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Building Bridges with the U.S. Intelligence Community - O'Rei...

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Saved by 2 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-04-23


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About three weeks before the start of the Russia-Georgia war last August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a directive entitled “Analytic Outreach”. In it, DNI McConnell authorized members of the 16 agencies that comprise the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to reach out to people outside the IC, “to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information.”

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Imagine how happy I was six months later to hear about a formalized and much easier way to bring outside expertise into the IC thanks to the dedicated efforts of a few intelligence professionals and the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis. Appropriately enough, this project is named BRIDGE.

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Since BRIDGE is Dan's brainchild, I've asked him to convey its purpose and function:

BRIDGE is designed to enable crowd-sourcing of intelligence applications--following the iPhone AppStore model--by providing a low barrier-to-entry platform to stimulate innovation and enable analysts to discover next generation capabilities that have value to their mission.

BRIDGE takes the Wiki model which enabled end users to easily contribute textual content en masse, and extends it to technology providers, enabling them to contribute technologies that enhance the intelligence mission in a matter of days. It is important to emphasize BRIDGE is not a Web2.0 tool, it is a low barrier to entry environment where promising Web2.0 tools can be placed - and analysts can use them to uncover their value prior to acquisition.

Since BRIDGE exposes key web services that emulate the mission environment, promising tools can be plucked from BRIDGE and quickly integrated into classified environments. This enables providers to develop against these endpoints in an unclassified setting, get feedback from users enabling shorter development spirals, mash-up new combinations of services, and dramatically reduce the time it takes to transition software to the mission setting. BRIDGE uses a "perpetual beta" model giving users an EARLY look at technologies--and a chance to provide feedback while they are still maturing.

Another unique characteristic of BRIDGE is that it provides an environment for Analytic Outreach--a place where IC analysts can reach out to expertise elsewhere in federal, state, and local government, in academia, and industry. New communities of interest can form quickly in BRIDGE through the “web of trust” access control model--access to minds outside the intelligence community creates an analytic force multiplier.

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I just decided to act on my own and launched an Open Source Intelligence gathering effort called Project Grey Goose, which brought together an eclectic mix of hackers, spooks, and techies from inside and outside the Intelligence Community.

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Here are three of the six applications currently in use on BRIDGE. Dan tells me that dozens more are on the way.

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Collaborative Analysis of Competing Hypotheses

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Hot Grinds
  • HotGrinds serves as an evidence-based structured discourse forum at the crossroads of a wiki, a collaboration platform and social network
  • Semantic search, expertise identification, and management overviews of debate provide greater collective awareness and enhanced collaboration

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Visually Structured Analytic Software

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In addition to being a development sandbox, BRIDGE also allows intelligence analysts to interact with outside experts whether they be in industry, academia, or other government agencies at the Federal, State, Local or Tribal level. Alternative analysis has long been a recommended approach to avoid myopic thinking by specialists. BRIDGE provides a platform for debating alternative viewpoints and comparing evidence across agencies, specialties, and borders of all kinds.

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One of the new applications coming up will be a Web-based version of Palantir Technologies' Analytic Platform

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BRIDGE is designed to enable crowd-sourcing of intelligence applications--following the iPhone AppStore model--by providing a low barrier-to-entry platform to stimulate innovation and enable analysts to discover next generation capabilities that have value to their mission.

Highlighted by cristode

BRIDGE takes the Wiki model which enabled end users to easily contribute textual content en masse, and extends it to technology providers, enabling them to contribute technologies that enhance the intelligence mission in a matter of days.

Highlighted by cristode

Another unique characteristic of BRIDGE is that it provides an environment for Analytic Outreach--a place where IC analysts can reach out to expertise elsewhere in federal, state, and local government, in academia, and industry. New communities of interest can form quickly in BRIDGE through the “web of trust” access control model--access to minds outside the intelligence community creates an analytic force multiplier.

Highlighted by cristode

Here are three of the six applications currently in use on BRIDGE.

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Collaborative Analysis of Competing Hypotheses
  • Web-based Analysis of Competing Hypotheses enables analysts to gather evidence collaboratively and think more critically about the plausible scenarios, mitigating bias
  • Collaborative views enable analysts to hone in on differences, making debate more constructive and encouraging deeper reasoning

Highlighted by cristode

Hot Grinds
  • HotGrinds serves as an evidence-based structured discourse forum at the crossroads of a wiki, a collaboration platform and social network
  • Semantic search, expertise identification, and management overviews of debate provide greater collective awareness and enhanced collaboration

Highlighted by cristode

Visually Structured Analytic Software
  • Organize ideas from many sources and many analysts into 2D conversation maps, significantly improving efficiency and situational awareness.
  • Identify the strongest evidence on all sides of an issue by tracking individual user credibility and the wisdom of the crowd

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