Distributed Collaborative Analysis: A New Approach for Intelligence Analysis

摘要

In the post Cold War environment, the threats to our National Security have grown more complex, dynamic, and uncertain. To further add to the complexity of the environment, the rapid growth in information age technologies continues to compress the dimensions of time and space significantly, while seeming to justify calls for resource reductions by the public. At the same time, the rapid pace of this growth has caused decision makers at all echelons - tactical to strategic - to challenge the Intelligence Community to become more responsive and agile in meeting their demands for intelligence. These strategic trends demand an Intelligence Community that can dominate the full spectrum of economic, political and military intelligence. Today's Intelligence Community, which evolved out of the necessity to contend with wars and technology, is a hierarchical structure that cannot compete in the information age. Recent advances in both the business and military intelligence communities indicate that success demands a change. One such change is to embrace a new method for analysis that is collaborative and distributed, facilitated by the Internet and its associated technologies. Although this approach requires improvements in interoperability of systems, security and a major cultural change within the Intelligence Community, doing so will significantly enhance its ability to deal with the effects of a more complex, dynamic and uncertain world, the information age, and the impact of limited resources.