The office has done this by enlisting the public in its review of progress reports from more than 2,000 companies—an effort to make sure each is complying with established social and environmental guidelines. It’s debatable whether encouraging public input is a good way to increase efficiency, but the move is the latest example of a quickly growing trend. Wiki software—easy-to-use programs that let anyone with Internet access create, remove and edit content on a Web page—first gained popularity thanks to Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia that has come to be hailed as one of the Web’s greatest resources. Now the technology is increasingly spreading outside the world of tech geeks and into the mainstream, being adopted by workplaces, corporations and even governments. In what’s been dubbed the “wiki workplace,” a growing number of organizations have begun shifting from traditional hierarchical structures to self-organized and collaborative networks, using wiki software—a basket of technologies that include wikis, blogs and other tools—to foster innovation across organizational and geographic boundaries. Executives say the new tools make it easier for teams to collaborate and share information, and to get projects up and running on the fly. “Collaborative software has become a very important part of how businesses will invent and innovate,” says Ken Bisconti, IBM’s vice president of messaging and collaboration software.
That the United Nations is embracing wikis is an indication that organizations are beginning to get over their fear that this technology could introduce chaos into their operations. As Wikipedia has demonstrated, Web sites that are open to the public are vulnerable to vandalism, bias, inconsistency and other problems. But most corporate wikis are closed to the public, limiting access to employees inside the company firewall. These quasi-closed systems, say technology mavens, impose accountability simply by keeping a record of every change and who made it.
IBM has used internal wikis since 2005, with an eye to selling the concept to its clients. One of its first applications was a wiki that employees could use to collaborate on writing a blogging manifesto: a set of policies for appropriate use of blogs in and out of the office. Thousands of employees contributed and edited that manifesto, which after receiving corporate approval—became the company’s official policy.
Today, workers throughout the global company are connected by an internal portal called WikiCentral, which more than 100,000 employees use for updating product documentation and modifying company policies, and for maintaining their own corporate profiles—a sort of business MySpace. And for the past couple of years, IBM has incorporated the wiki and other collaborative software into its corporate products like Lotus Notes, a desktop software for accessing e-mail and other applications. Its most advanced tool, the Quickr 8, combines blogs, wikis and plug-ins called “connectors” to link a range of business documents and libraries. Meanwhile, governments and NGOs are, like the United Nations, experimenting with using the wiki concept to collaborate within—even involve constituents in policymaking. Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies have begun using a common wiki called Intellipedia, a government-run—and top-secret—information-sharing source that allows them to merge research and intelligence gathering. And the nonpartisan WikiCongress—a user-generated Capitol Hill founded by former U.S. congressional staffers—lets the public vote on bills, create petitions and propose new policy, and then forwards the results to legislators. In Germany, the government’s Renewable Resources Agency (known by its German acronym, FNR) is using Wikipedia to update German-language entries on renewable resources, part of a three-year program aimed at providing accurate information to citizens, many of whom already use the site as an authoritative source. As part of its official mission, the FNR generates plenty of this material already, but it has become interested in Wikipedia as an important distribution channel for providing information to the public. And in Canada, the Green Party (which received 5 percent of the popular vote in the last federal election, but has no elected members in Parliament) recently put its platform on a wiki so party members could weigh in and give suggestions, which candidates could then look to for guidance.
All these applications, however, have only tapped part of wiki’s potential. Imagine millions of people connecting with world leaders and thinkers to discuss, debate and collaborate on everything from global politics to climate change. “Wikinomics” coauthor Don Tapscott says wikis have the potential to spawn new models for international problem solving and dialogue, increase transparency in government and open communication between citizens and policymakers. Consider Habitat Jam, an open conversation that was hosted recently by the nonprofit Globe Foundation in preparation for the third session of the World Urban Forum, a gathering of leaders to discuss the impact of global urbanization. During a three-day digital discussion, hundreds of thousands of people from 191 countries engaged in issues ranging from safety and security to improving the lives of slum dwellers. In India, women participated through moderators who went into communities to seek their views, while in Kenya, people waited hours for computer access so they could have a say. The results of the discussion were included in the forum’s agenda.
Still, it seems counterintuitive to think that soliciting global opinion will speed up decision making. And many policymakers remain steeped in resilient traditions and hierarchy that don’t involve limitless public input. But Tapscott, who, with funding from 20 countries, is conducting a large survey of collaborative opportunities in the public sector, thinks the possibilities outweigh the hurdles. “This could be the biggest change in the nature of democracy and the relationship between citizens and their state since the founding of Western democracy,” he says. That’s a lot to live up to.
