%0 Journal Article
%T Making Friends in Dark Shadows: An Examination of the Use of Social Computing Strategy Within the United States Intelligence Community Since 9/11
%A Andrew Chomik
%J Global Media Journal : Canadian Edition
%D 2011
%I University of Ottawa
%X The tragic events of 9/11/2001 in the United States highlighted failures in communication and cooperation in the U.S. intelligence community. Agencies within the community failed to ¡°connect the dots¡± by not collaborating in intelligence gathering efforts, which resulted in severe gaps in data sharing that eventually contributed to the terrorist attack on American soil. Since then, and under the recommendation made by the 9/11 Commission Report, the United States intelligence community has made organizational and operational changes to intelligence gathering and sharing, primarily with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The ODNI has since introduced a series of web-based social computing tools to be used by all members of the intelligence community, primarily with its closed-access wiki entitled ¡°Intellipedia¡± and their social networking service called ¡°A-Space¡±. This paper argues that, while the introduction of these and other social computing tools have been adopted successfully into the intelligence workplace, they have reached a plateau in their use and serve only as complementary tools to otherwise pre-existing information sharing processes. Agencies continue to ¡®stove-pipe¡¯ their respective data, a chronic challenge that plagues the community due to bureaucratic policy, technology use and workplace culture. This paper identifies and analyzes these challenges, and recommends improvements in the use of these tools, both in the business processes behind them and the technology itself. These recommendations aim to provide possible solutions for using these social computing tools as part of a more trusted, collaborative information sharing process.
%K 9/11
%K Crisis Management
%K Joint Production
%K Information Sharing
%K Intelligence
%K National Security
%K Social Computing
%K Social Media
%U http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/1102/v4i2_chomik.pdf