CDC transforms intranet into popular news channel

How the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turned its once stale intranet into a dynamic and widely read portal

Among the goals of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, is the improvement of global health by “sharing knowledge, tools and other resources with people and partners around the world.” It’s indeed a noble challenge that, until about four years ago, plagued internal communications at CDC.

“The information I received from [employees] was ‘we don’t know what’s going on in other parts of the company,'” explained Kay Golan, CDC’s director of employee communications.

With 14,000 employees worldwide—9,000 of whom are federal workers while the other 5,000 are contractors, and no newsletter, it’s not surprising employees felt disconnected.

The overall disconnect among CDC’s thousands of employees was rearing its head not only inside the agency, but in the public sector as well. If an employee’s neighbor inquired about a recent news story like influenza or food-borne pathogens, often times that employee knew just as much, if not less than his or her neighbor.