Copyright © 1999 Fredrick Thomas Martin
 

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Chapter 10  Achieving a More Agile Enterprise

        10.1 Intelligence Community Information Systems Strategic Plan
        10.2 The Future World of Intelligence: Virtual Intelligence
                10.2.1 What Is Agility?
                10.2.2 Why Is Agility Necessary for the Intelligence Community?
                10.2.3 What is an Agile Intelligence Enterprise?
                        10.2.3.1 Information Security Concerns
                        10.2.3.2 Coordinating Intelligence Community Management
                10.2.4 Status: CODA – Implementing the Agile Concept
        10.3 Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture
                10.3.1 JIVA Objectives
                10.3.2 JIVA Focus Areas
                10.3.3 JIVA Implementation
        10.4 Challenge for the Intelligence Community
        10.5 How Does This Relate to Business?


 
Chapter 10
Achieving a More Agile Intelligence Enterprise

Consider the following scenario:

"The year is 2005. Tensions in the world have been steadily increasing for the past 16 months, as a former Soviet bloc country with significant nuclear weapons capabilities has entered into a defensive agreement with a coalition of several suspected Middle East-based terrorist organizations that combined forces shortly after the turn of the millennium.

For the past two weeks, the US Intelligence Community has been operating under their highest state of alert. It is two and a half hours past midnight in Washington, D.C. National Imagery and Mapping Agency analysts have been monitoring troop movements from satellite imagery for the past two days. Major Jay Franklin, a US Army intelligence analyst stationed at the Defense Intelligence Agency, receives an emergency call from the commander of an elite special forces unit in the Middle East.

At approximately the same time, the watch officer in the National Security Operations Center of the National Security Agency receives an automated, high priority signal from a special array of sensors. The signal comes from one of its computers at a remote classified location in Eastern Europe, alerting the US Intelligence Community of possible impending troop movements. Meanwhile, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have been alerted to a possible attack scenario involving both chemical and nuclear weapons.

Major Franklin contacts Colonel Robert Boldrey in his remote headquarters to start a chain of collaborative operations that will involve real-time sharing of information across all of the intelligence agencies as well as the involved members of the military services.

Using programmed software intelligence agents, Colonel Boldrey is able to immediately contact all appropriate collaborative participants tasked with analyzing the troop movements and other available data. The results of their efforts will then be used as the basis for recommendations to the Commander of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force, the Secretary of Defense, and the President.

Although geographically dispersed around the globe, the participants are simultaneously viewing the same information, as well as each other, on a large-screen ‘whiteboard,’ as though they were in the same room. With instantaneous access to databases containing all-source intelligence, Signals Intelligence, and imagery, over secure high-speed and high-transmission bandwidth Intelink facilities, they are in a much better position to address this latest crisis…"

This is clearly a scenario with the potential for worldwide catastrophe. The important questions to ask for the future are whether the US Intelligence Community could:

  1. Respond in such a way, and
  2. Adjust its collection, exploitation, and analysis capabilities.
(i.e., how agile is the US Intelligence Community?)

The answers are yes, if the Intelligence Community meets the goals laid out in its first effort to formulate a common strategy for the integration and interoperability of Intelligence Community-wide information systems. Known as the Intelligence Community Information Systems Strategic Plan: Enabling a More Agile Intelligence Enterprise, this plan provides overall guidance for managing information resources within the Intelligence Community. Published in November 1997 by the Intelligence Systems Board, this plan specifies five specific goals, providing a framework for the development and implementation of information systems and other resources from 1999 to 2003, and guiding the Intelligence Community towards its goal of cooperation and becoming a "more agile intelligence enterprise."

This concluding chapter will further define the concept of an "agile" intelligence enterprise, and explain how the Intelligence Community plans to achieve its goal. To accomplish this, Chapter 10 first will discuss the five strategic goals that promote this concept of Intelligence Community integration and interoperability of information systems. It will then define the concepts of "agility" and an "agile intelligence enterprise" and their roles in the world of "virtual intelligence." The book then concludes with a look at the Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture (JIVA) program, explaining its vision and role in meeting the early 21st century objectives of the US Intelligence Community.

10.1 Intelligence Community Information Systems Strategic Plan

In Chapter 9, we discussed the tremendous changes that the Intelligence Community, with its diverse set of missions and organizations, has been undergoing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. To cope with these cultural and technical changes, and to bring focus to the management and operational needs of the Intelligence Community, the Strategic Plan includes five overall information technology goals. The five goals contain a number of supporting objectives and specific actions deemed necessary to meet each goal, enabling the Intelligence Community to become more "agile," while increasing its effectiveness and efficiency. An "implementation plan" is in the works to specify organizational responsibilities, methodologies, and an overall projected timeline for completion.

The Strategic Plan was requested by the Intelligence Systems Board, and prepared by the Intelligence Systems Secretariat and the Intelligence Community’s Senior Information Managers Panel discussed in Chapter 9. In addition to the thirteen "official" members of the Intelligence Community, five other organizations participated substantially in creating the Strategic Plan, written by the ISS and a special team of Intelligence Community representatives under the leadership of Nancy Marsh-Ayers. These five organizations included elements of the Department of Defense, including the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Defense Systems Information Agency; the National Drug Intelligence Center; and elements within the Department of Commerce.

The Foreword to the Strategic Plan is signed by the ISB co-chairs Richard J. Wilhelm (Executive Director for Intelligence Community Affairs) and Cheryl J. Roby (Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security). The Foreword states:

"…The rapid growth of technology and the increasing demands of our customers require formal Intelligence Community agreement on information technology. This plan represents a collaborative effort to develop inter-organizational opportunities for cooperation in information systems and technology…Implementing the goals, objectives, and actions in this plan will enable the Intelligence Community to better support the customers’ mission needs, coordinate common direction, and manage information systems investments…" The Strategic Plan’s five goals and their primary objectives relate to the areas of cooperation and collaboration that are deemed to have the highest potential for benefit. Although they apply specifically to the US Intelligence Community, they provide a framework to address information technology issues that are important for any enterprise, such as customer satisfaction, technology, security, management, and cost optimization. The five goals of the Strategic Plan are as follows. (Please note: The bolded goals and italicized objectives are directly from the Strategic Plan. However, the explanatory dialogue under each objective is the view of the author.)
 

1. Customer Satisfaction

Goal: Identify and provide information systems services based on customer needs.

Objectives:

  1. Establish a process for recognizing and translating customer needs having Community-wide utility into information technology requirements.

    2. There is no formal process within the Intelligence Community today to document and evaluate Community-wide customer requirements. In order to better serve its customers, the Intelligence Community must establish such a process in full partnership with its customers.
     

  2. Use advanced information technology to enrich the knowledge environment of the customer and to meet evolving customer requirements.

    3. There is a need to establish Intelligence Community partnerships and alliances with industry and academia that result in proof-of-concept prototypes of the more promising information technologies. These prototypes will allow the testing of new information technology approaches, helping to ensure that the final implementation is of high quality.
     

  3. Monitor, measure, and evaluate mission benefits and customer satisfaction obtained from Community-level investments in information systems, services, and technology.
Quality control and performance measures as well as other metrics need to be established to assess overall customer satisfaction from investments in information technology.
  2. Electronically connecting the Intelligence Community and its Customers

Goal: Evolve toward a fully integrated, distributed information space.

Objectives:

  1. Develop an information model and technology architecture for the Intelligence Community leveraging existing models and architectures across the Intelligence Community and federal government.

    2. This "information model" should describe the business and work processes of the Intelligence Community as a whole. It must be a cooperative effort across the Intelligence Community, building upon the modeling and architectural definition work that has already been accomplished at many of its individual intelligence agencies. In addition, an Intelligence Community-wide architecture must be developed, building upon the NSA Unified Cryptologic Architecture 2010 effort and the DoD standards efforts discussed in Chapter 3.
     

  2. Enable a robust and adaptable Community-wide and customer-wide telecommunications infrastructure.

    3. The overall capacity of the existing telecommunications infrastructure must be expanded, leading to an eventual "INTELNET" consisting of worldwide networks, using asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) or similar high bandwidth switching technology, transmitted over optical fiber cable, for the seamless transfer of data among the classified networks of the Intelligence Community.
     

  3. Develop a Community-wide, distributed "virtual" work environment.

    4. This "virtual" work environment would be the future Intelligence Community information technology infrastructure, and would include the standards, policies, and procedures necessary to ensure effective intelligence dissemination and collaboration. A specific key action leading to this infrastructure would be the development of an architecture that would allow customer access to all components of this new infrastructure from a single workstation.
     

  4. Migrate to a common data environment.

    5. The concept of a common data environment across the entire Intelligence Community, including data sharing, metadata, and other mission enhancement tools, will significantly enhance interoperability. This, in turn, will improve timeliness and reduce costs associated with intelligence production.
     

  5. Migrate to a Community –wide information processing environment.

    6. Similarly, implementation of the various standards activities addressed in Chapter 3 to an Intelligence Community-specific environment, as well as the use of commercial off-the-shelf products will also significantly improve interoperability. To accomplish this, a model is needed that can measure the levels of interoperability attained, and provide a metric of overall Intelligence Community-wide system performance.
     

  6. Implement a Community-wide message handling system.

    7. The Defense Messaging System, which will integrate messaging and electronic mail functions into a single system (discussed in Chapter 3), must be implemented within the Intelligence Community.
     

  7. Facilitate the efficient production, dissemination, and use of electronic intelligence products.

    8. The information space concept implemented by JICPAC and detailed in Chapter 8 must be expanded. The Intelink metadata initiative, and the use of SGML, document tagging and security-labeling schemes must be improved.
     

  8. Enable the Intelligence Community with multilingual capabilities.
Information technology must be used to increase the foreign language capabilities of the Intelligence Community. This technology will assist language training as well as language analysis and processing.
  3. Security and Protection

Goal: Protect the Intelligence Community’s information resources and infrastructure.

Objectives:

  1. Cooperate on policy formulation for information systems security in areas of common concern.

    2. Information systems security is the number one concern in the implementation of the "agile," electronically connected Intelligence Community of the future. Security policy and goals must be jointly developed, as a single enterprise, and be responsive to the new Intelligence Community practice of risk management over the more restrictive risk avoidance policies of the past.
     

  2. Enable adaptive security management.

    3. Similarly, these security policies and goals must be supported by an overall Intelligence Community security management infrastructure that includes all aspects of security as discussed in Chapter 4, including physical security.
     

  3. Apply US Government and commercial security technology to enable effective, appropriate use of global information networks and services.

    4. The Intelligence Community must use both government security technologies, such as Fortezza (described in Chapter 5), as well as commercial security products to realize its security objectives.
     

  4. Protect Community information resources and systems against information warfare and physical threats.
The use of security threat databases, vulnerability detection tools, and other information warfare and threat recognition mechanisms will facilitate this process.
  4. Management

Goal: Establish a Community-wide information and technology management process.

Objectives:

  1. Review, update, and continually improve Community management and governance processes oriented toward information technology programs of common concern.

    2. The ITMRA legislation, discussed in Chapter 9, was only the beginning. In addition to the Senior Information Managers Panel, other mechanisms must be established to improve the overall management of information technology across the entire Intelligence Community.
     

  2. Ensure that Intelligence Community organizations have a sufficient cadre of IT professionals.

    3. The Intelligence Community must cooperate as a single enterprise to effectively recruit, train, educate, and retain the caliber of information technology professionals needed to sustain future operations. Mr. Bran Ferren, Vice-President of Walt Disney Imagineering, and a frequent advisor to the US Intelligence Community, cites this need as absolutely critical as government salaries have continually failed to keep pace with the private sector.
     

  3. Improve awareness and insertion of new information technology across the Community.

    4. Develop mechanisms that are dedicated to the Intelligence Community, including business process reengineering, technology forums, and collaboration, to ensure awareness, support, and insertion of new information technology across the entire Intelligence Community.
     

  4. Establish an Intelligence Community-wide information records management process.

    5. This new process must address the legal requirements and business needs for a common approach to creating, using, classifying, and disposing of all Intelligence Community records.
     

  5. Ensure continuity of information services.

    6. In the event of a natural disaster or war causing a catastrophic disruption of network operations, the Intelligence Community must have an overall plan as well as various inter-agency support agreements in place to ensure uninterrupted service across the entire enterprise.
     

  6. Sustain operations through the Year 2000.
Continuity of information services includes, of course, continuity into the next century, i.e., all systems modifications dealing with the "Year 2000" or Y2K problem must be resolved.
  5. Cost-Effectiveness

Goal: Improve cost-effectiveness of Intelligence Community information systems.

Objectives:

  1. Maximize the effectiveness of Community-wide information technology expenditures.

    2. There are a number of ways in which the Intelligence Community can optimize funds expended on information technology. These include efforts to reduce duplication of efforts across the Intelligence Community, requirements to consolidate the Intelligence Community, to better exchange information. The development of "best practices," including joint projects, is also important.
     

  2. Implement the Community's information system "migration" strategy.

    3. The "migration" strategy refers to the process of identifying information systems that are common to all Intelligence Community members and then "migrating" to a single system that effectively addresses a particular area of concern. For example, efforts are underway to designate specific systems for payroll and personnel. Since mission-critical systems are candidates for migration also, this effort will establish a baseline for such systems.
     

  3. Work with federal agencies and industry to leverage "off-the-shelf" solutions.
In addition to reiterating the Intelligence Community commitment to commercial "off-the-shelf" solutions, this objective will require the establishment of a process to leverage work with industry by expressing Intelligence Community requirements with a single voice.
  These five goals and their supporting objectives define what the Intelligence Community wants to accomplish in order to achieve the level of interoperability necessary to become more efficient and "agile." Next, we will look in greater detail at the concept of an "agile intelligence enterprise."

 

Figure 10.1 Photo of Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
 

10.2 The Future World of Intelligence: "Virtual Intelligence"

Intelink, with all of its advantages, is actually only the beginning. One of the primary goals of the US Intelligence Community is an evolution towards what could be termed "Virtual Intelligence." Virtual Intelligence is the distributed "information space" that allows the creation of a tightly woven "Agile Intelligence Enterprise," based on the ability to collaborate, share data, and disseminate information electronically, across the globe, at any time. This concept of an Agile Intelligence Enterprise, which has been deemed as absolutely critical to the nation’s security in the 21st century, is the vision of the current Deputy Director of CIA for Science and Technology, Dr. Ruth A. David. A Stanford University educated electrical engineer and information technology expert, Dr. David came to the CIA from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she most recently was Director of Advanced Information Technologies. "I believe that the Intelligence Community today is at a crossroads of progress: Our choices are evolution or revolution…"
– Dr. Ruth A. David, October 1997
 Like many businesses today, the Intelligence Community is at a crossroads of progress. The issue is how to tackle a long-range strategic problem: meeting the expectations and needs of intelligence customers that require greater speed, flexibility, and capacity. In addition, these expectations and needs must be met within an environment that is constantly changing in order to respond to rapid technology changes, an information explosion, an unstable global political environment, and certainly an era of declining resources. The answer: create a more "agile intelligence enterprise."

10.2.1 What Is Agility?

The concept of agility in an organization is not new. Manufacturing enterprises developed the concept of a leaner, flexible organization to meet changing market requirements in a global competitive environment. Early experts such as Rick Dove, Steven L. Goldman, Roger N. Nagel, and Kenneth Preiss at the Iacocca Institute of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania authored a number of papers and books defining the concept. One notable paper was the 21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy, written by Dove and Nagel in 1991 for an industry-led consortium partially funded by the Department of Defense, which examined US manufacturing and its ability to be competitive in a global marketplace. According to Goldman, Nagel, and Preiss in their follow-on 1995 book entitled, Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations: "For a company, to be agile is to be capable of operating profitably in a competitive environment of continually, and unpredictably, changing customer opportunities…For an individual, to be agile is to be capable of contributing to the bottom line of a company that is constantly reorganizing its human and technological resources in response to unpredictably changing customer opportunities." According to Steve Goldman, "Agility is a name. It’s a name for the reorganization of production, adapted to distinctively new market forces that have undermined the mass production organization of business that previously dominated the 20th century." Goldman says that these new forces include: Goldman continues, "The organization of business in a way that is adapted to these new marketplace forces is what we call agile…The agile enterprise provides solutions to their customers, not just products. It works adaptively, responding to marketplace opportunities by reconfiguring its organization of work, its exploitation of technology, its use of alliances. It engages in intensive collaboration within the company, pulling together all of the resources that are necessary to produce profitable products and services regardless or where they may be distributed. And it forms alliances with suppliers, with customers, and with partnering companies. And finally, it is a knowledge-driven enterprise. The agile company is centered on people and information, not on technology alone, on people using technology in creative ways."

The "Agility Forum" is a leading provider of knowledge, products, and consulting services related to the concept of agility that are designed to strengthen the U.S. economy. The forum has assisted industry, government, education, and other services in the development of strategies to cope with dynamic, often unpredictable global markets. The Agility Forum has held a number of annual conferences to promote strategies for implementing this concept, and offers tools, consulting services, publications, and other education and training services.

 

Figure 10.2 Stovepipe Orientation of Intelligence Community
 

10.2.2 Why Is Agility Necessary for the Intelligence Community?

To begin our discussion on applying the concept of agility to the US Intelligence Community, we need to examine the composition of the various organizations that constitute the intelligence producers, as well as those that make up the community of intelligence users. Like many businesses, the Intelligence Community consists of a number of individual organizations that perform distinct missions, and yet support overlapping sets of customers. These separate organizations contain the discrete operations that collect, process, and exploit the various types of intelligence data. The autonomous nature of these organizations has led many people within the Intelligence Community to refer to them as "stovepipes," which connotes the image of a large number of individual chimneys all heating the same building. Further exacerbating the problem, the very existence of some agencies is "classified information," i.e., a closely guarded state secret. For example, the predecessor organizations of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) date back to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960’s, yet the existence of the NRO was classified information until only a couple of years ago. Other agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, have existed openly for decades.

There are some benefits to having stovepipes: the ability to train and maintain individual specializations, better accountability, and improved security. In spite of these advantages, however, the Intelligence Community has developed separate cultures and artificial barriers that tend to separate the various agencies. For example, the long-time practice of reducing security risks by disseminating information on a "need-to-know" basis – that is, only to those who have been both approved and deemed to actually need the information to perform their job – further exacerbates the problems associated with the stovepipe concept. However, it is not the "need-to-know" principle itself that has caused problems, but the manner in which it is implemented. Previously based almost entirely upon the originator of the information, the approach no longer meets the demands of a dynamic, rapidly changing environment. What is required is an approach that is flexible and more responsive to these constantly changing needs.

Indeed, it is now recognized that these separate stovepipe cultures do not always serve the intelligence users well. For example, each individual customer is generally interested in a slightly different aspect of a particular intelligence topic. Thus a report that satisfies the needs of the State Department may very well miss the mark for the warfighter in Bosnia. Furthermore, at least one of the customers of the Intelligence Community – the US Congress – as well as other "watchdog" organizations within the intelligence hierarchy, may view certain "stovepiped" activities as waste or redundancy. Studies of finished intelligence have shown that, in fact, little truly wasteful duplication exists. However, there appears to be an enormous amount of duplication on the input side, i.e., information gathering, modeling, and organization. Imagery analysts retain various files of information on their images, SIGINT analysts maintain files to help with SIGINT operations, and military analysts keep their own sets of information. Existing in all of the various stovepipes, this can be very wasteful. The Intelligence Community must make every effort to eliminate this duplication, particularly in the new era of fiscally restrained resources.

10.2.3 What is an Agile Intelligence Enterprise?

One could view the Agile Intelligence Enterprise as a conceptual business model useful in formulating and communicating strategies for improving the internal processes that support the information management needs of the US Government. As applied to the US intelligence mission, there are three primary components in Dr. David’s vision of managing information in an agile "Virtual Intelligence" enterprise: an electronic networking infrastructure; self-organizing, continuously forming and disbanding multidisciplinary teams; and shared data – linked, corporate-wide repositories of raw data, information, and finished intelligence. (1) Set of interoperable networks that electronically connect the Intelligence Community

The enabling technology for the Agile Intelligence Enterprise is the collection of global networks, protocols, hardware, and software that electronically connect the various components and customers of the US Intelligence Community. As discussed throughout this book, Intelink serves as a prototype for this electronic infrastructure, allowing personnel in the White House, State Department analysts, generals in the Pentagon, even the warfighters, access to classified information on nearly any subject.

As the Intelligence Community increasingly connects its various intranets and other electronic messaging networks, it becomes more agile. Intelligence requirements can be electronically transmitted immediately across the entire Intelligence Community. Yet, instead of a broadcast call to every single user on the network, these needs can be narrowly disseminated to the specific people with the desired knowledge and expertise. While this takes place today within the various stovepipes, the ability to take advantage of needed expertise across the entire enterprise allows a concentrated, fuller examination of a particular intelligence issue.

Additionally, with properly configured networks, the Intelligence Community has more than just a capability to provide timely notification – it has a mechanism by which intelligence officers may indicate whether or not they can contribute to satisfying a new intelligence requirement. Imagery analysts, for example, could indicate whether or not relevant imagery existed. An NSA SIGINT analyst may be aware of information that may help. A military analyst at DIA might be in the position to coordinate the overall response. In the words of Dr. David, "The notion here is that our geographically – and organizationally – scattered individual experts are in fact the very people best able to judge whether their expertise and responsibilities match the immediate problem that comes to their attention." The overall result is an enterprise-wide effort with a well-defined task and clear understanding of each contributor’s responsibilities.

 (2) Self-organizing, multidisciplinary "virtual teams" This component involves self-organizing teams of intelligence analysts from across the Intelligence Community, which are capable of dynamically forming whenever necessary in order to address the overlapping and ever-changing priorities, problems, and concerns of the various intelligence consumers. These "virtual teams" can take advantage of intelligent software agents and other tools on Intelink and other electronic networks to ensure that the right analysts are chosen for a particular problem. In this model, the experts continue to reside within their own stovepipe, with all of their normal resources at hand, but are able to collaborate with their counterparts in the other stovepipes. Upon completion of the given task, teams would then disband, ready to address the next crisis. Depending on their particular area of expertise, intelligence officers remaining at their own desks, within their own agency, might serve on a number of such "virtual teams" at the same time, providing enhanced capabilities to respond to changing requirements.

Andy Shepard, a senior intelligence officer assigned to the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, has stated that the benefit of self-organizing teams is easiest to illustrate when a high priority intelligence query requires a same-day response. In many of these cases, both the necessary data and the necessary expertise are dispersed over a number of different intelligence agencies. According to Shepard, "The distribution of talent is hard to exploit when deadlines are short." He adds, "It requires time to define the particular requirement, to communicate that need, to seek out the best people, and manage the overall response, including determining the best division of labor among the various team members that are selected." This time can often be measured in hours, or perhaps even days. Although not a problem for previous intelligence requirements that could wait for several days, the future environment will routinely require immediate, same-day responses. To be successful in that new environment, the Intelligence Community will need to form its teams and get them operational immediately, without any delay.

 (3) Shared intelligence data In this third component, intelligence data that has been gathered using the resources of the individual stovepipes becomes a shared asset across the entire Intelligence Community. With these corporate holdings of data (raw and finished intelligence), linked electronically, the Intelligence Community is better postured to take advantage of the collaborative sum of these individual efforts. For example, when an intelligence analyst needs a particular piece of information that is located within his own agency, access to that information is relatively simple, assuming that he is "cleared," i.e., has the proper security clearance for that information. Unfortunately, an item of critical information that is absolutely necessary for that analyst to see in order to fully understand or respond to the requirement is very likely to have been gathered by, and therefore stored at, another intelligence stovepipe or agency. In order to become a true "agile intelligence enterprise," the intelligence users and producers must have access to all necessary information, regardless of where it resides.

Dr. David would be quick to point out that this sharing of data across the intelligence enterprise does not refer to a single unified database, i.e., one large monolithic database. Current databases are not designed to provide the necessary security protections, and the data that reside within these databases have not been placed there with the concept of sharing or distributed access in mind. Instead, she says, "Our future shared information repository will consist of distributed, but connected, archives of data existing at multiple security levels and in many different compartments. These individual compartments can be managed within a common system using advanced information security practices and tools."

The concept of shared data could result in a number of other benefits, including:

· Improved Exploitation of Fragmented Data
Supported by powerful search and collaboration tools, intelligence analysts frequently discover a variety of data related to the intelligence task at hand. Using the concept of "shared data," these related associations could be documented and become part of the "corporate-holdings," thereby providing a set of fragmentary data that is linked and correlated. This fragmentary data could be permanently stored in databases and later accessed by other analysts working similar or related intelligence problems in the future. These databases would become a true "information space," analogous to the JICPAC implementation in Chapter 8, allowing the Intelligence Community as a whole to benefit. This capability to define, build, and then access a robust repository of institutional knowledge, with different types of data applying to different audiences, would greatly increase the agility of the Intelligence Community.
· Collaborative "Just-in-time" Tip-Off
With the increase in shared fragmented data, the Intelligence Community can now develop an improved Collaborative Tip-Off process. The additional data provides an increased ability to recognize potentially important new intelligence. Each individual stovepipe cannot afford to store large volumes of seemingly unusable data. However, as an information space of databases, that data becomes available to the entire Community, which means data that seems unimportant to one component may be discovered to be very important when viewed in the Intelligence Community’s all-source context. And, this information space can be manipulated by a common set of user tools, providing machine translation, or imagery manipulation, or other applicable collaboration or analyst tools. The result is "just-in-time" tip-off resulting from inter-stovepipe collaboration, and a more agile enterprise, better equipped to respond to changing requirements.
· Consumer Access to Stovepipe Data
The Intelligence Community can become more agile if it allows its users – the intelligence consumers – direct access to a view of its "information space," the total holdings of the Intelligence Community. However, providing this capability is quite controversial, as it impacts upon the very core of intelligence production: the "sources and methods" that are used by the individual stovepipes to produce their specialty intelligence. Therefore, proper security is an essential enabler of the vision of an Agile Intelligence Enterprise. In the new "risk management" paradigm under which the US Intelligence Community is operating, it is imperative to strike a balance between information sharing and information protection. For example, some concerns can be satisfied by allowing selected decision-makers to have special, tailored views of the database holdings. Using interest profiles and other techniques, this process could be automated.

10.2.3.1 Information Security Concerns

One of the most significant impediments to the success of this approach is information security. The use of Intelink-like networks, "virtual" teams, and shared data to enhance the speed, flexibility, and capacity of the intelligence production process requires Intelligence Community-wide agreement on a number of security issues. An approach is needed that will allow distributed data holdings that are satisfactorily protected from accidental or deliberate compromise. According to Dr. David, an acceptable level of protection could be accomplished by placing less emphasis on protecting data primarily at the system access point, and instead increasing the level of security of the individual data elements or other pieces of information contained within the data repository. She explains, "The concept is to retain some access control at the system entry points, but to prevent users from gaining automatic access to the contents." When a user discovers – for example, through the use of some sophisticated search tool – the existence of material that is more "sensitive," i.e., has a higher security classification, than their present information holdings (located, perhaps, at another agency), the network must be capable of determining whether or not that person can be granted access. In order to do this, the network needs to have enough information about the user to make its determination: security clearance level, agency affiliation, and other work-related security profiles. In addition, the automated search and collaboration tools need the ability to process data that is potentially classified at a level that is higher than the user may have. This, in turn, requires a set of guidelines, procedures, and policies – acceptable across the Intelligence enterprise – that determine what a user can see.

In order to manage risk properly, especially with the large spectrum of data within the Intelligence Community needing protection, a variety of options must be available in the system. That is, the network system would need to know enough about the data and the users to choose the appropriate rule for protecting more sensitive data. The figure below, provided by Dr. David, depicts different situations that might arise from diverse users scanning vast data repositories across the Intelligence Community.

10.2.3.2 Coordinating Intelligence Community Management

The concept of an "agile intelligence enterprise," supporting electronically networked operations, invoking virtual teams, and sharing corporate holdings across the enterprise is a fundamentally different way of doing business within the US Intelligence Community. The success of this new approach will require innovative management techniques applied in a number of areas, including: · Coordination of Intelligence Community-wide approaches to the resolution of the information security concerns outlined in the previous section

· Management collaboration to produce the necessary mechanisms for network managed user profiles and security clearances

· Development of common approaches to data representation within their own data holdings

· Development of innovative approaches to cope with the cultural issues that derive from decades of separate agencies and stovepipe mindsets

10.2.4 Status: CODA – Implementing the Agile Concept

The Intelligence Community is currently defining and expanding Dr. David’s vision of an Agile Intelligence Enterprise (AIE). Recently formed under the auspices of the Intelligence Community Management Staff, a special Intelligence Community-wide effort known as the "Community Operational Definition of the AIE" (CODA) has been launched. Indeed, CODA is one of several innovative efforts under the direction of Susan M. Gordon, Director of the CIA’s new Office of Advanced Analytical Tools (AAT). Headed by Dr. Paul Shebalin, a senior intelligence analyst and information technology expert, the CODA effort will develop the implementation process for the Intelligence Community’s transition to the electronically connected, agile enterprise of tomorrow.

In accordance with the Intelligence Community’s Information Systems Strategic Plan outlined earlier in this chapter, Dr. Shebalin’s activities are centered around the development of an information model and overarching Community-wide architectural "blueprint" for implementing the Agile Intelligence Enterprise. According to Shebalin, the CODA effort will serve as an "executive agent" for the entire Intelligence Community to:

· Create an Information Model that will describe the Agile Intelligence Enterprise

This information model should describe the set of interoperable networks that electronically connect the Intelligence Community, the self-organizing, multidisciplinary "virtual teams," and the enterprise-wide sharing of raw or fragmentary data and finished intelligence. In addition, the model should provide a framework for collaboration across the enterprise in a protected and secure environment.

The CODA effort is taking advantage of efforts already underway within the Intelligence Community. Building upon a series of working conferences with representatives from across the Intelligence Community held at a remote training facility, CODA is incorporating modeling efforts developed at the Operations Research staff of the National Security Agency in support of the Unified Cryptologic Architecture 2010 (UCA) efforts described in Chapter 3.

· Develop an information technology architecture for the Intelligence Community

The architecture will specify how shared, Intelligence Community-wide information technology systems will be acquired and maintained in the future. As in the development of the information model, this effort will be coordinated with the Intelligence Community’s UCA effort under the direction of Paul Newland, helping to ensure an effective integration of all applicable systems.

· Promote Intelligence Community prototyping of the Agile Intelligence Enterprise

CODA is promoting a series of operational, "proof-of-concept" prototypes that will enhance the definition of an Agile Intelligence Enterprise, and facilitate the implementation of this new concept. Clearly, Intelink has launched this effort, but these new prototypes would build upon the existing "virtual intelligence" environment established by Intelink, as well as the concept of an SGML-based "information space" implemented at JICPAC (detailed in Chapter 8). Early planned prototyping examples include projects oriented towards the policy-maker, the warfighter, and the intelligence analyst.

 According to Avis Boutell, CIA information management expert and former chair of the Intelligence Community’s Electronic Publishing Board, "The CODA efforts will be guided by an external Steering Group, and supported by various Intelligence Community Working Groups, representing all stakeholders." The CODA effort will leverage the efforts already underway at a number of individual intelligence agencies, enabling the Intelligence Community to fully exploit the tremendous potential of information technology, leading to a true "agile intelligence enterprise" for the future.

10.3 Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture

There are related efforts underway to ensure that the information management challenges of the US Intelligence Community are met. One of the most significant efforts, in terms of scope, resources, and overall potential for change, is the Defense Intelligence Agency led effort known as the Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture (JIVA). Specifically tasked with improving the Department of Defense intelligence agencies, JIVA’s objective is to modernize defense-related intelligence analytical processes and methodologies, and so its focus is on delivery of information to the warfighter. Nevertheless, this effort is addressing the same set of issues, challenges, and even technologies that the Intelligence Community is confronted with as a whole as it moves towards the Agile Intelligence Enterprise of the future.

Specifically, the JIVA Program will provide the Intelligence Community’s "all-source" intelligence workforce with the necessary set of tools, capabilities, and training to cope with the technology-driven, information-rich intelligence environment of the next millenium. According to the JIVA Strategic Plan, written by the JIVA Integration Management Office (JIMO):

"The ability of the Defense Intelligence Community to satisfy consumer information requirements, particularly those of the warfighters, hinges on how well the Community manages knowledge bases, as well as develops and maintains robust and effective analytical capabilities. The Community must invest in key technologies and approaches that are critical to all-source intelligence production; employ technology to leverage the productivity of widely dispersed analysts; and enhance the speed and efficiency of processing and dissemination. Doing this requires planning, programming, and budgeting for new opportunities afforded by the emerging and evolving technologies." According to Chris Demme, Deputy Director of the JIMO, JIVA plans to accomplish this by, "integrating existing defense-related intelligence information systems, providing sophisticated tools and training for the analyst, enhance information sharing with state-of-the-art collaboration tools, and improving the quality of intelligence electronic distribution of finished intelligence that is specifically tailored to the requirements of the user."
 
 
Figure 10.3 The Need for a Distributed Networked Organization
 

10.3.1 JIVA Objectives

The concept of JIVA will provide the battlefield commander with what today’s warfighter calls "dominant battlespace knowledge," or the concept of information superiority as we discussed earlier. The notion of "virtual teams," a major component of Dr. David’s vision of an Agile Intelligence Enterprise, is also a key element of JIVA. The idea is to foster partnerships among intelligence agencies through the creation of these electronic teams, which can tackle analytical problems concurrently. With an overall goal of creating a "new intelligence environment for the 21st century," the specific goals of JIVA, as articulated in the JIVA Strategic Plan, include:
  1. Improving the quality of analysis, and utility of the substance of intelligence products

    2. This objective includes the selection of advanced analytical, collaborative, and decision support tools, cognitive aids, and tools to aid search and retrieval of data from shared heterogeneous databases. It involves the transition to a concept that JIMO calls "knowledge base" which includes: Intelligence Community-wide expertise and requirements registry systems, data warehouse capabilities, and storage for modeling and simulation results. To enhance this objective, JIVA plans to leverage expertise and key efforts at the CIA and NSA as well as other intelligence elements, including on-going initiatives at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
     

  2. Providing specific and tailored intelligence to enhance the warfighter’s ability to visualize the data and ensure total operational awareness

    3. JIVA plans to accomplish this objective by deploying advanced, DoD standards-compliant workstations powerful enough to handle the dissemination and collaboration tools suite – including modeling and simulation tools – and other operational requirements of the future. This objective includes optimizing analytical training delivery, leading to the concept of a "virtual university."
     

  3. Improving the throughput and speed of delivery of intelligence

    4. JIVA will identify and evaluate customer information requirements and establish the resulting future communications needs of the Department of Defense intelligence agencies. This objective also includes identifying new techniques for the production and dissemination of finished intelligence in the new "virtual intelligence" environment.
     

  4. Reducing or eliminating unnecessary redundancy

    5. Using state-of-the-art mass storage devices, JIVA plans to use advanced data mining techniques and other tools to accomplish this objective. The objective also involves the creation of a networked organization capable of providing near real-time battlespace assessments, and exertion of influence over DoD intelligence budget deliberations.
     

  5. Strengthening management and ensuring the existence of the necessary policies, procedures, and training to assist in operating the new information environment

    6. This objective includes exploring and partnering with both private industry and academia to develop advanced virtual environment concepts. It also includes understanding the current culture of the Intelligence Community’s intelligence production process. This is considered by many to be absolutely critical to success.
     

  6. Establishing and integrating standards for commonality, interoperability, and modernization

    7. Strategic alliances will be formed within the Intelligence Community and related standards bodies. JIVA standards will be developed, implemented, and consistently enforced through the budget, acquisition, and other decision processes.
     

  7. Exploring leading-edge technology for future integration
To accomplish this objective, JIVA plans to leverage expertise across the Intelligence Community as well as academia and the private sector. JIVA will support and participate in the development of new "proof-of-concept" prototyping activities such as CODA, while identifying new technology with a high potential for use within the JIVA environment.

10.3.2 JIVA Focus Areas

JIVA is concentrating its efforts in three areas, providing the framework and resources to improve the analysis, production, training, automation, and other support infrastructures necessary to meet the overall JIVA goal of a new defense-related intelligence operating environment for the 21st century. The three focus areas of the JIVA effort are to improve:

· Analytical and Production Processes

As we have discussed throughout this book, declining resources have resulted in fewer Intelligence Community analysts who must collect, process, and disseminate a tremendously increased volume of information. This focus area will address the development and implementation of cognitive, or "knowledge-based" tools, which are necessary to allow the analyst to sort, identify, and verify the validity of information. This area will also address the development and implementation of the necessary tools to support effective collaboration. The idea is to make the entire intelligence production cycle more meaningful and timely. Thus these tools will concentrate on information visualization tools, and other products that will assist in the presentation, analysis, fusion, and dissemination of finished intelligence. The collaboration enhancement process will involve the same types of high-bandwidth applications that were discussed in Chapter 6 such as "whiteboarding," advanced video teleconferencing, and image manipulation. · Defense Intelligence Training JIVA will use new and emerging training technologies to ensure that intelligence analysts have the necessary expertise to operate within the new "virtual intelligence" environment. They will include self-paced computer-based training (CBT) techniques, computer assisted instruction (CAI), the concept of "distance learning" or "virtual university," and, of course, conventional instructor-based training. JIVA will also examine "Audiographics," a learning technique that employs video-based graphics with an instructor’s voice, delivered to remote sites electronically. All distributed training will focus on electronic delivery mechanisms such as Intelink and the global Internet. · Defense Intelligence Infrastructure The "Defense Intelligence Infrastructure" refers primarily to the eight intelligence agencies that fall directly under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Defense. This third focus area, in which much work has already been accomplished, involves the refurbishing of the hardware and other components necessary to accomplish the defense intelligence mission. Capital replacement programs, based on JIVA funding, have significantly enhanced defense intelligence capabilities. The next step – beyond the current capital replacement – will address communications and networking hardware that are necessary to operate in the future world of "virtual intelligence." JIVA must develop a responsive, "recapitalization" program, keyed to the rapid pace of the technology change cycle, in order to always stay ahead of technology obsolescence.

 

 
Figure 10.4 JIVA Focus Areas
 

10.3.3 JIVA Implementation

It should be clear that the goals of JIVA – for the Defense Intelligence Community – are similar to the goals of CODA, an Agile Intelligence Enterprise for the entire Intelligence Community. In both programs, providing a new world of what could be called "virtual intelligence," for the production and dissemination of this nation’s finished intelligence, requires a mechanism that will break down "stovepipe" barriers and associated cultures. This mechanism cuts across organizational boundaries with innovative technology in order to improve operations, increase efficiency and effectiveness, while reducing unneeded redundancy. For JIVA, this mechanism will be implemented in a two-phase approach: · Phase I: Near-Term Goals (1996-2001) This phase has begun, focusing on capital equipment replacement as mentioned above, as well as a number of parallel activities including prototyping of various collaboration capabilities, implementing new training strategies, and the initiation of improved management techniques. This phase also includes the actual fielding an initial set of specific JIVA collaboration capabilities and other mission-critical applications designed to support the new virtual production environment.
  · Phase II: Long-Term Goals (2002-2007) In this phase, JIVA plans to concentrate its efforts on the acquisition of new techniques, by leveraging technology to a number of mission-critical intelligence processes. In addition, JIVA plans to continue its "recapitalization" of information-related equipment – both hardware and software – throughout the Defense Intelligence Community. As in the CODA project, JIVA looks to a senior level Steering Group consisting of Intelligence Community leaders (as well as numerous working groups) for policy, guidance, and support.
 
Figure 10.5 Future JIVA Operational Environment
 

10.4 Challenge for the Intelligence Community

Many of the basic assumptions of intelligence have drastically changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Prior to that time, the free world was faced with a Soviet nuclear threat masked behind the Iron Curtain of Warsaw Pact allies. The US strategy was one of certainty – total and complete risk avoidance – with respect to Soviet capabilities and intentions. Today, rather than a single and primary intelligence goal (namely the Soviet Union – containment of Communism), there is a proliferation of potential intelligence areas of interest. The US must deal with a diverse set of national security interests and focus on risk management over risk avoidance. In this post-Cold War era, the primary concerns are topics such as international terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, economic intelligence, and drug trafficking.

In addition to these new interests, the US Intelligence Community finds a much more complex and ever-changing set of customers or authorized users of intelligence within the government. As the mission and functions of the various customer agencies expand, so does their need for intelligence to support those functions. The challenge, then, is to provide intelligence users the benefit of the totality of the distributed knowledge of the entire Intelligence Community, i.e., to leverage all of the information available when providing a response to a customer. That means they must take advantage of all of the information in all of the individual stovepipes; and they must do this cheaper, and faster. As shown in this book, an intranet – namely Intelink – that services the Intelligence Community and its customers is the first step towards providing this needed functionality. Yet, the Intelligence Community must not be content with their past successes such as those exemplified by ONI and JICPAC (Chapter 8). Rather, they must continue to evolve into a fully "Agile Intelligence Enterprise," through implementation projects such as CODA and JIVA, if the United States is to be capable of dealing with the intelligence problems it will face in the next millenium.

10.5 How Does This Relate to Business?

The primary example used in the book was Intelink, the classified, world-wide intranet for the US Intelligence Community which addresses one of the world's largest data management problems, involving demanding requirements that are at the extreme of what normal enterprises require. Intelink, which is used for electronic publishing and distribution of intelligence reports, analytical research, collaboration facilities, and training, has become the Information Management Improvement Model of the Intelligence Community.

It can be very useful to assess what the Intelink experiences might mean to other government entities and to the private sector. Indeed, examining the approach taken by the US Intelligence Community to help solve its own information management challenges can frequently be applied directly by the business leaders of today to their own enterprises. To facilitate this, we summarize a number of the overall lessons or conclusions relating to information management that a business enterprise might apply to its own environment. For example:

· Intranet Technology is Profound

Not since the advent of the personal computer has a new business tool had such a profound effect on all facets of business. Business enterprises that effectively leverage the global Internet and its related technologies such as intranets and extranets will reap competitive benefits well into the next millennium. The Intelligence Community’s information management model consisting of global Internet technologies, an "information space" of shared data that is managed across an "agile" enterprise, is directly applicable to business enterprises, large and small. · Top Management Support is Necessary The Intelligence Community experiences clearly show that success is dependent upon senior management support, forward thinking involving careful planning, leadership throughout the implementation process, and sufficient resources. Proper attention and support by upper management early on will reduce the likelihood of unanticipated surprises in the future. · Security is Critical to the Business Enterprise The culture of the global Internet is very open, and this frequently extends to intranet implementations. However, it is extremely important to balance the advantages of openness with the corporate needs of secure business information. Ranging from protection of basic customer information such as a credit card number to corporate liability to company trade secrets, security is as important to the business environment as it is to the Intelligence Community. Indeed, they both have the same fundamental reason for security: protect information from unintended access. The lessons learned from the security experiences of the US Intelligence Community can be directly applied to the business enterprise.

· Standards Must be Used

The individuals who are responsible for providing information technology and solutions within a company must recognize the critical nature of decisions involving the use of standards. They must prevent "locking" the company into a single vendor or proprietary standard without extensive discussions with the people affected by such a decision. The use of information technology standards, and commercial products that are compliant with these standards, provides a business enterprise with the most promise for eliminating system redundancies and incompatibilities, and reducing overall costs.

 · Training Must be a Major Focus Whether you rely on business and community colleges, technical schools, and universities, or extensive in-house training programs, training must be a major focus in acquiring the necessary skills to optimize the use of intranet, web, and other related information technologies. The sheer number of applications and technologies has added another layer of complexity to the diverse set of challenges facing most business enterprises. The experiences of the success stories cited earlier in this book, as well as the emphasis that has been placed on training by the Intelink Management Office and the new JIVA program demonstrate the commitment that the Intelligence Community has placed on training – a commitment that is directly applicable to the business enterprise. The global Internet, intranets, extranets, and web technologies are now at the forefront of the information technology industry, and have had a profound impact on the cultural and economic institutions of the world. Their impact on the business enterprise cannot be stressed enough. Over the next decade, this technology will continue to change the very core and structure of entire industries including the manner in which companies compete. Responding to these profound changes, business enterprises must adapt – or risk losing competitiveness and perhaps even cease to exist.