When Does Web 2.0 Work? Lessons For The Intelligence Communities (McKinsey Quarterly)

McKinsey, the capo di tutti capi of consulting firms, recently published a fascinating report titled How Companies Are Benefiting From Web 2.0. You have to register with McKinsey to read the full text but it is probably worth it if you are interested in how (and what) Web 2.0 technologies are actually making a difference in the very competitive, global business environment -- and, of course, which technologies appear to be falling out of favor as well.

The coolest thing about the report is the visualization tool they developed to supplement their report. I have a screenshot of one of the views of the data it provides below but that does not do it justice. Click here or on the picture to take you to the fully interactive set of charts and graphs (No registration required to play with the chart...).


The most interesting thing about the report, however, is the implications it holds for the intelligence community and its attempt to bring Web 2.0 technologies into the workplace. According to a report from earlier this year, Web 2.0 is in a midlife crisis within the national security intelligence community. The McKinsey report pretty clearly points to the likely reasons why. Specifically, they identified three major performance factors (ranked by the percentage that each factor made in the average company's success):

• "Management capabilities ranked highest at 54 percent, meaning that good management is more than half of the battle in ensuring satisfaction with Web 2.0, a high rate of adoption, and widespread use of the tools. The competitive environment explained 28 percent, size and location 17 percent."

Since management was such a fundamental part of the success or failure of these initiatives, McKinsey then dug into the numbers regarding management and found three critical management related sub-factors:

• "Parsing these results even further, we found that three aspects of management were particularly critical to superior performance: a lack of internal barriers to Web 2.0, a culture favoring open collaboration (a factor confirmed in the 2009 survey), and early adoption of Web 2.0 technologies."

Yoikes!

If McKinsey's results are accurate, then a true cynic would say the national security intel community already has three strikes against it. In these circumstances, it is only surprising that Web 2.0 has had any success -- at all.

That view is clearly unfair to the thousands of people who are already successfully working with these technologies inside the national security intelligence community. What would also be unfair, however, is to underestimate the roadblocks that conventional management approaches may be putting in the way of the productivity to be gained from implementing these technologies in intelligence.

Open Source Communicable Disease Surveillance Tool (Biocaster)

Developed by a Japanesse based team of international scientists, BioCaster is an attempt to text mine a number of open source data streams for breaking information about communicable diseases worldwide and then plot them in an easy-to-access/manipulate format on a Google map.

The applet is not embeddable (of course!) so, if you want to see the tool in action, you will have to go to the website or click on the map below:

Timeline Of Virtual Worlds (Greenbush Labs)

A colleague just pointed out to me a very interesting product on the Greenbush Labs Blog -- a virtual worlds timeline. What makes this timeline (see below) enormously cool is the way in which multiple media products have been integrated into it. I could imagine uses for this type of product in law enforcement, business and national security; virtually any time sensitive document (Imagine a history book, for example, put together using Dipity's technology...). Even if you are not into virtual worlds, you have to be impressed with this specific example and the possibilities of this technology in general.

Blogs Of Interest (INMM and Web 2.0)

There are two new blogs that are worth following if you are interested in the particular niche of information that they address. The Mercyhurst student chapter of the Institute of Nuclear Material Management maintains an on-going blog about nuclear proliferation, counter-proliferation and other issues here. Likewise, Chris, a student at Mercyhurst, is exploring how Web 2.0 tools could be used by the intelligence community here.

Web of Tomorrow (Military Information Technology Online)

Interesting, if a bit dated, article on the use of Web 2.0 tools in intelligence.

(Thanks, Rachel, for finding it!)