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

 * 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.