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9 April 2008

From the Bottom-up: Building the 21st Century CIA

For anyone who attended the talk today on Intellipedia by Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, you can post reactions on the blog....

"From the Bottom-up: Building the 21st Century CIA"

Sean Dennehy
Chief of the CIA Intellipedia Development Cell

Don Burke
Intellipedia Doyen

Abstract: In this seminar, Sean Dennehy and Don Burke will brief the technical and cultural changes underway at the CIA involving the adoption of wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking tools. These tools are being used to improve information sharing across the US Intelligence Community by moving information out of traditional channels. Sean and Don will also host a question and answer session. In 2005, Dr. Calvin Andrus published “The Wiki and The Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community.” Three years later, a vibrant and rapidly growing community has transformed how the CIA aggregates, communicates, and organizes intelligence information.

Sean Dennehy has more than 15 years of experience in various elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, DIA’s Joint Staff Intelligence, and supporting US Air Force operations. As the pilot customer for Intellipedia, he has become a leading change agent for incorporating Enterprise 2.0 solutions into the Intelligence Community's business practices. He has developed an innovative “sabbatical” program that introduces Intelligence Community officers to the numerous web 2.0 applications that are being deployed on multiple intelligence networks. The focus of his efforts is encouraging a viral adoption where officers replace existing processes to take advantage of network effects encountered when individuals move projects out of “channels” and onto “platforms”. His actions are based on the National Intelligence Strategy’s six main characteristics: results-focused, collaborative, bold, future-oriented, self-evaluating, and innovative. Together with a small cadre of early adopters, Mr. Dennehy is helping to break down stovepipes to allow intelligence professionals to truly act as a "community”.

Don Burke is a leading proponent of the Enterprise 2.0 ethos within the Intelligence Community and is currently the "Intellipedia Doyen", which is a role he has held since the spring of 2006. In this role he is partnered with other early adopters in an effort to demonstrate the value of social software tools, educate the Community on how to use these tools, and advocate for improvements to the environment with the goal of improving our ability to capture our knowledge and expertise. Mr. Burke is currently employed by the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and has a diverse 19+ year background in the Federal Government working a wide range of technical and analytical issues including collection, technical analysis, congressionally directed actions, direct support to operations, project management, advanced visualization technologies, software development, budgeting, and management. Mr. Burke was quoted extensively in the October 2007 SIGNAL magazine article "Intellipedia Seeks Ultimate Information Sharing."

Relevant Readings:

1. NY Times Article (good for general introduction to IC cultural and technological issues)
URL:
2. 2004 - Seminal Paper about why the IC needs to adopt social software technologies
Title: The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community
3. Wikipedia article on "Intellipedia"

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Posted by David Lazer at April 9, 2008 2:10 PM

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