U.S. Army Turns to Wiki Approach to Improve Field Manuals

I am currently engrossed in an excellent book entitled Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson. Emergence is the term used to describe the process by which self-organizing systems use bottom-up information for guidance. Think of an ant colony as a prime example. The queen ant does not provide instructions to the members of the colony -- all she does is produce more ants. What, then, is the source of the information that is necessary to organize such a complex community? It appears that the ants in the colony, as they wander around, generate "local" messages via their pheromone trails such as "food this way" and "we are under attack." The Wikipedia is organized in a similar bottom-up fashion to generate content. The U.S. Army has now adopted a "wiki" approach for editing its critical field manuals, allowing input from all soldiers rather than just officers (see: Care to Write Army Doctrine? With ID, Log On). Below is an excerpt from the article:

In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life. The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals....In recent years, collaborative projects like the Firefox Internet browser or Wikipedia pages have flourished with the growth of the Internet, showing the power of thousands of contributors pulling together. Not surprisingly, top-down, centralized institutions have resisted such tools, fearing the loss of control that comes with empowering anyone along the chain of command to contribute. Yet the Army seems willing to accept some loss of control. Under the three-month pilot program, the current version of each guide can be edited by anyone around the world who has been issued the ID card that allows access to the Army Internet system....As is true with Wikipedia, those changes will appear immediately on the site, though there is a team assigned to each manual to review new edits. Unlike Wikipedia, however, there will be no anonymous contributors. Many in the Army have been suspicious about the idea, questioning if each soldier — specialist or not — should have an equal right to create doctrine, [an army officer] said.

First of all, let me say that I consider this to be an excellent move on the part of the Army -- to tap into the expertise of the entire range of personnel for guidance. It's also a tacit admission that high-ranking officers do not have a monopoly on new or creative ideas. In fact, the scales may tip in favor of enlisted personnel in this department. In addition, there is no question that this new process may run counter to the top-down command and control structure of the military. Note the last sentence above in which an officer questions whether "doctrine creation" should be the "right" of all ranks. For me, the answer is whether the goal is for the Army doctrine to be as good as possible.

I can't help but draw a parallel between Army field manuals and the procedure manuals that regulate the operations of clinical laboratories. Such manuals do not make light reading but are critical documents for assessing the quality of a lab at the time of inspection. These manuals are often written and revised by a small group of medical technologists and lab physicians within the lab. I was wondering whether some clinical labs have adopted a wiki process to keep their manuals up-to-date and modify them when necessary. If they can be modified using a wiki approach, the burdensome and concentrated review immediately prior to a lab inspection could be avoided.