Coast Guard near end of acquisition wiki experiment

Wiki was created to crowdsource ideas for logistics information system acquisition

• By Alice Lipowicz
• Feb 07, 2011

The Coast Guard is wrapping up a three-month online crowdsourcing wiki it's using to help develop an acquisition strategy for a logistics information system.

Starting Feb. 8, the agency said it will assess the ideas and comments compiled on the wiki and decide how to proceed.

The Coast Guard created the Logistics Information Management System wiki in November 2010 as an informal tool to allow for public input into ideas for a logistic information system acquisition strategy.

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“This forum is a way for the project office to keep industry aware of our thoughts and ideas; a way for industry, academia, the public — anyone — to communicate directly with the project staff; [and] a place for you to help the government figure out how best to deliver the Coast Guard-Logistics Information Management System capability to the field,” states the acquisition wiki introductory Web page.

The Coast Guard further described the wiki as an experiment, open to anyone, and “informal as it can be and completely unofficial,” the wiki Web page continued.

“We'll give this a try, see if it's worth the energy, and reassess in three months [Feb. 8, 2011] to decide whether to continue,” the service said on the wiki Web page.

The initial goals for the acquisition strategy were to minimize costs; maximize the Coast Guard's ability to act as system integrator; create deliverables in small, usable segments; make the project scalable based on annual funding; minimize the time to market; and maximize effectiveness and the meeting of system requirements.

In May 2010, the General Services Administration pioneered the use of a wiki to develop ideas for acquisition strategies. Since then, a few agencies have experimented with acquisition-related wikis.