1. Processing Make the Most of What You Know
Robert David Steele
Intelligence Coach

2. Bangalore, India No computers, no bus passes
If you think you have it bad, consider Bangalore, India.
99 people have to depend on one jeep, five motorcycles, and a scooter.
No bus passes, no training, no computers.

3. National Drug Intelligence Center Processing Makes A Strategic Difference
Telling a story: DEA 900 files, FBI 90 files
Case file benefits: visualizing the data for deep understanding
Inter-agency benefits: providing an incentive for sharing leads

4. Processing Objectives Pattern analysis & anomaly detection
Automated processing is vital to making sense of vast quantities of information.
Pattern analysis & anomaly detection are the primary objectives--the human mind will provide the understanding.

5. Collection Management Can’t do CM without processing
If you don’t know what you already know, and if you don’t know what your critical information gaps are, you cannot do effective collection management or case development.

6. Analysis Can’t do analysis without processing
Our first mistake is to treat people as “free” goods.
Our second mistake is to assume that an analyst can make sense of information simply by reading and thinking.
THE NAKED ANALYST

7. Processing Pre-Requisite #1 Data handling standards
Digitization of data at the point of acquisition makes everything else easier.
Agreeing on common data handling standards compatible with web-based information sharing is helpful.

8. Processing Pre-requisite #2 Geospatial attributes
Adding geospatial attributes to your data will increase its processing value by 100X to 1000X!
Geospatial and time attributes are what make automated fusion and pattern detection possible.

9. Processing Pre-requisite #3 Interoperability
Interoperability of digital data is vital.
Among the seven national tribes
Among regional military commands
Among military and non-governmental organizations including foreign businesses

10. The Big Picture Four processing quadrants
TECHNICAL
HUMAN
III - External Information
EXTERNAL
INTERNAL
Organizational
Memory System
Data
Conversion
Visualization
Heterogeneous
Search & Retrieval
Trip
Reports
Churning
(Rotationals)
Local
Knowledge
Expert Hires
“Just Enough,
Just in Time”
Internal Reporting
Vendor Reporting
Government Monitoring
Customer Monitoring
Environmental Monitoring
Technology Monitoring
CHUNKS
(Intellectual Property)
PERSONALITY
(Insight/Intuition)
Patents, Etc.
Trade Secrets
Meta-Data
Knowledge Capital™
Rolodexes/
Personal Brand
Out-Sourcing of
Information
Processing
Project/Group
Management
Training
Business
Intelligence
Institutionalized
E-Commerce
Automated Analysis
Cell #
IV - Organizational Intelligence
I - Knowledge Management
II - Collaborative Work
I’m going to go slowly with this chart. I want to make four key points here.
First, knowledge management is elementary. We need to make the most of what we already know, and that means that we need an architecture that can handle both secrets and non-secrets while permitting the sharing of information across organizational lines. We can’t do that today within DoD, much less the rest of USG.
Second, collaborative work, the ability to find, work with, and co-produce knowledge with anyone, anywhere in the world, is the real challenge facing us today. We are spending too much money on proprietary high-end compartmented solutions. The Internet and nomadic wireless computing are well-established, let’s get on with it, starting with funding for direct analyst access to the open sources that can help them identify expert peers in the private sector.
Third, and Peter Drucker emphasized this in August 1998, we have to stop obsessing on information technology and we have to get serious about accessing external information. We can apply the “T” here, but we need to put the “I” horse in front of the “T” cart. Drucker says the third quadrant, External Information, is where the next revolution in IT must happen I have been saying this since 1988.
Lastly, our architecture must provide for how we turn these first three quadrants into Organizational Intelligence, that is, knowledge that remains available to future generations in the face of rotations, retirements, deaths, and other human passages.

11. Processing Quadrant #1 Knowledge Management
Know what you know
Do not lose data, insights, links
Integrate people, projects, vendors, times, places, objects
Optimize application of technology to internal information
INTERNAL
Internal Reporting
Vendor Reporting
Project Management
Data Conversion
Automated Analysis

12. Processing Quadrant #2 Collaborative Work
Human Capital
Inherent in People
Who They Know
How They Know
When They Know
What They Do
Who They Tell
How They Feel
INSIGHT
Employee BrandNames
Rolodexes
Directories
Cell Telephone Networks
Trip Reports
Rotationals
Training

13. Processing Quadrant #3 External Information Acquisition
Peter Drucker says this is the next 50 years of innovation
OLD: spend on technology
NEW: spend on external information in all languages, from all sources, all the time
EXTERNAL
Local knowledge
Expert hires “just enough, just in time”
Customer monitoring
Government monitoring
Technology monitoring
Environment monitoring

14. Processing Quadrant #4 Organizational Intelligence
Data standards
Data entry mandated
Storage & retrieval
Historical access without legacy system training
Employee shoeboxes integrated/not lost
MEMORY
Intellectual Property
Organizational Memory
Meta-Data
History of Information
Electronic/Human Links
Survive Human Turnover

15. Processing Desktop: Generic Analytic Functionalities
Conversion of Paper Documents to Digital Form
Automated Extraction of Data Elements From Text and Images
Standardizing and Converting Data Formats
Processing Images, Video, Audio, Signal Data
Automated Foreign Language Translation
Open Literature
Non-Text Data
Restricted Information
Detection of Alert Situations
Clustering and Linking of
Related Data
Statistical Analysis to Reveal Anomalies
Detection of Changing Trends
Interactive Search and Retrieval of Data
Graphic and Map-Based Visualization of Data
Modeling and Simulations
Collaborative Work
Notetaking and Organizing Ideas
Structured Argument Analysis
Desktop Publishing and Word Processing
Production of Graphics, Videos and Online Briefings
Revision Tracking and Realtime Group Review
Finished Intelligence and Reporting A B C
Here is another way of looking at where we need to focus intelligence technology--on desktop processing, rather than on satellite collection!
CIA--Diane Webb in particular--defined these functionalities in 1986 and they still are not available to any intelligence analyst today for two reasons:
First, because we spend all our money in highly compartmented programs where cooperation is viewed as one step short of treason; and
Second, and I don’t have an answer, we have failed to focus on the importance of establishing Application Program Interface (API) standards that permit plug and play among third party softwares, and are stable or at least easily updatable.
We desperately need analytic tools, and I would very much like to see General Kernan at JFCOM take on these 18 functionalities as part of the Future Intelligence Collaborative Environment (FICE), and in the process, working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, devise an approach to the API issue. We need to establish a cross-government council on analytic tools, with JFCOM and NSA as the heavy-duty performers, and CIA as the top client.
If we establish XML data standards, open encryption, and stable API’s, we can have all of this on every analyst’s desktop within five years, at a reasonable cost.

16. Processing Desktop No Easy Solutions
Plan
Extend
Report
Share
OSALAT
Copernic
Collect
Excaliber
Topic
Analyst Workbench
Identifier, SIFT,
OnTopic, Labrador
GMS, Athens
Aerotext
Intelligent Miner
For Text
Analyze
Content Extractor
Information Portal,
Comprendium
ClearForest Suite
CrimeLink
Analyst Notebook
**C-4-U Scout
**CI Spider
**Knowledge.Works
**Market Signal Analyzer
**E-Sense
**Corporate Intelligence Service
**TextAnalyst
**Plumtree Corporate Portal
**Powerize
**Strategy!
**Wincite
**WisdomBuilder
** Previously reviewed in the Fuld & Co. Software Report
Groove?
EDGE?
MindMap?
SYSTRAN+?
Other
CATALYST
Elements?
This slide was created by Claudia Porter, a senior manager at Austin Info Systems in Texas, for her presentation to my conference last May. I asked her to start with the existing survey of business intelligence software by Leonard Fuld, a very competent practitioner. The four items in red are my addition after the fact.
This is a mish-mash and most of the products do not meet customer expectations. None of them work well with one another, and all of them assume that the data will already be digital and in some structured form.
The “T” must provide for stable and robust unstructured data entry and data conversion portals, for plug and play handshakes, and for idiot-proof online training embedded within each program…and good documentation of code.

17. Emerging Technologies #1 Digitization of documents
Battlefield digitization is no longer an issue
Battlefield translation is no longer an issue
What is missing is the leadership willingness to link troops to both processing and expert translators.

18. Emerging Technologies #2 Visualization of links in text
Visualization of links among people, vehicles, weapons, and bank accounts is no longer an issue.
What is missing is the leadership commitment to arming troops with intelligence

19. Emerging Technologies #3 Peer-to-peer computing & communications
Networked “side to side” intelligence is vastly more effective than up and down chain of command intelligence.
What is lacking is a leadership commitment to training and then trusting the troops.

20. Processing Solution #1 Internet as common operating environment
War and operations other than war are now a “come as you are” situation, with ad hoc allies that cannot be anticipated.
Only the Internet offers a global C4I solution for mix and match people, equipment, and data.

21. Processing Solution #2 Open source software & security
European Community has the right idea--open source software is the wave of the future
Security must be in the software, not the hardware or the physical controls

22. Processing Solution #3 24/7 “Plots” at every level
Need “plots” at the township, city, province, and national levels, as well as special regional intelligence centers
Sources, geospatial processing, and analysts must merge

23. Recommendation #1 National “skunkworks” for seven tribes
Neither the government nor the business world will solve the processing problem alone.
Need a national “skunkworks” where open sources and open software can be safely integrated

24. Recommendation #2 Push NATO and USA for web-based sharing
Help the European Community focus on the urgency of insisting that NATO and the USA migrate to a web-based approach to sharing all information, at every classification level. This is a Native American ethic.

25. Recommendation #3 Internet, Wireless, Spectrum
Extend the Internet to every street corner
Go wireless, with encryption, quickly
Free up as much spectrum as possible--South Korea is the leader, not the USA

26. Creating a Smart Nation Connect Content Coordinate C-ecurity
Connectivity everywhere
Content is digitized
Coordination of standards and investments
C4 Security across all seven tribes--public safety at same level as safety of secrets