User:Econterms/U.S. Federal Government MediaWikis


 * There are many MediaWiki installations in the U.S. federal government, oriented to projects or office/department organizations.
 * There's no master list or close organization of them.
 * Major examples:  Intellipedia and Diplopedia, across agencies, starting ~2006
 * integrated with other cross-agency tools


 * Powerpedia across Dept of Energy, NREL has advanced Semantic MediaWikis
 * NASA's high tech examples: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/05/05/mediawiki-nasa/
 * Statipedia -- statistical methods, data sources, definitions ; comparison of policy, tools, organization, staff, platforms, procedures, evaluations and critiques of the agencies also. E.g., critiques of unemployment statistics or inflation statistics.  Much to gain with visibility / translucency across the agencies.
 * many others
 * not for public access -- govt staff need freedom of speech for these to be useful in the organizations


 * It will be helpful to be in touch more with one another
 * Federal MediaWiki Demonstration and Discussion Group: Since Nov 2014 we have monthly virtual demos, organized by Tom O'Neill of DOE/Powerpedia.
 * We want/need more participation -- contact me (econterms at gmail.com)
 * I try to record important installations on Statipedia
 * Evidence of "success" for the organization is sometimes missing
 * I have several tech questions to ask on behalf of others.
 * We'd be looking to support a MediaWiki organization somehow


 * Issue of whether and when to scale up
 * Gcpedia reaches most of Canadian civil service in principle
 * That design could help U.S. civil service see one another's procedures broadly and standardize from below. (Recurring pattern:  standardization from above, slowly and coercively)
 * Recurring choice: one big wiki or a farm of small wikis. Scale/efficiency versus focus.

Background
 Not all US federal staff have a wiki available & allowed  If so, it’s not visible across most of government  Or requires frequent login  Key usability issue: emailing a hyperlink – will it work?  Cost/complexity of many wikis, admins, namespaces federal worker should have a "right" to this I think not for secret data not for official pronouncements, mainly. definitions of executive order and actions in response telling our own history response mix of fear and need-for-approval and conference notes needs to be easy to search purpose is search and discovery show calendar
 * Wave of these 2008-2009, now maybe a new wave. Also in use:  Confluence, SharePoint, also probably Twiki
 * Earlier presentation with the main issues
 * See wikiapiary.com; may not have any info about internal govt wikis freephile.org/wikireport.

Not all US federal staff have a wiki available & allowed  If so, it’s not visible across most of government  Or requires frequent login  Key usability issue: emailing a hyperlink – will it work?  Cost/complexity of many wikis, admins, namespace

Storing documents versus wiki-text  Documents are self-contained, often finished binary files

 may be hard to search for; authored; dated; formatted; may have intro, conclusion; may have focused audience; may be official ; updates require coordination or permission; common on SharePoint & Confluence

 Wikitext is searchable and open

 fragmentary; multi-authored; unlikely to be official or definitive; can be updated and link to latest sources; open format; can manipulate with extensions, import/export

 Both needed ; some mismatch in what’s used/available

Reference works vs. Project/team-orientation  Reference works (like Wikipedia) tend to be

 Open, descriptive, scientific, for broad audience

 Groups/teams may require  Fine-grained security  Dashboard or project status summaries

Rhetorics for wikis in govt

 Openness, transparency (translucency)  Overcoming stovepipes/silos  Reduce duplication of effort  Clarify & unify procedures

 Ease training, turnover, emergency management Rhetorics against

 System’s insecure or uncertified

 Organizational culture doesn’t fit  Wiki would encourage sloppy or undignified handling of info

 “Knowledge base” is not our job

ther purposes & imagined futures “Management visions often do not match the benefits delivered by successful wikis.” -- Grudin & Poole (2010)  Citizens get their information from wikis  And we in govt are in the information services business  It’s relevant to know the science and practice  Writing for Wikipedia meets our mission directly  Empowerment  Benefit to our personnel – e.g. in enabling to publish good work  Users find specialists, who then serve larger audience  Together, agencies have vast, diverse resources, expertise, capability, and economies of scale and scope

Efficient scientific communities (knowledge management)  Support references to evidence  cultural change  Shared source material, reference points, mutual awareness, peer review (reduce fiefdoms)  Support tools development by our own staff  Info on platforms - “discoverable” not “disseminated”  Could reduce email strain  Support bottom-up and outside-in innovation  Compare practices between agencies  Give workers broad opportunity/right to wikis  like IG’s office; like freedom of speech  Emergent or open-source type innovation

Efficient scientific communities (knowledge management)  Support references to evidence  cultural change  Shared source material, reference points, mutual awareness, peer review (reduce fiefdoms)  Support tools development by our own staff  Info on platforms - “discoverable” not “disseminated”  Could reduce email strain  Support bottom-up and outside-in innovation  Compare practices between agencies  Give workers broad opportunity/right to wikis  like IG’s office; like freedom of speech  Emergent or open-source type innovation

I look forward to see lots of MOUs, VPATs, requisitions, certifications, procedures, what software others are running, comparisons of agency procedures for travel and procurement and records management. responses by agencies to executive orders, and other administrative purposes. and calendar items. Notes from conferences.