stovepiping

1 9.9

A way of keeping information in separate computer systems so people must switch between them

noun
/ˈstoʊvˌpaɪpɪŋ/

Specialized

: aislamiento de información

The first step is to move beyond agency "stovepiping" and use all the talent and expertise within the federal government.

Examples

The whole reason they opened up the cables to SPIRnet was to allow analysts and other professionals to see the links on terrorist threats and also to prevent the Cheneys of this world from doing what they did with the Iraq war—"stovepiping" intelligence to counter facts in order to win the internal battle on the issue of the war.

Blog text (26)
The government's problem with stovepiping has prevented important information from being shared across agencies.
Experts recommend avoiding stovepiping to ensure that all necessary information is accessible to policymakers.
Bureaucratic and professional stovepiping made nuclear officials unwilling to take advice from experts outside the field.

Antonyms

unification

Specialized

1 4.8

A process that combines separate data sets into one complete customer record

How Isolated

siloing

Jargon

1 7.5

stovepiping

Specialized

1 9.9

Surface Forms

stovepiping singular

stovepipings plural

Morphology

stovepiping = stovepipe (opaque) = stove + pipe + ing

The form is built from 'stovepipe' plus '-ing', but the organizational meaning is a metaphorical extension that is not predictable from the literal parts.

Etymology

The word stovepiping comes from the image of a stovepipe, a straight pipe that goes up from a stove and does not join other pipes so nothing moves between them. That's why stovepiping means keeping information in separate systems that do not 'talk' to each other, making it hard to share or use the data.