DI2E Conference thoughts...
The DI2E conference was held in Dallas, TX this week. It is quite clear the intelligence status-quo is not working anymore. At one time, the amount of good intel data was hard to get and the risk was easy to manage via stove pipe environments. Today, there is an overwhelming amount information available to analysts. But, how does the analyst find good intel (needle in the needle stack) in the explosion of information now available to support the mission? How can analysis decision time be improved in order to take action at the edge sooner? Now, add in the reality of significantly reduced budgets for the foreseeable future.
Risk profiles must also change to enable coalition partners to effectively work towards a common goal, not to mention sharing intel within our own cross-agency teams. As noted by one speaker, the risk profile must move from need-to-know to need-to-share. There is more risk, but the benefit trade-offs are worth the risk. This transformation will not be easy as there are many years of engrained cultural impediments that must be overcome. However, there seem to be some forcing functions that may help drive new behavior, such as budget constraints leading to reduced resources in both people and systems.
Some key themes mentioned at the conference were more effective communication and collaboration, the integration of humans and technology, information management, and the dissemination of information to the commanders. Moving forward, systems and practices must be adapted to the specific mission, and it must be flexible... agile? Boiler plate approaches are not sufficient. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet.
The message to the solution provider community was also clear. We must do a better job at understanding the customer's needs. However, many times the customer doesn't know what to ask for regarding intel (ISR) capabilities. This is symptomatic of solving problems where a lot of unknowns exist. In many cases, analysts are not sufficiently trained on exiting systems, or on "research driven" practices required for unstructured OSINT analytics, which contributes to the requirements gap. This is not a dig to the intel community, but a reality of the speed and amount of information. The game has changed. Solution provider systems and processes must adapt as well to enable the highest level of mission success to our commanders.
At IKANOW, our focus is on solving the large unstructured (with structured) data problem with Infinit.e, an open analytics platform that is easily configurable to meet the specific mission needs. Additionally, IKANOW's Agile Intelligence approach addresses many of the analyst enablement impediments noted above by incorporating agile Scrum practices, such as a continuous inspect and adapt approach with integrating technical platform SME's with analysts establishing cross-functional teams. The open analytic Infinit.e system with the agile intelligence approach provides the analyst team the flexibility, adaptability and enablement required to solve the intel problems that exist today and tomorrow.
-DS