Like everyone else, intelligence analysts find themselves working in closed compartments, in which sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. An analyst may be unaware that they have a counterpart, in another intelligence agency, working on a related problem, and that they could assist one another in solving a common goal.

How to overcome this?

With social networking.

Of a very specialized kind.

Enter A-Space, which one blogger described as the “MySpace for spies.”

Here, analysts can theoretically create trusted contacts with other analysts and post profiles that contain updated contact information and details of their areas of expertise. The analysts' areas of expertise may be further defined through text mining software that sifts through analyst e-mail.

According to Government Computer News: Based on Jive Software’s Social Business Software (formerly Clearspace) solution, A-Space lets the analysts create workspaces on various subject matter, such as the avian flu, Iranian elections or Somali piracy on which they can share information and collaborate on projects.

There are abut 1,400 to 1,500 workspaces in A-Space, Wertheimer said. After an initial slow start in which analysts were skeptical about sharing information, they now see that collaboration reduces the time and effort they spend on analyzing data . . .

You can find out more in publications such as e-Week, Federal Computer Week, and  Wikipedia; it is sponsored by the Director of National Intelligence and the United States government.