Cross-Organizational Information Sharing
KDE Topic AreaPosts
Behind the Brand: Why Your Organization’s Origin Story Matters
When we talk about an origin story, we naturally think of characters in great movies or captivating novels. We rarely think about businesses or organizations. Origin stories, when skillfully woven into an organization’s strategic communications in the defense sector, can pack an effective punch with key audiences.
How to Get the Most out of Your Experience as a New Employee
In this episode, Leah Balkin, Systems Engineer, discusses her efforts to promote mentorship at MITRE.
Building Resilient Teams and Cross-Collaboration Between Different Organizations, with Renee Rookwood
In this episode of the MITRE Knowledge Driven Enterprise Podcast, Renee Rookwood, Healthcare Principal, shares her relationship with the concept of resilience and how it is applied to teams.
MITRE Platforms to Accelerate Mission Impact
Foundry’s CIO named MITRE to the CIO 100 for a second year in a row. The award recognizes MITRE’s enterprise platforms IT/knowledge management initiative for accelerating mission impact in 2021.
Safeguarding Our Smart Ports: Lessons from Djibouti with Tamara Ambrosio-Hemphill
In this episode of the Knowledge-Driven Podcast, MITRE’s Tamara Ambrosio-Hemphill guides us through the decision-support tools MITRE has been developing to help the U.S. safeguard critical infrastructure across the globe while building partnerships and helping allies create a better future for their citizens.
Organizational Inclusion and Diversity, with Paulette Huckstep
In this episode of the MITRE Knowledge Driven Podcast, Commerce Domain Lead, Paulette Huckstep, discusses her experience as a leader on MITRE’s Multi-Gen Council and what it means to make a difference in terms of a company’s organizational inclusion and diversity.
New book teaches how to apply agility principles to organizations
In their new book, The Government Leader’s Guide to Organizational Agility, authors Sarah Miller and Dr. Shelley Kirkpatrick consolidated their combined 42 years of knowledge, tools, anecdotes, tips, and tricks into one resource for government agency leaders at all levels. Leaders are urged to consult the book as a reference when using agility to make organizational changes.
The Power of Civic Time with Jenn Richkus and Jon Desenberg
In the latest installment of the Knowledge-Driven Podcast, join us as Jenn Richkus and Jon Desenburg share how they are using their civic time to help the Endangered Wildlife Trust improve life for people and animals across the African continent.
Sustainable Diet, Sustainable World: Community Supported Agriculture Helps Make Both Happen
When you buy your groceries, the best and brightest fruits and veggies have usually traveled across the country and sometimes across the world to get to you. This supply chain bypasses the perfectly fresh produce local to your community. Our traditional market practices have enormously high transportation and carbon costs, create massive amounts of wasted food, and may leave our local farmers with unsustainable businesses.
So what can we do to address these problems?
The Road to Resilient, Sustainable Infrastructure is a Smart One
When Charles Clancy helped launch Virginia’s Smart City Innovation Competition in January, he mentioned that, despite being MITRE’s Chief Futurist, his job didn’t come with a crystal ball.
Instead, he told the hundred or so innovators participating in the month-long hackathon—the first of its kind in Virginia—that his job is to think beyond the challenges facing the government today, focus on likely challenges in the future, and ensure that MITRE has talent with the schooling and smarts to prepare for those problems.
The Power of Geospatial Data In Developing Countries
Many countries in the Global South are not fortunate enough to have the infrastructure or tools that we take for granted. Things as simple as knowing where a community is can mean life or death when battling disease. Join us as Dr. Victoria M. Gammino walks us through her work turning geospatial data into the tools and technology needed to keep the world healthy and disease free.
The ROAR Awards: Two Years and Counting
Charles Schmidt worked with his leadership in the Cyber Security Technical Center to figure out ways to incentivize better use of Tech Stature to record outreach activities. The Collaboration & Information Management department in Corporate Operations created the initial ROAR website to record awardees, and the Digital Content and Creative department designed the ROAR ribbons with their roaring lion icon. Thanks to these collective efforts, the Ribbons for Outreach Activity Recognition, or ROAR, was born.
A Faint Silver Lining Emerges From 2020: A Couple of Lessons Learned About Change
It’s no secret that change can be difficult and slow, especially when it comes to changes at work. Just this week, I heard an executive say, “Anyone who tells you that change is easy hasn’t done it before.”
Yet this year, many of us have quickly embraced virtual collaboration tools. We’ve all experienced numerous other changes, especially as we untethered from the “40 hour+ work on-site” culture. Why have we been so quick to adopt Zoom, Slack, and Office 365? What can we learn from this recent experience so that we can support our colleagues through future change?
Artificial Intelligence Helps MITRE Save Lives During the Pandemic
A computer scientist looks at a refugee crisis to model a pandemic.
How does that connection work exactly and why? If it appears to resemble a scenario in which a farmer learns how to plant an apple orchard by examining the supply chain for manufacturing orange juice, well, you may actually be onto something. The novel coronavirus has presented unprecedented medical, social, and economic challenges, which means that the thoughtful people responding have no choice but to innovate. However, in 2020, innovation doesn’t mean going where no one has gone before. It means harvesting everything that has come before in a disciplined way to see what might bear fruit.
Encouraging the Next Generation of Innovative Thinkers
In designing solutions to some of the most pressing, complex, entrenched problems facing the nation, MITRE employees know they have to get creative.
And, as a company working in the public interest, we want to be sure the next generation of engineers and business leaders can address similarly formidable challenges. We want them to get creative too.
That’s why we recently deepened our partnership with James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA by bringing MITRE into the classroom.
The Rise of Citizen Science
“Science,” “collaboration,” and “serving the best interests of the wider community” are cherished values at MITRE, as is the concept of continuous learning. At MITRE, citizen science is thus a volunteer and civic activity, a hobby, a tool for research, a source of learning, a professional and social networking opportunity, and a means of giving back to the scientific community.
AI for All is for Everybody
As graduating seniors at Florida International University (FIU), Charlie Ramirez and Sephora Jean-Mary headed into their final semester aiming to find a real-life business problem they could solve. Their senior design capstone project was supposed to enable these two front-end developers to display what they’d already learned as computer science students.
Turkeys vs Swans, with Imanuel Portalatin
Despite our modern world, many systems aren’t built with uncertainty in mind. Alas, these unexpected events may become the new normal. Fortunately, Imanuel has been leading the charge to re-examine how we design and implement systems with new approaches that make them more resilient to the unexpected. Listen in as we explore how his work is helping the world prepare for the next natural disaster or global pandemic.
A Story of the Game-Changing Value of Tacit Knowledge: “Is There a Doctor in the House?”
MITRE’s talents for strategic modernization (e.g., enterprise planning, organizational change, business innovation, technology transitioning) are informed by both our explicit knowledge and our tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is what we objectively know. Explicit knowledge can be readily articulated, codified, stored and accessed, and transmitted to others, and represents an estimated 20% of our knowledge (e.g., plans, reports, data analysis). Implicit or tacit knowledge is more subjective.
Rachel Mayer on the Fight Against Maternal Mortality
Rachel Mayer has grown up with medicine on the mind, but one subject has always been at the forefront: Maternal mortality. In a country as advanced and capable as the United States, why is Maternal Mortality still so high? While many public health practitioners often turn to medicinal interventions, she turned to data.
An introduction to interoperability in healthcare
We’ve all been there—sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, filling out redundant forms with our healthcare history. Each time, we sit with silent frustration, wondering why we must complete the same paperwork every time we visit our healthcare provider.
We wonder: It’s 2019. Shouldn’t transmitting health information from one place to another be seamless?
Supporting sponsors to solve their own challenges: Moving from exulted expert to guide
Sponsors turn to us for our expertise and expect us to have the answers and to make recommendations. This role of guide can be liberating. As guides, we no longer need to have all the answers. Instead we ask provocative questions to our sponsors to elicit their own answers. (Feel free to start playing the song “Let it go” in your head.) This change in role may push both us and our sponsors out of our proverbial comfort zones. Let me tell you how this has worked in real life.
Framing ethical standards for consumer data use in health care
How do we balance the desire of organizations to harness big data’s power with the need to prevent potential harm to individuals or populations? For health care, MITRE developed a framework to promote the ethical use of consumer-generated lifestyle data.
A serious game enhances organizational agility
Today’s environment is one of constant change and disruption. Government organizations are greatly impacted by new technologies, new laws and policies, administration changes, and customer expectations for increased services. To carry out their missions and serve customers in this type of environment, government organizations must operate in a more agile manner and better manage constraints and demands.
Interview with Jackie Morin on her journey from intern to senior engineer
Jackie Morin is a Senior Software Engineer whose journey at MITRE started when she was a high school intern. Now she guides new interns as they journey from academia to industry! Enjoy a discussion on what it takes to be an intern (and employee) here at MITRE, as well as the steps MITRE is taking to pave the way for future employees. It’s an exploration of excellence at all levels.
Military to MITRE: Perspectives of Recently Transitioned Veterans
This article identifies veterans navigating the process of transitioning to civilian employment in an attempt to highlight the struggles and benefits of being a veteran in the civilian workforce.
Bot Power at Discover Engineering Family Day
What child can resist the challenge of building a tiny robot (or “bot”) using the head of a toothbrush, a button battery, and a pager motor?
Interview with Dr. Sanith Wijesinghe on Agile Connected Government
Welcome to the first installment of the Knowledge-Driven Podcast. In this new series, Software Systems Engineer Cameron Boozarjomehri interviews technical leaders at MITRE who have made knowledge sharing and collaboration an integral part of their practice.
MITRE Creates Playbook on Medical Device Cybersecurity
Guidance developed with FDA outlines preparedness and response recommendations for healthcare delivery organizations and others.
Communication—the Special Sauce of Major Change
MITRE loves data. MITRE practitioners are passionate about solving problems using scientific evidence, and this is just as true for social scientists at MITRE as it is for engineers. Here is how MITRE practitioners use data to ensure that our recommendations on strategic communication have the greatest possible impact.
Evolving the Electronic Flight Bag
An electronic flight bag (EFB) may typically be used to replace pilots’ paper charts, but with some new developments, it could start to be more of a cognitive assistant. MITRE researchers….
Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of NextGen Equipage in Real Time
Even in the most high-tech domains, knowledge needs to flow across many platforms—explicitly during face-to-face discussions at conferences and in working groups, implicitly as teams perform together, and deliberately as new technology rolls out and directives roll with them. MITRE serves as an interface for all types of ongoing collaboration.—Editor
MITRE’s National Airspace System Operations Dashboard Directs Attention to all the Right Places
Air traffic managers have dozens of tools and capabilities they must monitor to keep up with what’s going on in the nation’s airspace at any given time. These tools and capabilities monitor airport and airspace demand, assess the impact of reroutes, and track emerging weather patterns…
RTCA Symposium Offers Insights on Achieving Higher Levels of Performance in Aviation
The 2017 RTCA Symposium in Crystal City, Virginia, featured MITRE staff speaking on topics ranging from commercial space operations and the future of avionics to Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast…
Designing a Bridge Between Theory and Practice
One practice that Natalie Angier, James Gleick, Jeanne Liedtka, Steven Pinker, and Deborah Tannen have in common…
Remote Tower Idea Gains Traction in Aviation Industry
Tony Colavito leads MITRE’s remote tower efforts—using real-time camera feeds to replicate or enhance the panoramic view air traffic controllers have from an airport tower. MITRE is exploring its application to a variety of airport operations in both the United States...
MITRE Innovators Share Research at ATM2017 Seminar
Offering rich technical papers that resonate with international researchers and the chance to collaborate with the world’s aviation innovators, the June ATM R&D Seminar in Seattle, Washington, once again featured MITRE presenters who work on behalf of the Federal...
Managing Language Chaos
Echoing Lewis Carroll, a colleague reminded me once that words mean whatever we choose to have them mean—a practice that might work if we lived in isolation from one another and if nothing that we said or did mattered. Alas, language, like personal devices, seems to...
The 2017 Aviation Forum: Sharing and Advancing Research
MITRE has supported the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mission for more than 50 years and has operated its federally funded research and development center—the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD)—since 1990. CAASD provides the FAA with...
Rising to the Challenge: Countering Unauthorized Unmanned Aircraft Systems
It’s one thing to talk with your cubemate about a cool technology, another to collaborate companywide to build one. But it’s a whole different level of conversation when you try to talk to the world at large about a technical issue that affects every person on the...
Air Traffic Control Association Technical Symposium Looks to the Future
Elly Smith shared the MITRE perspective on time-based management in air traffic control at the 2017 ATCA Technical Symposium. Smith is the Trajectory Based Operations Portfolio Manager in MITRE’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD, our Federally...
MITRE Shares Remote Tower Work at CANSO Asia Pacific Conference
At the 2017 Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation Conference this past spring, MITRE’s Mimi Dobbs and Juliana Goh participated in a panel discussion on the remote tower concept and its impact on air traffic management. Dobbs and Goh are staff in MITRE’s Center...
At Xponential 2017, MITRE Staff Share Information on Unmanned Aircraft Systems
As co-chair of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Science and Research Panel, MITRE’s Ted Lester recently presented an update on the past two years of the panel’s work, at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's (AUVSI) Xponential 2017 conference, in...
From Surface to Space in Just Two Conferences
MITRE works with the Federal Aviation Administration to enable the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world and to meet the evolving needs of the nation's airspace. We have supported the FAA's mission for more than 50 years and have operated the Center for...
Playing Games Can Solve Real-World Problems
As the author of this post observes, there’s an emotional component to the exchange of knowledge via games that goes beyond just having fun. Serious games may increase loyalty, engagement, and participation in tasks.—Editor Author: Michael PackPlaying games is one of...
MITRE’s Commercial Aviation Dashboard Improves Air Traffic Management, Flight Safety
With the increasing demand for a diversity of new entrant operations come a variety of economic efficiency challenges. A MITRE team collaborating with the Federal Aviation Administration and industry experts is developing technology to make it easier for FAA’s air...
MITRE Hackathon Examines the Impact of Emerging Mobile Technologies
The 42 staffers and interns who participated in MITRE's 2017 Hackathon aimed to connect around problems not projects. and connect they did, using Discuss@MITRE, Github, Hackathon.io, Slack, our internal wiki (MITREpedia)--and these are just the tools. The teams won...
Digital Notebooks for Emergency First Responders: A Conversation with the Winning Team of the MITRE Hackathon
(L-R) Michael Lull, Kevin Long, Grant Pan, Joey Menzenski, and Jared Ondricek show off their award after a 24-hour marathon of hacking (team member not pictured: Jeff Stein). On February 24, 2017, MITRE sponsored an internal hackathon at its McLean, Virginia campus...
MITRE Sponsors Women’s Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
So many of us take Wikipedia for granted, It’s just, well, there, right? Ever focused on service, MITRE staff set out to do more than consume its bounty. We became volunteer editors, focusing on the contributions of women in STEM. Learning, doing, contributing—good...
Casting a Shadow to Shine a Light
The MITRE Job Shadowing Program allowed Software Systems Engineer Dan Mauer to shadow Chief Engineer Richard Games to better understand how the MITRE Innovation Program addresses the needs of our sponsors. (Photo by Michael Baker)There are many ways to network and...
Getting the Word Out and Bringing Back the News
MITRE staff are lifelong learners—it’s not hard to engage us in conversation online or in person or both at the same time. Somewhere in the swirl of activity, however, someone needs to capture the connections and outcomes, of course. For MITRE’s Center for Advanced...
The New ABCs of Research: Part 1
The old computing was just about what computers could do; the new computing is also about what users and organizations can do. Successful technologies are those that are close to being in harmony with the needs of users and organizations. These technologies must...
Mapping World-Class Capabilities to the Healthcare Domain
Linda Fischetti, John Shottes, Lisa Tutterow, Cynthia Taylor Small, Steve Scott, Marianne Smith, Phil Trudeau, Lara Van Nostrand, and Stacey Zlotnick—who together bring expertise in learning, technology, and healthcare to the endeavor—created an interactive learning...
Cost FACTS: Using a Social Media Platform to Create a Dynamic Tool for MITRE’s Cost Community and Beyond
If you’ve ever remodeled your kitchen, you know (perhaps to your horror) the potential difference between an estimate and the final bill. It’s why experienced homeowners often warn, “Take that estimate and double it!” Fortunately for taxpayers, there are a number of...
New Generation Warfare: Helping the U.S. Army Create a Synthetic Training Environment for Today’s Way of War
To ensure that our soldiers are well prepared to operate in a complex and dangerous security environment, MITRE is working with the U.S. Army to develop the most advanced training environment in the world. MITRE’s Bruce Gorski and Brian Parrish created a...
Flying Friendlier Skies: Turning Raw Meteorological Measurements Into Meaningful Visualizations that Can Advance Aviation Safety
If you’ve ever experienced weather-related turbulence while traveling on a plane, you know it can be a frightening experience. Understanding how weather events impact air operations can help pilots avoid potentially dangerous situations. The MITRE Corporation’s Center...
Bugs, Trojans, and Rootkits: Fighting Back Against Things that Go Bump in the Network
Cyber Denial, Deception and Counter Deception: A Framework for Supporting Active Cyber Defense, by Kristin Heckman, Frank Stech, Roshan Thomas, Ben Schmoker and Alexander Tsow, examines how using denial and deception (D&D) techniques can prevent cyber attackers...
Intranet Organization Pages Make Data Easy to Find and Hard to Miss
MITRE’s intranet team stays on top of trends like responsive design. They also keep us responsive to one another so that we can engage in the reachback that helps us answer our customers’ questions. In this post, the authors describe how MITRE’s Organization Pages...
Pearls of Wisdom: Part 2
This second post on the challenges of retaining corporate know-how in the face of changing work-force demographics reviews an extended conversation among interested MITRE staff. Because it’s always easier to come up with ideas than to implement them, this group...
Pearls of Wisdom: Part 1
This first of two posts covers some of the challenges of retaining the know-how of experienced staff in the face of changing work-force demographics. The authors compare tacit and explicit knowledge, and consider how companies might capture and retain this rich...
Ending Isolation and Building a Unified Team Across Distributed Sites
As a workforce becomes increasingly distributed, it is more important than ever to facilitate, ensure, and capture collaboration in order to share knowledge effectively and efficiently; effective communication is essential to achieving business goals. As mobile...
Avoiding Single Points of Failure Through Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge management is all about making sure that all components of an organization, project, or task can work together regardless of staff rotation. We capture, store, share, analyze, and share some more precisely because who’s coming or going will change. Sadia...
From Telewho to Teleyou: Engaging as a Teleworker at MITRE
Brett Profitt’s observation that “MITRE sets teleworkers up for success, but teleworkers must endeavor to be successful” resonated. No matter how many business process tools an organization makes available, staff have to use them to good end. And he does, mentioning...
Do you MOOC? Could you? Would you gMOOC?
The phrase corporate training may sound like, well, school, but in the hands of Lara Van Nostrand, it is anything but. Her team sets up collaborative learning experiences that take advantage of online classes held elsewhere (e.g., Coursera), interactive survey...
The Balancing Act of Usability and Security
Collaboration systems are traditionally all about enabling users to share information. Usability is paramount: the easier it is for users to share within a tool, the more powerful and successful the tool is considered to be. Somewhat the opposite applies to security systems, as they are often considered most successful when parties are prevented from sharing something. Yet these two considerations, seemingly at odds with each other, are both essential to functioning systems in the real world.