Intelligent Enterprise

Better Insight for Business Decisions

RSS
Webcasts
Whitepapers
Subscribe
Home

November 12, 2001

Knowledge Can Be a Weapon

The World Trade Center tragedy suggests a dire need for better knowledge management practices

by Justin Kestelyn

The last outcome one could associate with the September 11 World Trade Center disaster is the elevation of knowledge management and realtime decision-making to prominence in the public sector. But after reading a fascinating story recently published in Government Computer News ("In the Information Age, Data Is the Artillery," Richard W. Walker, Sept. 24, 2001), I am utterly convinced of exactly that. (Note: I realize that any attempt to draw such a mundane conclusion could risk trivializing this tragedy - as if that were possible - but please take note that I have no such intention. As a journalist, it's my job to find meaning, even in the meaningless.)

GCN reports that Ruth David, former deputy director for science and technology at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and now heading a government-funded research organization called Anser Inc., spoke at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., last year on the subject of knowledge management's role in countering terrorism. Astonishingly, David offered a thought experiment in which widespread terrorist attacks cause disparate local, state, and federal agencies to share information like never before. In her scenario, their ability to collaborate in the development of a "big picture" leads to the revelation that the seemingly random attacks are in fact phases of a larger campaign executed by a hitherto unknown international terrorist organization.

According to GCN, David has since characterized the intelligence breakdown prior to the September 11 tragedy as a knowledge management failure: a reflection of the government's inability to construct and maintain collective memory from technology and process standpoints. Conversely, one reason for the terrorists'ultimate "success" was their expertise in developing, sharing, and acting decisively on information.

The Real Deal

In the IT and business press, there has been much discussion about the expected new prominence of technologies such as data mining and biometrics in the global War on Terrorism, and their value in that effort is obvious. Within government circles, however, there will be no more valuable investments made in technology and process than for the purpose of knowledge management (or to use more meaningful terms, realtime information sharing and collaboration). To be successful, the U.S. counterterrorism effort will truly need to operate like an intelligent enterprise, making disparate information assets available to decision makers regardless of their agency affiliation and updating those assets as events occur. Unfortunately, this goal is counterintuitive for most government agencies (as for most businesses).

Furthermore, because the enemy in this war is so adept at acting on shared information - interestingly, most observers now commonly refer to Osama bin Laden's group as a "network," or even as a "corporation" - we will have to be equally skilled in discouraging enemy collaboration and degrading their information resources as well.

Rate This Article

Comments:

Optional e-mail address:

Share and Share Alike

The concept of collaborative, realtime "decision processing" has been influential in military-industrial circles for some time. Indeed, one goal of the U.S. military's decade-old effort to reinvent itself has been to support the rapid, uninterrupted flow of information among command centers and the "battlespace" such that operations can continually be adjusted to changing environmental factors. But until now, this concept has been MIA from the civilian branches of government - even the national security and law enforcement arms - which famously erect elaborate bureaucratic barriers to impede the flow of information in their own territorial interests.

There are exceptions, of course; GCN cites an ongoing U.S. State Department initiative to create infrastructure that supports a global, integrated view of classified information that resides at U.S. embassies worldwide. But if the United States is to have a fighting chance at attaining a "knowledge advantage," as one expert put it, information will have to become free-flowing and ubiquitous among more of the people who need it most.