## CIA

CIA - Naar een kennisorganisatie

Achtergrond informatie
De Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) heeft als primaire functie om informatie te verkrijgen en te analyseren over andere regeringen, bedrijven en personen en deze informatie op de juiste plekken binnen de regering te bezorgen. De tweede functie is propaganda/PR activiteiten, juiste en onjuiste informatie verspreiden, en anderen ten gunste van de VS te beïnvloeden. De derde functie is deelnemen aan operaties.
Wereld verandert
Vanaf 2005 merkte de CIA dat de wereld veranderde. Informatie overal ter wereld werd zeer snel gedeeld door de ‘tegenstanders’. Niet langer voldeed de hiërarchische organisatiestructuur. De top-down benadering zorgde ervoor dat informatie niet snel genoeg op de juiste plek kwam. Er werd besloten om de hele manier waarop geleerd werd en waarop informatie intern werd uitgewisseld drastisch om te gooien.

Transcriptie interview CIA, PDF

Frans Bax van de CIA University en Elliott Masie spreken over de veranderende paradigma's.

Oplossing

Interview met CIA

ELLIOTT MASIE: Would you put your hands together for Frans Bax, the chief learning officer of the Central Intelligence Agency?

FRANS BAX: Hello, good morning.

ELLIOT MASIE: So you must get some kidding along the way. You’re the chief learning officer of the CIA?

FRANS BAX: Absolutely, people think we know everything, so why train?

ELLIOT MASIE: It’s interesting. I was recently at a conference, a tradecraft conference with Frans, and Frans is the president of the CIA University and it was interesting because I was there for four minutes and somebody handed me a paper called “Wikis and the CIA.” How are you starting to experiment with this?

FRANS BAX: Well, like many of you we are just starting to look at technologies that can deliver knowledge and learning everywhere and our version of extreme learning is to deliver training to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places I can’t even tell you about. So using technologies like wikis becomes a way to share knowledge fast and to get experts to contribute on topics that someone might not even know their expertise will help us out on. So we are at the very start of an exciting process to try to do that.

ELLIOT MASIE: And your mission at the CIA as a learning officer there?
FRANS BAX: Well, CIA, to give you a quick sound bite on us, we’re one of 15 intelligence agencies in the US intelligence community. Another one, the Defense Intelligence Agency is here with their people: Dave Banks, an old friend is here just like I am. CIA, like all of those agencies, does training and we created a CIA University, originally born at the time of September 11th, to greatly expand our training effort. We train in many occupations that some of you probably don’t even know exist: things like clandestine operations officer or intelligence analyst.

So we put together training solutions that will meet the need - lots of classroom training, but increasingly online - and we hope in the future, web based training as well.

ELLIOT MASIE: Just as a final question, one of the things we had talked about when we met was the concept that what a wiki could do if we go to the wisdom of the crowds. Another author who was at the same conference I spoke at was, in one case you could trust the intelligence of one of your agents or one source, but imagine if that was contextualized by hundreds of folks who might say, “I don’t get that,” or that obviously with a lot of the pressure on getting the intelligence right, this is a shift for you in that sense.

FRANS BAX: Absolutely, and we deal by the very nature of our profession and business with unknowns or futures that have not yet happened so we can get it wrong. I don’t have to tell you where we did that, do I? It’s in the newspapers when that happens. So the wisdom of crowds and using systems of thinking that way is very important to us and if we can draw in multiple ideas or even opinions below that level of idea, it might give us the answer that was missing before.

ELLIOT MASIE: What was interesting, too, when we went to our conference, you not only had folks from the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, but you’re working collaboratively with folks around the world.

FRANS BAX: Absolutely, we have many close allies on the global war on terror and so we have to share our training and share our knowledge with other countries and the intelligence officers they have.

ELLIOT MASIE: Great, and once again, as we look at learning, we look at our field what we have tried to do and are going to continue throughout the conference is show you how broad spectrum our field is and how much we can learn from each other and I’m real excited about working with Frans and his colleagues to get an even better cooperative spirit between what we learn in your world, what we learn in the corporate world, and the higher ed world.

FRANS BAX: You bet we will do that.

Fantastische verandering

Voor mij was het apart om te horen dat juist zo'n traditionele organisatie door externe veranderingen zelf de verandering tot stand brengt en open staat voor significante innovaties. Niet technisch is het een hele verandering maar juist het communicatie- en leermodel.

Fantastische quote: "Nobody knows as much as everybody."