The German Armed Forces Wiki-Service began as an experiment to evaluate using wikis and social software to better organize information on their intranet and make knowledge more accessible. Over time, they expanded from a single wiki to include multiple agency, project, and topic wikis. Through marketing efforts and a focus on community participation, they grew an active author base to over 800 users contributing to content. Metrics on page views and edits show increasing engagement with the service. The goal is to transition from an experimental phase to productive long-term operation, selecting a platform that can support an expanding community focus.

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Wiki-Service
of the
German Federal Armed Forces

2. Problem
© Egon Häbich / PIXELIO
Although German Armed Forces have a
organisational-wide intranet with lots of
information offers, there is no real „hub“ or
„road sign“ to find the information you need.

3. Method
Quelle: http://www.bwb.org/
The Wiki-Service is designed as an experiment. Its
goal is to evaluate the benefits of wikis and social
software for organizing the intranet‘s informations
and make knowledge more accessible.
Therefor we use the spiral approach of Concept
Development and Experimentation (CD&E).
3

4. Timeline productive
operation
Because earlier a bottom-up
initiative failed at higher
leadership commitment, we main experiment
choosed a middle-up-down- Aug 10
approach. First, we set up a
demonstrator and convinced today
higher leadership, then we
began to built up a beta
Mar 09 - formal start
community.
Nov 08 - Inspector General
permits start
Dec 2007 - reached ministry of
defence
2006 - first works and begin of convincing

5. Iteration
The current step is about
integrating social networking. steps
Users an their knowledge shift
to focus.
The project began with the idea
of a „Wikipedia Bundeswehr“
Soon it evolved into today‘s
Wiki-Service with the offer to
create wikis for any use case.

6. BeWiki is the hub, the roadsign
Wiki-Service to all the information in the
intranet and other wikis. Was
The service hosts several wikis. prefilled with > 40.000 articles.
Agency Wikis
are information
portals for Project Wikis
organisational are used for
units (m)any use
cases
Wikipedia Mirrors are customized,
linkable and integrated mirrors of
german and english Wikipedia

7. Platform
Over time we added
support for multiple wikis,
Because there was support for closed user
no budget at the groups, semantic and
beginning, we social profiles
decided to use
MediaWiki on LAMP.
?
With our steps toward focusing on communities we
more and more reach mediawiki‘s limits.
After experimentation phase we‘ll have to decide which
platform will be suitable for productive operations.

8. Change
Management
To accelerate the development of an
active community we started a marketing
campaign with internal and external
publications, presentations, posters,
flyers, wallpapers, screensaver ...

9. Quality The gardener community does also
garden wiki contents, but focuses on
Management gardening community and self control. In
this way we hope to get a much higher
impact of self control mechanisms by
multiplying the gardening activies.
organisation Plan
experts
In addition we're
developing social-
technical solutions to
identify more complex
quality problems with
community an scientific approach.
Act Do
Moder
controls Goal is to develop
metrics using
ga metadata of wiki
r de content that show a
probability for
ne postitive or negative
rs Check
bots
quality issues.

10. Community
shifts into focus
Participation rises with awareness of
dynamic content and community
We use social profiles and
a highly dynamic home
page to visualize
participation

11. Participation Figures
November 2009
(after 8 Months)
possible users: ~170.000
passive users: ~40.000
registered users: 2.736
authors: 881
authors > 100 edits: 88

12. Participation Figures
September 2009
(after 6 Months)
Users (by IP)
60000
45000
30000
15000
0
Jul-09 Aug-09 Sept-09
May-09 Jun-09
Mar-09 Apr-09
Jan-09 Feb-09
whole service
BeWiki
organisations and projects
Wikipedia Mirror

13. Examples of
appearing Wikis
Seminar Planning
& Lessons by Trainees
Project Management
Agency Portals
Online Software Help by Users

14. Hauptmann Dennis Marc Busch
Streitkräfteamt
Cpt Dennis Marc Busch
German Armed Forces Office
Mail: dennismarcbusch@bundeswehr.org
Tel: +49 (228) 43320 – 684
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