All news, All about Intellipedia!

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)

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)

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)

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)

I just saw this story on AlwaysOn with a link the ABC News blog post. Here's an extract that sums up the main point of the post:

The CIA recently updated its policies on Freedom of Information Act requests to allow bloggers to qualify for special treatment once reserved for old-school reporters. And last August, the NSA issued a directive to its employees to report leaks of classified information to the media -- "including blogs," the order said.

My initial question is how can I get on the list so I can receive classified report leaks ;-), but seriously, this is good news for bloggers. Go bloggers!

My second thought is: Would internal (meaning CIA/NSA or in general, Intelligence Community) bloggers and for that matter Intellipedians be allowed to request information for their blogs or Intellipedia using FOIA or would they already have that information available?

BTW, I wonder how they define blogger. Would someone that set up a blog a couple of weeks ago be able to have the same privileges? (I'm not saying that they shouldn't, especially if in those 2 weeks that person has been an excellent blogger.)

Just food for thought while I create a real Intellipedia-related post...

Posted by eMarv at 01:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)