Embracing analytics: A path forward for the intelligence community
The intelligence community needs to revamp its approach to analytics — and that means creating an analytics strategy that will change the status quo. The challenges facing analysts are consistent throughout the strategic, operational and tactical levels of intelligence operations. The intelligence cycle (see diagram below) is a great teaching tool, but in practice cohesion throughout the process is extremely problematic.
Often times the Priority Intelligence Requirements that come out of the Planning and Direction phase seem cookie cutter and are so high level that it’s difficult to measure impact.
Intelligence Requirements and Essential Elements of Information allow for more specific information to be captured through the monitoring of Indicators and Warnings, but how well can we, and are we, tracking the progress of answering these requirements?
How accurately can we assess if the Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs) being tracked at the tactical level have any impact at the operational or strategic levels and vice versa? We list our PIRs on a PowerPoint slide and brief leadership on where things stand without cognizance of how others are briefing the status of similar or related PIRs to their leadership.
How does that PowerPoint slide actually show impact in a way that influences the intelligence cycle and real world operations? It doesn’t. It’s a slide with information that rarely finds purpose — and that must change.
A significant amount of money goes into the Collections phase and rightfully so. Organizations have used both Common Operating Pictures (COPs) and Common Intelligence Pictures (CIPs) to track collections assets, but where does the analytics behind the information collected feed into those COPs and CIPs? It generally doesn’t. I would argue that we have yet to execute a true CIP because we have failed to integrate the depth and breadth of analytics in a way that presents a comprehensive picture of our intelligence efforts.
Collections and Processing and Exploitation are the phases I like to refer to as the science of intelligence. This is where the intelligence disciplines sit, and there’s a lot of technical expertise and procedures that go into understanding how to deploy assets and decipher the data collected.
Both of these require expertise in one particular area – a silo, if you will. You wouldn’t have an analyst trained in geospatial intelligence serve as a signals intelligence analyst because each field requires training, expertise and understanding of the given intelligence discipline. The silos of information should be broken down in the next phase of Analysis and Production, but often times organizational and technological barriers exist that make intelligence fusion difficult.
If the science of intelligence happens during Processing and Exploitation, then the art happens during Analysis and Production. This is where everything is supposed to come together to provide a higher level understanding.
But how do we really analyze? We have long used IPB/IPOE (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace/Operational Environment) as a manual guideline to prepare briefings. We incorporated the ASCOPE and PMESII frameworks (see chart below) to monitor topics that were key factors in monitoring activities within counterinsurgency environments. But we have yet to meaningfully progress beyond categorizing information to capturing a true strategy for analyzing and providing a deeper understanding of the battlespace.
