All news, All about Intellipedia!

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)