Gadgetopia

An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified: A good article about Diplopedia, which is the State Department’s wiki, much like Intellipedia over at the CIA.

In addition to reference material like the 200 biographies of Italian political and business leaders, the more than 4,400 Diplopedia articles reflect the range of the staff’s concerns — among popular articles are high-minded titles like “Foreign Affairs Professional Reading List” and mundane ones like “Building Pass.”

The point of this article is this:

There was a larger point to bringing his message to Wikimania 2008, as the annual conference is called: if wikis can work at the State Department, with its fabled bureaucracy and attention to protocol and word choice, they can work anywhere.

At Blend, we’re having great luck with a wiki built on Google Sites (and, really, that’s what Google Sites is — a very polished wiki with some bells and whistles).

On another note, I’m really fascinated by the idea of the use of wikis, blogs, and social networking in government organizations. If anyone knows of any other links about this, please drop me a note.