Cultivating Communities of Practice

To Support Analytic Collaboration

Darin Warner and David Blauvelt

Informal communities of practice (CoPs) already help analysts 

collaborate across the IC, and their expertise is often levied against 

threats that do not fit neatly into existing organizations. CoPs are 

typically formed organically by analysts, and while they may briefly

thrive independently, these groups face long-term challenges including 

the lack of resources, visibility, and authority. A CoP may collapse when 

a key individual leaves, or the U.S. national security enterprise may

create an entirely new CoP that can disrupt, displace, or dilute the 

existing information-sharing patterns. We invite your ideas on

strengthening CoPs and their contributions: Can the IC, perhaps using 

senior facilitators or other stewards, address these challenges by providing 

the support and advocacy needed to sustain grassroots CoPs?

RESEARCH SHORT

April 25, 2023

What this is:

Research Shorts fuse two 

research cultures, blending 

intelligence information with 

academic insights on topics of 

interest to the IC. Shorts are 

intended to constructively 

start and add to the IC's 

conversations—not to finish 

them. NIU, the sole fully 

TS/SCI-cleared university, 

publishes the Shorts.

What this is not:

Research Shorts are not 

finished intelligence and are 

not IC-coordinated. The 

opinions expressed are solely 

those of the author and do not 

represent those of any U.S. 

Government agency.

IMAGE FROM SHUTTERSTOCK

SOUNDING BOARD Soliciting comments on inprogress academic research
2

Grassroots Communities Enable the IC To Thrive -

Yet Are Often Shunned

In the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and other U.S. Government entities—to include the 

Department of Defense (DoD)—collaboration is essential to understand and address national 

security challenges. When collaboration falters, the U.S. Government may implement 

measures to overcome identified challenges, as it did in creating the Office of the Director of 

Intelligence (ODNI) to curb institutional silos.1 Despite these 

mechanisms, collaboration shortfalls persist, particularly when

resources are shifted to address new priorities. Such movement

can hinder cross-organizational awareness of counterparts 

working on similar or complementary national security issues. 

Occasionally, however, communities of practice (CoPs) emerge 

voluntarily at the grassroots level (GCoPs) to leverage expertise 

that otherwise may not be easily identifiable. These GCoPs serve 

as “desired paths” that can become routine components of 

governmentwide collaboration and information sharing.

A GCoP can be a highly effective information-sharing resource 

for several reasons. First, it creates a forum that connects workinglevel counterparts across the national security community focused 

on a specific topic. Second, a GCoP may not have a specific 

organizational affiliation, affording greater flexibility and agility. 

Third, a GCoP encourages participation across diverse 

communities regardless of paygrade or rank, providing more 

opportunities to learn, engage, and collaborate. Finally, and

perhaps the most undervalued aspect of these groups, once a GCoP isformed and fully functional, 

it can be immediately leveraged to support an emerging crisis and potentially respond to tasking.

Based on their review of the academic literature throughout the past 30 years on CoPs, the 

authors have determined that these groups provide:

• Rapid identification of experts and touch points across stovepipes;

• Encouragement of peer interactions, new relationships, and acceptance;

• Ease of mentoring and “apprenticing”;

• Continuity of expertise and knowledge between periods of transitioning resources;

• Flexibility to address high priority, critical topics; and

• Vision and stimulus for the innovation required to counter adversaries.

Yet the literature also shows that, without sustained senior-level support, CoPs may have 

limited effectiveness or even collapse. Efforts by employees of the Federal Energy 

Management Program and their colleagues from other U.S. Government departments to sustain 

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHTS

• Communities of Practice (CoPs)—

frequently formed by working-level 

counterparts across organizations to 

make progress on specific issues—

have proven to be effective in both 

the public and private sectors.

• CoPs can strengthen analysis by 

connecting experts across the IC.

• Formal support from IC leadership, 

perhaps through a senior facilitator, 

could empower CoPs to achieve 

breakthroughs in tackling the emerging 

threats to U.S. national security.
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a CoP—designed to increase operational productivity at shared Federal facilities—were 

blocked by restrictions on the comingling of different agencies’ funds.2

Background and Benefits of CoPs

CoP pioneers Lave and Wenger popularized the term in the late 1980s, introducing the concept 

in their landmark book, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. 4 They

envisioned a CoP as a mechanism to collectively address problems, deepen expertise, and share 

concerns and knowledge. CoPs display significant variations in terms of size, form, and 

composition. The basic structural components of a CoP often discussed in the literature include 

population, duration, intent, and means of interaction.5 CoP membership can comprise a few 

experts to hundreds, working within a single organization or across multiple entities. Duration is 

dependent on the topic and the willingness of organizations to contribute members to the CoP

and, therefore, can range from a few months to decades. Intent refers to the process whereby 

experts gravitate to one another to share ideas and best practices, typically with the goal of either 

supporting a longstanding issue or an emerging challenge within a larger organizational or 

community context. With dispersed CoPs now the norm, virtual interaction is typically the 

primary means of interaction, with in-person meetings being secondary but just as critical.

Considering large enterprises similar to the IC, Wenger and Snyder (2000) described several cases 

where the CoP model was adopted—with measurable performance improvements—in a wide 

range of organizations, including an international bank (World Bank), a U.S. car manufacturer

(Chrysler), and a U.S. Government agency (Veterans Administration).

6 Implementation of the 

CoP model has been inconsistent across the U.S. Government, yet prevalent in spots— from usage 

in individual agencies to the “digital.gov” program that connects Federal employees in CoPs 

outside the IC primarily using an online mechanism to facilitate interaction.

The literature consistently shows that immediate and sustainable benefits emerge from the 

implementation of the CoP model within an agency or enterprise of agencies. Empirical 

research by Chindgren-Wagner (2010) showed that CoPs within the U.S. Government create 

DESIRED PATHS PRINCIPLE: 

A Metaphor for Communities of Practice

The “desired paths” principle, cited in urban planning, can be seen when 

pedestrians find the shortest path between key locations, often shunning 

sidewalks and streets. Over time, this pedestrian traffic creates markings 

or lines in the dirt that reveal these pathways. When this method is 

employed, the walkways may be cemented, codifying the wisdom of the 

pedestrian crowd. “However, desired paths are not inert histories, but 

representative of a constantly evolving relationship.”3

Image of a pedestrian-created pathway by Alan Stanton, Tottenham Green, London, UK, April 14, 

2012. Photo courtesy of Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanstanton/7094286453/in/pooldesire_paths/, under Creative Commons license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.
4

an atmosphere of connectivity and knowledge sharing conducive to innovation, a critical 

component of achieving new discoveries. 7 Further exploration in the Federal government 

realm was conducted by Reed (2014), who outlined the Department of Energy’s adoption of 

CoPs in the Federal Energy Management Program.8 The findings from Reed’s study validated 

Chindgren-Wagner’s and Wenger’s prior studies, even showing that CoPs were indeed the 

leading elements in achieving breakthroughs and critical organizational changes.

Why Even Successful Grassroots Communities Often Fail

Despite their value, GCoPs often face challenges with respect to resources, visibility, and 

authority. First, these groups often depend on a small core of people—or sometimes one 

person—to administer and organize them. These individuals, although often highly dedicated, 

frequently rotate to new positions without the guarantee that any organization or agency will 

replace them. Because of the group’s informal status, GCoPs often lack billets and funding, as 

noted by Wenger and Snyder (2000).

9 Therefore, a replacement core member, even if one is 

identified or volunteers, may not have the same bandwidth or background necessary to 

maintain the GCoP’s activities.

Second, as a GCoP—or even a formally directed CoP—

emerges to tackle a new IC challenge, crisis, or priority (e.g., 

the Islamic State, the Russia-Ukraine war, or climate change), 

its members may be unaware of the existing grassroots efforts. 

Not realizing that other engagement mechanisms already exist

(which could enable the newer entities to focus their efforts and 

tap useful resources more efficiently) risks duplication of effort, 

reduced community visibility about activities, and saturation 

that could dilute their collective impact. 

Third, IC GCoPs primarily exist at the working level and most 

often do not have the authority to engage with policymakers. 

Rather, their activities and collaboration forums provide 

information and connectivity that support the offices with such 

authority. Even if GCoP activities inform policymaking, any input must be vetted by agencies 

or other formal organizations. The absence of this authority is arguably a reason why GCoPs 

are poorly resourced or face duplication of effort. Authority requires more responsibility to 

generate and measure impact. Even if a GCoP’s members do not seek authority because of the 

increased responsibility it would entail, greater policymaker awareness of the GCoP’s added 

value could improve the chances of personnel support by the GCoP members’ home agencies.

How Can the IC Embrace Grassroots Communities?

Despite the challenges associated with starting and operating GCoPs, intelligence and national 

security professionals will continue to form them as “desired paths;” however, there is rarely a 
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visible means for GCoPs to gain resources, visibility, or authority as appropriate. Cox (2005) 

explored the idea that management should “foster” CoPs to empower them.10 In assessing 

feedback on a virtual CoP study that included online participation by academics from six 

different countries, Guldberg and Mackness (2009) also suggested the benefits of an enabling 

authority to support a CoP’s (or GCoP’s) endeavors. Although 92 percent of the participants 

felt positive about their CoP experience and 76 percent believed their opinions were heard, 

despite cultural and language barriers, some participants viewed the group as too fragmented,

with no one facilitating the group’s direction.11

Could the IC provide a facilitator—or experts champion of sorts—to better leverage the expertise

of existing GCoPs and encourage the formation of new groupsto address emerging issues? These 

facilitators could reside in government departments, agencies, or organizations responsible for 

coordinating activities among individual agencies (i.e., how the ODNI oversees IC coordination),

and they would be responsible for identifying and providing resources, visibility, and authority 

to support new and existing GCoPs in their respective communities. As noted in Reed (2014), 

the inability to comingle various energy funds impeded an effort by the Federal Energy 

Management Program to form a CoP in the 1990s—before the ODNI existed.12

Should support for these cross-agency GCoPs in the IC reside with the DNI? As such CoPs 

tend to transcend IC organizations, the ODNI could be an effective place to house an IC CoP 

facilitator, especially as the ODNI frequently also engages outside the IC to integrate expertise 

from other U.S. Government agencies and departments. An IC CoP facilitator could 

organizationally reside, for example, under the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for 

Mission Integration (DDNI/MI).

A designated CoP facilitator would need to identify all existing CoPs (including grassroots 

efforts that exist within and across agencies). The facilitator would differentiate these groups 

to understand their design, role, mission, and contribution. CoP identification—particularly at 

the genesis of such a position—would help not only to understand what groups currently exist 

and which topics they are covering, but also to understand whether certain agencies and topics 

are underrepresented. The CoP facilitator could then create a reporting mechanism for 

identifying and tracking new groups. To assist the CoP facilitator in tracking these groups, the

ODNI could produce a new Intelligence Community Directive on CoP creation and ask 

agencies to report new CoPs to the facilitator.

After identifying these groups, the CoP facilitator could then create opportunities for 

establishing new CoPs and recruit agencies and experts within those agencies to lead them. 

The CoP facilitator would not force agencies or individuals to create CoPs but would be able

to establish communication and collaboration mechanisms to at least enable the basic elements 

of coordination.

Other key elements of the CoP facilitator’s role could be marketing and supporting the CoPs

under IC purview. Whenever these CoPs require access to administrative support or services, the 

CoP facilitator would be the one primarily responsible for working to meet those administrative
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needs and to serve as the institutional champion for these groups. Ideally, the CoP facilitator 

would have a staff to support this function, field requests, and liaise with the various CoPs.

Should a Central Authority Reinforce “Desired Paths”?

Grassroots CoPs represent fast-moving, evolving, and flexible opportunities to capture

comprehensive input and diverse perspectives, preserve and grow knowledge, and leverage 

cross-community information to support analysis and decisionmaking. These informal groups 

often lack resources, visibility, and authority, and suffer from high turnover as analysts move 

to new positions, taking their knowledge with them and risking network collapse. 

Promoting IC GCoPs with a centralized facilitator and investing comparatively small amounts 

of resources could enable stronger, more cohesive analytic networks that can effectively respond 

to needs and challenges posed by increasingly nimble and dangerous adversaries and complex 

actor-less threats. An argument has been made for the formal support of these collaborative 

workgroups, but several questions remain—chief among them being: What level of oversight by 

an IC CoP facilitator would promote a collectively stronger IC analytic capability without 

damaging the inherent qualities of organically grown, self-governing GCoPs?

• How might the experts-led direction setting found in GCoPs be sustained, even as their 

grassroots governing structure needs adjustment to ensure funding, accountability for 

results, and tasking authority?

• As attrition and individual agency requirements move GCoP members to new positions, 

how might an IC facilitator coordinate continued access to—or replacement of—their 

expertise?

• What level of authority should an IC CoPs facilitator exercise to create or sunset IC CoPs 

in response to evolving national security concerns? One could argue that, although a CoP 

might lose energy and support as its issue’s priority wanes, a minimal level of group 

expertise and collaboration should be maintained as IC priorities tend to be cyclical.

In what other ways could IC GCoPs be supported? 

• Are there options to support groups at the agency or office level that could enable these 

“desired paths” to connect and grow? Environmental security groups across the IC 

recently banded together under a consortium to gain more recognition; would this work 

for other GCoPs?

• How might local-level facilitators, perhaps in coordination with an IC CoPs experts 

champion, help preserve institutional memory?

• If the ODNI is the most appropriate facilitator within the IC, which DoD entity might 

serve a similar support role across the defense community and coordinate IC-DoD 

collaborative efforts?
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What Might You Propose?

The IC is facing an evolving, dynamic threat environment where our adversaries are becoming 

increasingly agile and adept—for example, in the cyber realm as seen in the growing spread of 

disinformation, deep fakes, election meddling, and ransomware attacks. Individual experts and 

grassroots communities across the IC could be better connected through communities of 

practice to leverage their knowledge and promote the innovative thinking required to counter 

these challenges to U.S. national security. 

But barriers to much-needed IC collaboration still exist. What can we do to help break down 

those barriers?

We invite your responses to the questions above and welcome your thoughts on how the 

IC can leverage Communities of Practice across organizations and topics. We also welcome 

your examples of contributions made by CoPs and GCoPs to U.S. Government operations or 

policy advancement. To share your ideas, please contact the NIU Office of Research at

Research@niu.odni.gov.

Darin Warner is an Intelligence Analysis Technical Lead and a Data Science Researcher at the National 

Security Agency. Mr. Warner is also a U.S. Army Veteran, and he previously served as a Brookings 

Legislative Fellow for Senator Angus King (I-ME) on his Environment and Energy Team and as a Senior 

Project Manager for an environmental consulting firm, holding a Professional Geologist license from 

the State of New Hampshire. He holds a B.S. in Natural Science/Mathematics and an M.S. in Geology, 

both from the University of Wyoming. 

Dr. David Blauvelt is a Research Scientist at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and a founder 

of the IC Environmental Security Working Group. Dr. Blauvelt served as a member of the Research 

Faculty in NIU’s Caracristi Institute for Intelligence Research from 2017-20; he holds a B.A. in Geology 

from the State University of New York at Geneseo, an M.A. in Geology from the University of Buffalo, 

and a Ph.D. of Physical Geography from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

If you have comments, questions, or a suggestion for a Research Short topic or article, please contact 

the NIU Office of Research at Research@niu.odni.gov.
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Endnotes

1 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, “How To Do It? A Different Way of 

Organizing the Government,” The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

2004), 399-428, https://www.govinfo.gov/features/911-commission-report. 

2 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Communities of Practice: A Tool 

for Creating Institutional Change in Support of the Mission of the Federal Energy Management Program, by John

H. Reed, November 2014, https://www.energy.gov/eere/femp/articles/communities-practice-tool-creatinginstitutional-change-support-mission-federal.

3 Parker Schorr, “Desire Paths: The Unofficial Footpaths that Frustrate, Captivate Campus Planners,” University of 

Wisconsin-Madison News, April 24, 2019, https://news.wisc.edu/desire-paths-the-unofficial-footpaths-thatfrustrate-captivate-campus-planners/.

4 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press, 1991). 

5 Steven J. Kerno, Jr., “Limitations of Communities of Practice: A Consideration of Unresolved Issues and 

Difficulties in the Approach,” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 15, no. 1 (August 2008), 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1548051808317998. 

6 Etienne C. Wenger and William M. Snyder, “Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier,” Harvard 

Business Review, January-February 2000, 139-45, https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-theorganizational-frontier.

7 Tina M. Chindgren-Wagner, “Climate of Innovation in Government Communities of Practice: Focusing on 

Knowledge Gains and Relationships,” paper presented at Project Management Institute Research Conference Defining 

the Future of Project Management, Washington, DC, July 14, 2010, https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/communitypractice-knowledge-management-gains-6461.

8 U.S. Department of Energy, Communities of Practice. 

9 Wenger and Snyder, “Communities of Practice.”

10 Andrew Cox, “What Are Communities of Practice? A Critical Review of Four Seminal Works,” Journal of 

Information Science 31, no. 6 (July 2016), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0165551505057016.

11 Karen Guldberg and J. Mackness, “Foundations of Communities of Practice: Enablers and Barriers to Participation,” 

Journal of Computer-Assisted Learning 25, no 6 (November 5, 2009), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/

10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00327.x.

12 U.S. Department of Energy, Communities of Practice.