Wikipedia untuk orang Cerdik Pandai CIA

From the Bottom-up: Building the 21st Century Intelligence Community
Speakers:
Don Burke, Intellipedia Doyen, CIA
Sean Dennehy, Intellipedia Evangelists, CIA

What it promised:
Speakers will brief the technical and cultural changes underway at the CIA and across the Intelligence Community involving the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 through tools that are being used to improve information sharing. (Enterprise 2.0 Conference Guidebook)

What was delivered:
As promised, although I am sure not all was divulged... But enough was said to give us an honest view of how enterprise 2.0 is working for even more complex organizations such as the CIA.

The focus was Intellipedia, a wiki used by the US Intelligence community to share knowledge on various aspects of spying, technology, occurences that may or may not have an impact on security in America, basically everything the American equivalent of James Bond would want to know. Spooks contribute articles that are fingerprinted and tracked which in some manner allow for some form of content validation. On top of the Wiki (platformed provided by Wikipedia), are nifty bookmarks and alerts to the latest changes on any particular article, videos, tagging a document management system. Of course, there are several access levels, from top secret, secret to Sensitive but Unclassified but all Intellipedia users are allowed to access and read contributions.

Lessons learnt from Intellipedia:

• Because of similar enterprise 2.0 type resistance, start small. Choose a project that is workable- topical versus organizational: Intellipedia started off with acronyms, as should any acronym loving organizations such as MDeC.
• Age is just a number. The idea of Intellipedia came about when there was a knowledge gap among the younger workforce and the "M's" , or millenials, whose extensive knowledge and experience were not properly documented and transferred. Intellipedia has been extremely appealing to the younguns, but some of its heavy contributors are also made up of the Ms - with a little encouragement of course.
• They had to "force" contributions at first. Populating the wiki was important to generate interest and voluntary contributions.
• Imagine trading top secret information! There were a lot of security concerns among the general community. Individuals were concerned with the rights of viewing and writing of certain information rather than on the idea that many heads is better than one (unless you work in Ramsey's Hell Kitchen)- again, some patience and persistence required.
• Replace an existing business process, don't make new ones which may result in greater resistance to change. If it means calling a Blog something else, then by all means do so. Call it report writing if you please.
• Touch the hearts of as many people as possible.

More information from the Enterprise 2.0 advocates themselves

Conclusion:

All in all, its about a cultural changes. Sikit-sikit, jadi bukit. You overcome the characteristics of the usual "must be reasonable and move with caution" individuals within the organization as stipulated by Burke and Dennehy, by taking small steps during implementation even if it accounts for smaller successes at the end. Many small successes is after all great too. Intellipedia helped them solve problems. Maybe help them catch Osama too? They were able to answer "business" questions that would not have been possible before, and within a much shorter timeframe. So now, if the US Intelligence Community and its secrets can do it, why not us ay?