[Slightly off topic (sorry!) ... but then ... this is the
platform we are collaborating on too! =ppy] (01)
Thanks to Marc Wine for informing us about this article at the
Ontolog Forum weekly call today. =ppy (02)
Source: http://www.gcn.com/print/25_25/41673-1.html (03)
// (04)
*The amazing Wikis* (05)
From the CIO Council to the CIA, the lightweight collaboration
platform is taking hold—but it’s not a no-brainer (06)
By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff (07)
Government Computer News - 08/21/06 issue (08)
While monthly meetings of the Collaborative Expedition Workshop
normally fill a pretty big room at the National Science
Foundation’s Ballston, Va., headquarters, July’s attracted nearly
double the usual attendance. It turned out folks from a wide
swath of intelligence, defense and civilian agencies wanted to
know how they could use an emerging form of online collaboration.
The topic of the workshop? Wiki software. (09)
The workshops are put on by the General Services Administration
and the CIO Council to identify new, effective collaborative
technologies. Wikis proved a natural fit. A wiki is a type of Web
site that lets users edit content directly in their Web browser.
Disarmingly simple, wikis can serve as a hub for groups with
dispersed members to share information. They can also serve as an
easy way to store information that others in an office can
consult and update. (010)
According to Mark Roseman, founder of commercial wiki provider
CourseForum Technologies of Guelph, Ontario, “wikis work really
well in situations where people are just trying to work together
in a fashion that suits them better.” (011)
Online collaboration is nothing new, of course. What makes wiki
software so unique is that it does not require specialized
software on the users’ part, nor does it require much training. (012)
In late 2002, IT research firm IDC of Framingham, Mass.,
conducted a study that found e-mail was by far the most popular
collaboration tool, used in more than 90 percent of the projects
surveyed. People working together on projects simply exchanged
notes and sent files as attachments rather than using dedicated
collaborative software, such as Microsoft’s Groove or EMC Corp.’s
eRoom. E-mail required no special software beyond what most
people already had. (013)
While it’s easy to use, the downside to relying on e-mail is that
“all the value is kept in people’s private inboxes,” said Ross
Mayfield, chief executive officer and founder of commercial wiki
provider Socialtext of Palo Alto, Calif. (014)
Like e-mail, wikis require no special software; only a Web
browser. By using a wiki in addition to, or instead of, e-mail,
files can be stored in a central location, with very little work
or technical expertise. “With the way people use wikis, things
stay transparent and impermanent. You can always update
information any time with a single click,” Mayfield said. (015)
Anyone with a browser can edit a wiki page. (Setting up a wiki is
something else; see story, next page.) A wiki page looks
identical to a regular Web page, except that somewhere is a
button marked “Edit.” Click on that button and you get a
plain-text version of that page, in which you can make changes.
When you’re finished, just click on the Save button and your work
gets added to that page. (016)
Contrast this with something like IBM’s Lotus Notes or other
commercial collaboration packages. In such a case, each user
needs the Lotus software, which could prevent casual or
cross-agency collaboration. “Plus the training requirement is
huge,” Roseman said. “The nice thing with wikis is that you can
structure the space the way you want, not the way the software
wants you to.” (017)
*Government use* (018)
Like other grassroots technologies, wikis have quietly permeated
the fabric of government IT. (019)
Last year, when the Federal CIO Council’s Architecture and
Infrastructure Committee set out to revise the Federal Enterprise
Architecture Data Reference Model, it used two wikis, one public
and one exclusive to participants. The wiki was provided by CIM
Engineering Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., through an existing
contract with GSA. (020)
Hashing out a new DRM was an onerous task involving 130
participants from around the country. Many of the individuals
were strangers and the material was formidable. (021)
The wiki format offered an easy way to post and cross-index
documents, as well as archive e-mail discussions, said Michael
Daconta, who was the technical lead for the group and is now vice
president of enterprise data management for Oberon Associates
Inc. of Manassas, Va. Although the wiki was not instrumental to
the success of the group, it did streamline operations. The group
was able to quickly post working-level documents for public
viewing. And because it required little formal training,
participants could quickly start contributing. (022)
At the Collaborative Expedition Workshop, D. Calvin Andrus, the
chief technology officer for the Central Intelligence Agency’s
Center for Mission Innovation, said the CIA has recently begun
using wikis to share information. At first, the CIA used wikis
internally. It has about 12,000 pages scattered throughout its
top-secret network, Andrus said. Increasingly, though, the agency
is using the technology to collaborate with other intelligence
offices, Andrus said. (023)
Analysts from the CIA’s Office of Iraqi Analysis are devoting
time to assembling what they know into a collection of wiki
pages, collectively know as the Intellipedia. The wiki pages can
then be made available to other intelligence agencies and the
analysts themselves continue to update the pages. (024)
The CIO Council’s Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
also relies on wiki software provided by CIM Engineering. In
conjunction with other groups, the council sometimes holds
conferences and helps guide a number of pilot projects. The wiki
has been essential to facilitating work before, during and after
the group’s workshops, said co-chairman Brand Niemann. (025)
Before an event, the group uses a wiki to hash out details such
as speaker schedules and discussion topics. During the
conference, participants refer to the wiki for directions,
dial-in numbers, schedules and posted presentations. Afterwards,
the wiki serves as a record of the event and a document repository. (026)
The community of practice had used various collaboration tools
before settling on a wiki, Niemann said. They weren’t as easy for
newcomers to use, which created a bottleneck, forcing Niemann and
co-chair Susan Turnbull to handle all the shared material. (027)
“Everything had to come to us, and we had to post everything,”
Niemann said. “Now we distribute the workload. We tell people,
‘If you are going to make a presentation, please post your file.’ ” (028)
Leonard Dorfman, vice president of product marketing for
commercial wiki provider eTouch Systems Corp. of Fremont, Calif.,
said that once they’re introduced to an enterprise, wikis usually
proliferate. Once a technically minded group, say a staff of
engineers, installs a wiki for a particular project, that wiki
software is often adopted by other groups over time. (029)
*Nature of collaboration* (030)
Wikis are so straightforward that it’s difficult to assess the
changes they could make to social collaboration overall. In many
ways, a wiki doesn’t change the nature of collaboration, it just
streamlines record-keeping. “It was certainly no silver bullet,”
Daconta said of the DRM wiki. While it offered a quick way to
post material, the wiki did not alter the process of developing
the DRM itself. (031)
A common aspect of collaborative workgroups is that many people
offer some input, but there are usually a few people who serve up
the lion’s share. Implicit in the wiki’s ease-of-use is the
assumption that it lowers the barrier of participation, thereby
fostering a more democratic environment. But when reflecting on
the group dynamics of developing the DRM, Daconta found it
similar to large group projects he had participated in before. (032)
“The success of the wiki directly relates to the comfort level
and the training of the group,” Daconta said. Although wikis are
easy to use, some training is still required to handle details
like markup. Turnbull periodically holds phone seminars on how to
use the CIM wiki so participants in various government projects
quickly get up to speed. So the technical barrier to online
collaboration can be lowered through wikis, but not eliminated.
“The problem is your non-techies will shy away from it,” Daconta
said, noting that today’s wiki editing software is still primitive. (033)
Others, however, see wikis portending great organizational
change. Andrus is one who can see how wikis could dramatically
change reporting routines for the CIA, which must collect and
analyze data from around the world. He admits that the
organization is now outgunned by Web users, at least when it
comes to basic fact-gathering and reporting. (034)
As an example, he points to a Wikipedia [www.wikipedia.com] entry
on last summer’s terrorist bombings in London. Within 90 minutes
of the bombing, a Wikipedia page was posted about the event and
was updated almost continually in the days that followed. “There
was no editor-in-chief. No one told anybody to do this. [People]
took it upon themselves to make this entry. They were empowered,”
Andrus said. (035)
This approach is a powerful contrast to the CIA’s routine. The
usual process of the CIA is to collect information, write a
report, carefully edit the report to eliminate errors and push
the copy through production. “That is a yesterday’s-news-tomorrow
paradigm,” he said. (036)
Wiki software points to a new model, Andrus noted: Instead of
editing and then publishing material, the material is published
first and edited later. (037)
Andrus isn’t alone in advocating this approach. At last spring’s
LinuxWorld Conference in Boston, Peter Thoeny, who manages the
Twiki Wiki software, also expressed a similar sentiment. Managers
usually first see wikis as chaotic, he noted. They want the
content to be perfect before it’s posted. But overall, it is more
efficient to post new material early and then revise it often.
Thoeny noted that this is the approach used by embedded software
maker Wind River Software, which has an internal corporate wiki
that, with over 85,000 pages, is updated 22,000 times a month. (038)
Using such an approach, Andrus said, “Once we get a critical
mass, we can change the way we do intelligence forever.” (039)
// (040)
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