NPR has a great story on this today -----
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2733832&C=america U.S. Intel Agencies Modernize Info Sharing Use Variations Of MySpace, Wikipedia By STEPHEN LOSEY The U.S. intelligence community, which is struggling to share information as its corps of midlevel analysts thins, is turning to programs familiar to any teenager, senior intelligence officials said. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is building online libraries and launching variations of Wikipedia and MySpace on its intranet to distribute data, said Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. As baby boomers retire, the analytical work force will lose vast amounts of institutional knowledge and expertise. The weaknesses run across the board, Fingar said, but the 16 intelligence agencies are especially short on expertise on Africa, science and technology, Latin America, South Asia and Southeast Asia. But a new generation of analysts in their 20s and 30s, hired after the Sept. 11 attacks, is helping transform U.S. intelligence by devising variations of the online programs they are comfortable with, Fingar said. The community is moving away from top-down management reviews of intelligence data and more toward peer reviews that a wiki environment encourages. This is management from below, said Robert Houdek, Fingars adviser. Neither Fingar nor ODNI chief human capital officer Ron Sanders would put a number on the analyst shortage, but both said people in midcareer are far outnumbered by those nearing retirement and those just starting out. They said intelligence agencies need roughly equal numbers to minimize disruption as analysts age and retire. Robert Richer, a former human resources chief at the CIA and now chief executive officer of Total Intelligence Solutions in Arlington, Va., estimated that midcareer analysts account for between 15 percent and 20 percent of the total. Recruiting Efforts To fix this and to plug gaps in languages, cultural skills and scientific knowledge the agency is relaxing long-held security rules that discouraged the hiring of immigrants and their children, Fingar said. Upon review, intelligence officials had discovered that the rules were largely self-imposed and could be worked around, Sanders said. Thats a talent pool weve taken for granted, Sanders said. They may not walk in the door a finished analytic product, but they may start out further along than someone fresh off a college campus. But colleges remain fertile recruitment grounds. Sanders said the intelligence community is running a pilot program for Africa analysts, and planned to participate in a conference May 4 at the University of Maryland to recruit African-language speakers. And most advanced science and engineering researchers at American universities are recent immigrants, Fingar said. Richer said universities are the right place to look for analytic experience, but questioned whether professors would leave their jobs and hard-won tenure to work for the government. He said the intelligence directorate may have to hire academics as consultants who keep their tenured university jobs. The intelligence directorate has also hired CareerBuilder.com to make recruitment Web pages with want ads, information about the intelligence community, and even streaming video about advertised jobs. ODNI has also consolidated hiring within the intelligence community, allowing candidates to send a single job applications to be circulated to all relevant agencies. This helps each agency understand what its sister agencies do, who theyre looking for, and what redundancies might be avoided. It also fosters quicker hirings, as agencies move to snap up promising applicants before their sister agencies. Thats whats revolutionary, Sanders said. Heretofore, each agency looked at its own skill gaps and went to fill them. [Now, its a matter of] what are our needs across the board, lets coordinate how we meet those needs, rather than everyone out fending for his or herself. Along those lines, ODNI recently created an Analytic Resource Catalog, a directory of every intelligence analyst in the federal government, his or her areas of expertise, and contact information. This will enable agencies to find needed analytical expertise in other agencies that they may lack. Online Tools The intelligence community is sharing information as well as analysts. Information sharing and collaboration are force multipliers, Sanders said. The Intellipedia program, a classified, internal version of Wikipedia created in April 2006, is used by two-thirds of the analysts, Fingar said. Each day, 50 to 100 new articles are posted and 3,000 to 6,000 articles are edited by users. Fingar said that a group of intelligence collectors and analysts scattered around the world recently used Intellipedia to describe how Iraqi insurgents are using chlorine in improvised explosive devices. They developed it in a couple of days interacting in Intellipedia, Fingar said. No bureaucracy, no mother-may-I, no convening meetings. They did it and it came out pretty good. Thats going to continue to grow. Fingar said senior officials are considering requiring all Africa analysts to use Intellipedia in their analyses as part of the pilot program. In March, the CIA started working on a digital library of national intelligence information everything from raw data to finished analytic products. It will far dwarf the Library of Congress, Fingar said. If an analyst has written on tribal divisions in eastern Congo, that may remain fresh for years. Individuals will forget it was done, but you could find it in a digital card catalog. By the end of this year, intelligence analysts will have an early version of the online social networking site MySpace. Analysts will use the system, called A-Space, to find other analysts with related expertise and to share ideas and information, Fingar said. Work on this program began in April, he said. Training Improved training also will let younger analysts grow into strong midlevel managers, Sanders said. Aside from sending analysts back to graduate school or doctoral programs, the directorate started an Analysis 101 program in March to standardize analytic training across all agencies. This will make it easier for analysts to transfer from one agency to another and the increased job opportunities will keep them from leaving the intelligence community, Sanders said. For the first time we are truly building a community, and putting mechanisms in place to sustain it, Houdek said. 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