The CX Blog

There’s an intriguing article in the current issue of Knowledge Management for Development Journal entitled Stealth Transformation: Case Study of the  Introduciton of a Wiki to the UN, by Anna and Mikel Maron.

The UN didn’t want a wiki, but he specific group she was working with did want one.  They just had no idea what they were getting into.

Early on, the specific global group she was working resorted to email to capture quickly evolving information and planning.

Despite intranets, workspaces and complicated initiatives galore, email was the primary collaboration tool.

Of course, this communication quickly devolved into multiple branches of information without any way to collect and share information among non-tech groups.  Sound familiar, anyone?

The idea of wiki was first mentioned as a possible way to collect and share info on a global basis in 2006.  As the project moved forward through communities of practice, the idea of a wiki kept surfacing.  Finally, it was decided they would try MediaWiki, the app used for Wikipedia simply because it was assumed to be the most stable since it has been tested by the most hard hitting group available: the public.

Since this was a stealth undertaking, roll-out and customization was iterative.  The one key thing Maron mentions is  “seeding” the database first with lots of articles and useful resources and then pointing people to the wiki for what they wanted rather than sending it to them through email.

The changes brought about by an open, editable collaboration tool were profound.

Rarely has an organization, especially the UN, operated so transparently. The results is that sta knowledged is passively transmitted into the wider community of…governance practitioners, breaking down instituional barriers to information and the responsible individuals.

But all was not perfect in wikidom.  The mass of information tended to get unwieldy quickly and urgently required the use of librarians to help organize, make sense of and maintain the growing resource.  The groups involved were not the same as the global Wikipedia community, so there weren’t many self-selected “gardeners” and editors to help maintain the usability and credibility of the growing mass of information.

The project, however, is viewed as a successful example of how wikis can be used to gather together and share information across communities of practice quickly and collaboratively.  Rock on!