The IC Shows How Collaboration Is Done

The intelligence community has been leading the government pack in its collaboration efforts. Christopher Dorobek points to 9/11 and other examples to show how government realized it needed a better way to collect, process and share intelligence data in this month's Incoming column, "The Intelligence Community Writes the Book on Collaboration."

The intelligence issues, particularly in the case of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, are well documented in the 9/11 Commission's final report. The commission found that the government largely had the necessary data, but it failed to connect the dots. That data was scattered throughout many different organizations and among many people. Different parts of the intelligence and law enforcement organizations were not speaking to one other. In fact, these issues are not unique to the intelligence agencies. They are all too familiar throughout government.

Yet Dorobek notes that the intelligence community has developed a set of tools to quickly share information, known as Intellipedia. The success of the Intellipedia team has many people talking, and new reports show that Web-based collaboration works. Everyone seems to be talking about social media and collaborative platforms such as Facebook, wikis and cloud computing. Do you think these tools are effective? If your organization uses them, have you noticed improved communication and collaboration? Is the intelligence community on the right track?