Case Summary

Facing a network of agency scientists, engineers, acquisition workers and military service members, the Defense Department launched in 2008 an internal wiki as a way to improve collaboration and information sharing among its many employees and contractors.

Business Challenge

The Department of Defense operates with both a large agency base of federal employees and service members and a wide network of scientists, engineers, and contractors. Inside DOD, the agency required greater collaboration in regard to capability issues and problems, research and engineering programs, and technology implementation issues.

In collaborating with external groups, the department needed to develop easier means for information sharing among agency officials, contractors, and other industry groups. Complaints had frequently been heard from defense contractors that those who want to offer solutions to the Pentagon have trouble finding timely information on those needs.

"That way we can get the collaboration and coordination and reduce duplication. It also lets us avoid learning the same lesson two or three times in our enterprise."

-John Young, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics²

Approach Taken

The Department of Defense settled on developing an internal wiki based on the successes of federal wikis for the intelligence community (Intellipedia), Deptartment of State (Diplopedia), and FBI (Bureaupedia). The site was in beta version for the summer of 2008 and was fully launched on October 1, 2008.

DOD Techipedia is available only to federal employees and contractors registered with the Defense Technical Information Center, DOD's central repository for defense-related science and technology information.

DOD also plans to launch a public portal, called DefenseSolutions.gov, in Spring 2009 designed for companies that do not yet do business with the Pentagon but want to submit knowledge. There are also plans to launch an external wiki which will be an open version of DoDTechipedia.mil where defense contractors, and even those small-to-medium firms can get together with scientists, project managers, and other technology experts to try to sort out tech solutions to these problems.