From left, Umesh Verman, CEO, Blue Lance Computer Security Software; Dr. William E. Fitzgibbon, dean, College of Technology, University of Houston; and The Honorable Dale Meyerrose, Harris Corporation.
The Baker Institute recently hosted The Honorable Dale Meyerrose, a retired Air Force major general and the former chief information officer and information sharing executive for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Gen. Meyerrose is now head of the cyber practice at Harris Corporation and teaches at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. He is also a cybersecurity expert and holds a deep love for Wikipedia.
I had a chance to speak with Gen. Meyerrose at length during his visit, and he gave the kind of frank, levelheaded talk one can only give after leaving federal service. Among the topics that came up over the obligatory plate of fajitas that goes with a visit to Houston was the proposed dismantlement of uGov, the Intelligence Community’s (IC) unclassified e-mail system for reaching beyond the confines of Washington’s set of three-letter agencies. I have gone on record as saying this seems to be a bad idea.
Meyerrose was one of the architects of the uGov system, and while I will not speak for him, I believe it would be fair to say that he was a key player in the move from the “need to know” culture found in the IC before 9/11 to a more entrepreneurial, open and engaged “need to share” mindset. His boss, former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, was also on campus last week and lauded his achievements while at the ODNI.
Perhaps the most amusing element of Meyerrose’s visit, for me, was realizing that he, too, had attended what may have been the most important intellectual get-together of my professional career, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikimania conference at Harvard Law School in 2006. This was the time and place where the Wiki movement went huge and global, and also where the IC collectively realized there could be a new and radically different method for collecting, analyzing and disseminating intelligence (although Calvin Andrus had figured this out some time before). The IC went Wiki, and almost overnight, Intellipedia was created. At the same time, the State Department jumped into the Wiki business with both feet as well.
Now we hear that a more open, communicative IC may be on the outs. Shutting down uGov is a provocative act toward those in the intelligence business who know that their methods and culture must change. Any movement toward closing Intellipedia, especially at the unclassified level, would be further reinforcement of a belief that old “need to know” habits are resurfacing in the massive intelligence bureaucracy. This is not what the country needs and will not make us any safer.