BigShinyThing

The FT reports today that America’s intelligence agencies are about to launch ‘A Space’, an internal communications tool modelled on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), believes that the site will help dismantle the agencies’ siloed mentalities and help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited. He told the FT, “Burying the same number of analysts in ever higher piles of hay would no more increase the number of needles.”

Of course, this story has rather handily come out the day before ‘a systemic failure’ was blamed for the CIA failing to predict the 911 terrorist attacks.

The DNI has also built an internal collaborative site called Intellipedia, based on Wikipedia. The CIA recently used Facebook to recruit and has created a version of del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site, for members of the intelligence community. Another tool is an intelligence library which can be accessed via A Space.

The big lesson here is even the intelligence community is beginning to recognise the importance of opening up flows of communication and information. Mike Wertheimer, the senior DNI officer for analytic for transformation and technology (we are LOVING these job titles) said that, “We are willing to experiment in ways that we have never experimented before. It breaks a lot of traditional senses that people’s lives are at risk, and how can you take any step that increases that risk.” Spies — like big corporates — have issues with sharing stuff. But maybe for better reasons. Wertheimer says, “They ask ‘well can we have access (to the intelligence library)?’ I ask them back if you want access, what services are you willing to put in, have you thought through your risk/profit scenario? They kind of stand back because that is not normally how we talk to them. It is a new day.”

All those organisations busily banning Facebook and other new tools of collaboration and communication should take heed.