Intellipedia Inches Toward Acceptance

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Intellipedia Inches Toward Acceptance

KGB thankful for central repository of secrets

By Alex Pinto May 01 2009, 01:00 AM

For the past three years, the U.S. intelligence community has been using a classified wiki called Intellipedia. Launched in 2005 during the shakedown of the intel community that followed the shock of 9/11, the idea exploded despite some resistance from the stodgy old guard. The site now hosts almost a million pages.

Intellipedia stays well maintained thanks to a dedicated group of individuals who “garden” the wiki, watching over their specific domains of expertise. Already, there are a handful of success stories. When problems arise, especially overseas, Intellipedia offers a place for analysts to react quickly and share information quickly.

All of the 16 intelligence groups in the U.S. make use of Intellipedia, so information has been able to travel faster than ever throughout the community, uniting the knowledge of those who work in different agencies but cover the same topics. Just recently, the site got a cosmetic revamp that makes it more user-friendly. By most accounts, including those of the impressed-sounding mass media, it is a great success.

Or is it? There have been reports of growing pains as the wiki goes from childhood to adolescence. Although the growth of Intellipedia was initially rapid and impressive, Chris Rasmussen of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has indicated that it is struggling to continue that growth rate. He says new people just aren’t joining in. The dedicated individuals who were there from day one have now added much of what they know, and the size of the wiki has plateaued.

To remedy this, Rasmussen points to successes in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department, which have started using the wiki for exclusively for some official reports, rather than always double-posting information both on the wiki and in conventional formats. This singular approach is crucial to the future of Intellipedia, Rasmussen thinks, as most agencies still refuse to trust the wiki as part of official process.

No one loves a stovepipe as much as the intelligence community, and there's been no shortage of mistrust of the collaborative wiki concept.

Early on in Intellipedia's existence, then-director of the National Intelligence Council Tom Fingar attempted to publish an official National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria on the site, but saw it fail because of its lack of a formal thesis. It was finished in the traditional system of organized peer-review.

Greg Treverton of the RAND corporation told Time magazine that, regarding intelligence estimates, the problem is less about using Intellipedia to create the polished reports that have always predominated in the IC, but instead moving away from those reports altogether.

“Intelligence analysis should be a sense-making exercise, a process,” he says. “Intellipedia is ideal for that: if you slice it at any given time, you are saying, 'Here is the best state of understanding at the moment.'"

In any case, Intellipedia has a bit of an identity crisis on its hands. Will it remain as it is now, a great tool for those in the intelligence community to use at their leisure, which may occasionally produce a brilliant result? Or is it the future of intelligence analysis in the U.S., the spearhead of a total overhaul in the way the CIA and the rest of the agencies operate? Only time will tell.

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Chris Rasmussen
May 1, 2009 2:15 PM

Good write up especially the third to last paragraph about over-reliance on “finished intelligence.” If you judge Intellipedia from the perspective of household name recognition, the number of users, and the high volume of encyclopedic content (not the trusted “source”) then Intellipedia is a success. I believe this is shortsighted and have been internally and publicly trying to steer Intellipedia into a “living” or “purple” intelligence model. I, like Treverton, believe that the wiki can be the authoritative place for “what we know right now” about a topic. This would help reduce duplication and shift the IC away from its often misdirected focus on agency-specific polished reports. Judging Intellipedia from this perspective it has a long way to go. Also, the purple intelligence model described above is supported by very few people even among passionate users. I like to ask, what has Intellipedia replaced? And the answer in most cases is very little. Has it fundamentally re-defined the heart of the “production” process of polished reports? There are a pocket of anecdotes but a couple of anecdotes after three years of use and hoping things will get better are not elements a strategy. Many may disagree with my strategy to break us out of stagnation, but I only ask this: instead of complaining and criticizing--suggest an alternative strategy. I’m trying to socialize the terms “Purple Intelligence" and/or "living intelligence.” These terms are references to what happens when a range of information is mixed together and the intelligence topic is constantly updated unlike the snapshot idea behind the "finished intelligence" process. If intelligence agencies were to adhere to the same concept – mixing their information together into one topical space rather than circulating reports with limited feedback loops on near identical topics through disparate agency-specific production systems--the government would experience more robust and efficient business processes. In 2006, intelligence officials acknowledged major barriers to information sharing. U.S. intelligence agencies still produce about 50,000 reports a year, often lengthy and redundant. Purple intelligence can help reduce the amount of duplication by moving the review process into the same space where the collaboration takes place. I’m working on a cool little video clip that explains purple intelligence. I’ve talked about it extensively for years behind the firewall at work, but it was mentioned in Lin Wells and Mark Drapeau’s Social Software and National Security paper (link below). http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/Def_Tech/DTP61_SocialSoftwareandNationalSecurity.pdf At any rate, I’m often mis-quoted in the press and blogs. These quotes spin off other commentary that is not always accurate. I understand this is a very esoteric topic but wanted to comment to convey more nuance.

Andrea Baker
May 1, 2009 3:41 PM

I actually disagree with Mr. Rasmussen's assertions of slow growth and the plateau of the wiki. The CIA recently put out a press release with some interesting information about the 3rd Anniversary of Intellipedia. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/intellipedia-celebrates-third-anniversary.html

Chris Rasmussen
May 1, 2009 5:15 PM

That story is mostly quantitative "evidence" and briefly touches upon the deeper points Mr. Treverton and I argue toward the end about "bureaucratization" and over-emphasis on analytical reports.

Channeling that often mis-direct energy of the analytic report is what I want to talk about.

Chris Rasmussen
May 1, 2009 6:54 PM

That story is mostly quantitative evidence. It briefly touches upon the over-emphasis on the analytic report and how to “bureaucratize” things near the end. These are the points I want to talk about. I’ve been arguing points similar to Treverton’s for a very long time behind the firewall and just recently in “public” in an attempt to jumpstart the “purple” process. This vision will take massive executive power (leadership) in the form of turning certain systems off and re-directing the IC’s often mis-directed “faith” in finished intelligence. As I said long ago, grassroots and impressive nominal user stats and edit rates are tapped out!