stovepiped

adjective

stove·​piped ˈstōv-ˌpīpt 

: isolated in a way that hinders communication and cooperation with others

… the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together. We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it.

—George W. Bush

Over the last half of the 20th century, an isolating bureaucracy grew up around the functions of government, with each department and agency focusing on its area of expertise. Within this stovepiped structure, efforts often intersected only by accident, cooperation was rare and collaboration even rarer.

—Sherri Goodman

American education also tends to be stovepiped: you learn English from English teachers, math from math teachers, and biology from biology teachers. A STEM curriculum is predicated on the notion that the best teaching is interdisciplinary, because similar patterns of thinking underlie many subjects and integrating them makes students smarter.

—D. T. Max

Word History

First Known Use

1988, in the meaning defined above