{"id":236,"date":"2021-01-02T20:15:19","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T20:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/?p=236"},"modified":"2021-01-23T10:02:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T10:02:07","slug":"intellipedia-a-case-of-intrapreneurship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/intellipedia-a-case-of-intrapreneurship\/","title":{"rendered":"Intellipedia as a case of intrapreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Intellipedia is a Wikipedia for the US Intelligence Community: a tool for collaborative, asynchronous information sharing within and between different U.S. intelligence agencies. It uses the same software as Wikipedia<\/a>, and even had an \u201dimport from Wikipedia\u201d-option in an earlier version (Dennehy<\/a>, 2008<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>), where analysts could easily include data from Wikipedia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is part of an outline for my thesis on
Intrapreneurs as insider threats<\/em><\/a>
Feedback is more than welcome
in the comments<\/a> or via email<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellipedia is separately implemented on different clearance levels to compartmentalize sensitive information (CIA<\/a>, 2009<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). In March 2017, one of its founders (Dennehy<\/a>, 2017<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>) stated that Intellipedia had received \u201dabout 350 Million pageviews\u201d<\/em> since its inception more than ten years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst the idea for the effort is attributed to the then head of the CIA\u2019s unit for collaboration technologies, Calvin Andrus (Tomlin<\/a>, 2005<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>) and his article in Intelligence Studies, \u201cThe Wiki and The Blog\u201d (Andrus<\/a>, 2005<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>), it was CIA\u2019s Sean Dennehy and Don Burke that are credited for spearheading the initiative (CIA<\/a>, 2008<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tested in 2005 and announced formally in 2006, Intellipedia soon became something of a trophy project for the US Government. Dennehy later recalled how \u201dI thought I was working for our public relations office <\/em>[because] I was up in their office so often about Intellipedia\u201d<\/em> (Dennehy<\/a>, 2008). However, the Intellipedia project was also met by skepticism from members of the USIC (Dixon & McNamara<\/a>, 2008<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). Sean Dennehy, later publicly recalled: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dWe were called traitors, [and were told] we were going to get people killed\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>(Havenstein<\/a>, 2008<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellipedia in earlier literature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Intellipedia has been recognized as an intrapreneurial venture by consulting firm Deloitte (Arnold & Magia<\/a>, 2013<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>) and has been covered in many news articles, but is generally understudied in academic literature. The available research is a case study of Intellipedia as a main example for one of three \u201ddistinct legislative approaches\u201d to increase federal counterterrorism information-sharing by the U.S. Congress, where Intellipedia illustrates the consent approach (Peled<\/a>, 2016<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellipedia is also named in a conference talk (not cited by Peled) about how the U.S. Information Sharing Environment (ISE), has benefited from Intellipedia (Willbrand, 2010<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). Both contributions mention Intellipedia as a response to the political pressure for more information sharing within the USIC, in the wake of the 9\/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S. in 2001. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than this, Intellipedia is named in student papers, namely Ben Eli & Hutchins<\/a> (2010<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span>) and Chomik<\/a> (2012<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). The latter student also wrote an article mentioning Intellipedia published in a journal the year before he presented his master thesis (Chomik<\/a>, 2011<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, there is an ethnographic study made by the Defense Intelligence Agency\u2019s (DIA) Knowledge Lab, of how DIA analysts use and experience the Intellipedia, privately published online by one of the researchers (Dixon & McNamara<\/a>, 2008<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). The DIA study is made from unclassified data extracted from interviews (with ten analysts identified as active users of Intellipedia and five identified as non-users), all anonymized. The researchers stated reluctance to call their results \u201dfindings\u201d and instead presented them as observations, as there was no systematic sample of respondents and because the sample size was relatively small (this study is one of two main sources used by Chomik in 2012<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you know of other published
studies, papers or findings on Intellipedia?

Please let me know in the comments<\/a>, or via email<\/a>!
(Cat photo by Jakayla Toney<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intellipedia is a Wikipedia for the US Intelligence Community: a tool for collaborative, asynchronous information sharing within and between different U.S. intelligence agencies. It uses the same software as Wikipedia, and even had an \u201dimport from Wikipedia\u201d-option in an earlier version (Dennehy, 2008), where analysts could easily include data from Wikipedia. This is part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,9,8],"tags":[10,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gustavs.se\/intra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}