CIA is upbeat on enterprise 2.0

CIOs may not quite get the wiki thing, but the Central Intelligence Agency is pretty bullish on Web 2.0 techniques.

According to CIO.com, part of the CIA's technology makeover relied on wiki software. Using a little enterprise 2.0 the CIA created something called Intellipedia, which was introduced in 2006. CIO writes:

One of the more notable successes that the CIA has delivered to the intel community is the Intellipedia product, which was introduced in 2006. Based on wiki software, Intellipedia allows analysts in all 16 organizations in the intelligence community to share Web-based information on critical topics and search for intel expertise on a wide range of subjects, such as who's got expertise on Burundi. Unlike Wikipedia, there is no anonymity: Everyone is authenticated onto the system and quality control is high, reports Ken Westbrook, chief of business information strategy in the CIA's intelligence directorate.

So far, there are more than 40,000 registered users who have made 1.8 million page edits on more than 300,000 pages in the system. (Before Intellipedia, Westbrook says, "you'd have to send e-mails through lots of people and hope that they read them.")

CIO notes that there were cultural hurdles with the wiki effort, but agents eventually embraced it. In other areas Westbrook is upbeat about user generated software projects. In other words, the CIA is buying into the consumerization drumbeat. I'm all for the CIA adopting Web 2.0 technologies, but I do wonder about security. Many consumer technologies just aren't ready for corporate use. It's one thing when a retailer loses your information through some insecure Web service. It's quite another when CIA dossiers get lifted.