Wiki Warfare

While forward-thinking companies and the academic community have embraced web-based information-sharing technologies to speed decision cycles and innovate across organizational boundaries, the US military has been characteristically cautious. Open access to information does pose security risks, and the prevailing vertical hierarchy facilitates the centralized command and control characteristic of modern (and ancient) militaries. Unfortunately, the nature of communications has changed so dramatically in the last ten years that "Napoleonic," tiered command structures now work against groupthink and collaboration. Communications and data-transfer capabilities now dramatically outpace the lumbering military organization. The objective of this research was to prove that web-based collaborative tools such as wikis and weblogs had meaningful application within the US military. The Problem/Solution methodology was employed, in addition to an analysis of case studies that highlighted the experiences of military organizations, governmental agencies, and large corporations as they incorporated web-based information sharing technologies into their operations. While the efficacy of these modern tools was easily proven, cultural biases in the US military may slow the application of web-based collaborative software, and concerns about open information will remain. Nevertheless, it was this author's recommendation that DOD and service-component agencies charged with the oversight and administration of military information systems review current guidelines to ensure the ability of military commanders to operate weblogs and wiki-based documents on internal sites.