DNI to Crowdsource a “Safe Routes through Afghanistan” App
Or at least that what I understand from Greg Gardner, deputy chief information officer for the Director of National Intelligence who spoke a lunch in Pentagon City hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association yesterday.
DNI envisions a system in which individuals from nondefense groups and military members can type in their location, the route they plan to take and their intended destination to retrieve the latest information on surroundings.
“I’m at Camp Alpha, and I’m going to Town Eagle” the user would enter into a protected unclassified system, and then retrieve a graphic display of a safe route through the country, Gardner explained.
“We’re thinking in terms of Web 2.0 social networking in ways that we haven’t done before,” he said, adding the approach will mean accepting some risk in return for knowledge of much greater value to information sharing. The network is in limited use, Gardner said in an interview with Nextgov, but he could not comment on when it would launch officially.
The application would work like a wiki—a Web site that any user can edit—“so you get this growing base of current knowledge,” he said at the lunch. It would communicate safety information and mission-critical details, such as the last time a public health team visited the town or the amount of money that governments have invested nearby schools.
- NextGov
