Today! 

Posted by eMarv at 03:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jim Downing of the Smart Mobs website wrote a blog post about a SMH (Sydney Morning Herald newspaper) article on Intellipedia.

Unfortunately, the article was only a carbon copy of other articles we've seen and the blog post was just a summary of the article. I was really hoping they had added some commentary about what they thought about Intellipedia.

I did find an interesting ad next to the blog post though. Check it out below:

What do you think about this ad being on the Smart Mobs website? (I found it interesting...) Just FYI, the Smart Mobs subtitle (on the website as of 7 Nov 2006) is:

The next social revolution

Mobile communication, pervasive computing, wireless networks, collective action.

Posted by eMarv at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a link to The Skopje Times (from the blog: "weblog for the Global, Macedonian and Skopjan war of ideas"), run by Ivica Bocevski, who wrote the Intellipedia-related blog post: Intellipedia - иднината на разузнавањето

Anyone care to translate or provide a summary? I wonder how Ivica first found out about Intellipedia. Is the media there writing about Intellipedia?

BTW, below is the text that refers to this blog:

Инаку, Wikipedia веќе има цел текст посветен на Intellipedia, а на Интернет дури се појави и блог посветен на овој нов продукт.

Here's my translation using the Macedonian to English dictionary (since there is no Macedonian to English translator on Babelfish or Google Translate though the Babelfish Russian to English translator helped):

Otherwise, Wikipedia already has an article dedicated to Intellipeda, and even on Internet it has a blog dedicated to the novel product.

благодарам! (Thanks!)

Posted by eMarv at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this article after seeing it bookmarked in kirbyp's del.icio.us bookmarks. Thanks kirbyp!

Now for the quotes and comments:

"...officials from the 16 U.S. spy agencies — and even some beyond that — are increasingly using a new internal website called 'Intellipedia'..."

"...even some beyond that..." Interesting! At least one of the beyond that is the TSA which they refer to further down in the article.

"All of these tools ... are in their Model T stage," conceded Sean Dennehy of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, who helped develop the Intellipedia.

Congrats Sean! (You will be in the history books, for sure.) Regarding the Model T comment, it is great to hear that the Intelligence Community is not waiting to develop a perfect solution (which doesn't exist) and wait to deploy it (when it is obsolete). Agile methodology at its best! Throw something out there, let people pound on it, massage it, throw it out there again and repeat. BTW, it looks like Sean is becoming the king of the memorable sound bite. Remember his other quote in the LA Times article: "It moves us away from homogenized intelligence..." (I also saw an interesting quote in Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion that extends Sean's comment: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." Walter Lippman. I wonder if that is what happened in the past...)

"When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a Manhattan apartment building this month, officials from the Transportation Security Administration and eight other agencies updated information on the accident 80 times in two hours."

Can you say success story? Imagine if this were to happen with any other potential terrorist event. Actually, who's to say it hasn't happened already?

"Don Burke, a CIA officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, said more than 3,600 users have created log-ons to use the site..."

I wonder how many are active users or what percentage of the registered users are actually active. My guess is that they haven't tapped into the Long Tail yet since as mentioned further in the article there are "tens of thousands of users."

Getting some traditionalists to contribute takes encouragement. Intellipedia's architects have resorted to sending small, black garden shovels to contributors.

"I dig Intellipedia!" says the handle. "It's wiki, wiki, Baby."

Want to see what it looks like? That you'll have to Google.

Why not just get rid of the traditionalists? (Just joking, I know there will always be traditionalists but it doesn't hurt to ask... :) As you all know, you need not look further than this blog's Intellipedia shovel category to see the pic. We also know that they aren't giving them only to traditionalists as Kevin is proof.

Posted by eMarv at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Story actually found this blog. He posted a comment on Intellipedia shovel entry. I checked out his blog and low and behold and Voila! I found the picture below.

Everyone, please join me in congratulating Kevin on becoming the first with an Intellipedia shovel! So what's the next award after the shovel? Kevin, if you read this, can you share how many edits you had or was it an award based on quality, not quantity?

Posted by eMarv at 03:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by eMarv at 03:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned the announcement of the Intellipedia Roundtable on a previous post, but now that I found the original FAS post by Steven Aftergood, I just wanted to refer to it directly.

I am still curious to see how they got access to the Media Advisory. Maybe one of the recipients sent it to them... I actually posted a comment on his blog asking the question. Let's see if he publishes the comment and then answers it.

Posted by eMarv at 03:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The article is titled Oogle und Intellipedia. I looked at the Google translation and could get the gist of it, but could anyone provide a better translation of the article or at least the first line below:

Was ist das Beste, was man über Medien sagen kann: dass voneinander gelernt wird.

One question: Is it that google indexes German sites more or is that not many other folks are writing about Intellipedia in the rest of the world?

Posted by eMarv at 07:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Intellipedia: Eine eigene Wikipedia für US-Geheimdienste

This article refers to a magazine article, Wikipedia ist schneller als die Geheimdienste, in Telepolis.

They talk about Dr. Andrus' and Mr. Russell's presentations and their references to Intellipedia.

Anyone care to translate? Their comments would be especially interesting to understand...

UPDATE: Dietmar provided a translation below. (Thanks Dietmar!) Please check the comments.

Posted by eMarv at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The Reuters article.

"...the [Wikipedia] format known for its openness is key to the future of American espionage."

Wow! Key is the word! Imagine that, the government using an open system to open up! I wonder if and how the new spy movies to come will use Intellipedia. They'd probably have to spice it up a bit and create a Minority Report system-like interface or better yet use virtual worlds like Second Life. (If you go there, feel free to add me as a friend. I'm eMarv Alturas.) What do you think? What kind of movie would it be?

"Less restrictive versions exist for 'secret' and 'sensitive but unclassified' material."

Wouldn't it be great to have one version that can effectively handle all versions? 

"Intellipedia is currently being used to assemble a major intelligence report, known as a national intelligence estimate, on Nigeria as well as the State Department's annual country reports on terrorism, officials said."

Great to hear! The State Department is also participating.

"Some day it may also be the path intelligence officials take to produce the president's daily intelligence briefing."

Intellipedia may produce the president's daily brief! Very cool!

Dr. Wertheimer comment: "We're taking a risk," acknowledged Michael Wertheimer, the intelligence community's chief technical officer. "There's a risk it's going to show up in the media, that it'll be leaked."

There are risks in everything that everyone does. The key is risk management, not risk avoidance. The clearance has to mean something...

"Intelligence officials are so enthusiastic about Intellipedia that they plan to provide access to Britain, Canada and Australia."

What do you think about this? IMO, this can only be a good thing. Would you add anyone else to the list? If so, who else would you add?

A final very interesting quote:

Even China could be granted access to help produce an unclassified intelligence estimate on the worldwide threat posed by infectious diseases.

"We'd hope to get down to the doctor in Shanghai who may have a useful contribution on avian flu," senior intelligence analyst Fred Hassani said.

WOW! Why can't this happen now?

Posted by eMarv at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This post is not to different from the LA Times post. There are a couple of additions.

One: "The system is based on the software used by millions of Internet users to create encyclopedia entries at www.wikipedia.org."

The Intellipedia Wikipedia article has that info too. 

Two: "But unlike that largely anonymous environment [Wikipedia], the individuals who add material to pages on the intelligence system have to attach their names to their contributions."

I actually see this as a good thing! Full attribution is good especially with regards to intelligence. What do you about full attribution in wikis?

On a side note, one thing that I want to know is how the Intelligence Summit got to participate. Good for them!

Posted by eMarv at 01:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned in the last post, mainstream media is starting the onslaught of Intellipedia articles. The LA Times article is one of them.

Here's some interesting quotes from the article:

After being criticized for downplaying dissenting views on Iraq's alleged weapons programs, "we're trying to transform the way we do business," said Michele Weslander, a senior official overseeing the initiative for the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte.

Transformation in the Intelligence Community is good. Don't ya think? (BTW, in case you didn't know, Michele Weslander is the Deputy CIO of the ODNI.)

Here's another excerpt:

Officials said that the program is still under development and has not replaced existing procedures used to create intelligence reports delivered to President Bush and other policymakers. But it is being used to assemble preliminary judgments for a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria and could someday supplant the more cumbersome mechanisms used to create such reports.

I wonder why it hasn't replaced existing procedures and why it hasn't already "supplant[ed] the more cumbersome mechanisms?" If you had a choice on whether to select a process that was more cumbersome or efficient, what would you choose?

Another quote:

"I think in the future you'll press a button and this will be the NIE," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

Hooray for Dr. Wertheimer! We need more forward thinking leaders like him in the government! Imagine that press a button and out pops the NIE. Who woulda thunk?

Another: "In a meeting with reporters at the Office of the Director for National Intelligence..."

So this must have been the by-invitation-only meeting on 31 October 2006, which the Homeland Security Watch referred to and that I wrote the last post about.

Another: "...officials showed how analysts from multiple agencies had used the network to post frequent updates on recent events, including the crash of a small plane into a New York City apartment building last month and North Korea's test of a missile in July."

Awesome! Real-time intelligence!

Another:

Officials said they were not making the network available to members of Congress or other policymakers, largely because of a reluctance to disseminate material that analysts view as a work in progress.

If the material expressly states that it is a work in progress, what's the problem? Anyway, isn't everything a work in progress?

Another:

But they stressed that disseminating material to the widest possible audience of analysts is key to avoiding mistakes like those that contributed to erroneous assessments that Iraq possessed stockpiles of banned weapons and was pursuing a nuclear arsenal.

"erroneous assessments": I'm not going to comment on this since I really don't want to start a political debate, but we'll see where the blog takes us... :)

And the final and most awesome quote:

"It moves us away from homogenized intelligence," said Sean Dennehy, a CIA official involved in creating the new system.

I was going to say that the only thing I want homogenized is milk, but I drink soy milk. ;-) Being different and diverse is good, especially, IMO, when dealing with intelligence!

So what do you think about the government officials comments? 

Posted by eMarv at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by eMarv at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Intellipedia. Many of the hottest online tools now in use turn out to be ideal for sharing intelligence, officials say. Two years ago, the CIA launched its own wiki. (A wiki is an online site that allows users to collectively add and edit content, like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.) Dubbed simply the CIA Wiki, it now boasts some 10,000 classified pages. In January, the DNI followed with a communitywide wiki, dubbed the Intellipedia. The DNI's National Intelligence Council-which produces the government's weighty National Intelligence Estimates on key topics-has just launched an experiment to produce the first NIE by wiki. The subject: Nigeria. Top experts on the oil-rich African nation are working together on the Intellipedia to help chart its future. "I don't know if it's going to work," says Thomas Fingar, the chief of analysis for the DNI. "It might; might not."

Blogs have also caught on among specialists across the intelligence community. Encouraged by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, home to the agency's corps of analysts, CIA officials in the past year have signed up for some 200 group blogs and 1,500 individual blogs. After all the early excitement, however, the number of active blogs is now down to about 125. And as on the outside, the intelligence blogosphere is not without controversy. In July, a CIA contractor was summarily dismissed after posting her views that U.S. interrogation techniques violated the Geneva Conventions.

Government censors aside, intelligence blogs sound surprisingly similar to their more public cousins on the Internet. Classified blogs, complains one insider, range from "incredibly stupid" to "a few good ones" that are widely read.

Posted by eMarv at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Intellipedia,” as it is called, allows analysts to create a subject, then add their knowledge or documents to the “collaboration space,” [Richard Russell, deputy assistant director of national intelligence for information sharing and customer outreach at the office of the director of national intelligence] said at a conference sponsored by the Association for Enterprise Integration.

Intellipedia was created so “analysts in different agencies that work X or Y can go in and see what other people are doing on subject X or Y and actually add in their two cents worth ... or documents that they have,” Russell said.

“What we’re after here is decision superiority” not information superiority, he said. “We have to get inside the decision cycle of the enemy. We have to be able to discover what they’re doing and respond to it effectively.”

On a more open scale, the intelligence community recently collaborated with Health and Human Services to set up a “sensitive, but non-classified” avian flu portal that can be used by interested parties. Such forums are relatively easy to set up because 90 percent of the information on the subject is unclassified.

Posted by eMarv at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Found another article that refers to Intellipedia and Dr. Andrus:

At the Collaborative Expedition Workshop, D. Calvin Andrus, the chief technology officer for the Central Intelligence Agency’s Center for Mission Innovation, said the CIA has recently begun using wikis to share information. At first, the CIA used wikis internally. It has about 12,000 pages scattered throughout its top-secret network, Andrus said. Increasingly, though, the agency is using the technology to collaborate with other intelligence offices, Andrus said.

Analysts from the CIA’s Office of Iraqi Analysis are devoting time to assembling what they know into a collection of wiki pages, collectively know as the Intellipedia. The wiki pages can then be made available to other intelligence agencies and the analysts themselves continue to update the pages.

So how long do you think it will be before the rest of the CIA embraces Intellipedia? 

Posted by eMarv at 01:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

-Technology is the enabler, not the solution
-The solution is changing the culture to allow intelligence officers to share and act -- with simple rules of engagement
-The ODNI must build an incentive and reward structure for those components that adopt this new model of doing business

Posted by eMarv at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this GCN article when it first came out, but thought I'd blog about it now...What is especially interesting is what Dr. Fingar says about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) effort. It would be very interesting to see how it pans out. I really hope it works for the best for all.

What do you think? Will it work? 

Posted by eMarv at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by eMarv at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)