At the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) I ran across: Cloud Computing: Risks, Benefits, and Mission Enhancement for the Intelligence Community, which I thought might be of interest.
The document is important to learn the “lingo” that is being used to describe cloud computing in the intelligence community.
And to understand the grave misunderstandings of cloud computing in the intelligence community.
At page 7 you will find:
Within the IC, information is often the decisive discriminator. Studies of recent mission failures found that many were caused by:
- The compartmentalization of information in data silos;
- Weaknesses of the human-based document exploitation process; and
- A reliance on “operationally proven” processes and filters typically used to address the lack of computational power or decision time.8
In most of these cases, the critical piece of information necessary for mission success was already possessed. The failure was not in obtaining the information but in locating and applying it to the mission. Cloud computing can address such issues, as well as enabling multi-use intelligence. Cloud solutions can now be used to work on all of the data, all of the time. With the ability to leverage the power of a supercomputer at will, critical decision timelines can now be more easily met. (Emphasis added)
Hard to make that many mistakes in one passage, short of misspelling one’s own name.
Cloud computing cannot address the sharing of intelligence, or as the document says: “…work on all of the data, all of the time.” That is a utter and complete falsehood.
Intelligence sharing is possible with cloud computing, just as it is with file folders with sticky labels. But the mechanism of sharing has not, cannot, and will not enable the sharing of intelligence or data in the intelligence community.
To say otherwise is to ignore the realities that produced the current culture of not sharing intelligence and data.
Sharing data and intelligence can only be accomplished by creating cultures, habits, social mechanisms that reward and promote the sharing of data and intelligence. Some of those can be represented or facilitated in information systems but it will be people who authorize, create and reward the use of those mechanisms.
So long as the NSA views the CIA (to just pick two agencies at random) as a leaky sieve, its staff are not going to take responsibility for initiating the sharing of information. Or even responding favorably to requests for information. You can pick any other pairing and get the same result.
Developing incentives and ridding the relevant agencies of people who aren’t incentivized to share, will go much further to promote the sharing of intelligence than any particular technology solution.
If you start to pitch a topic map solution in the intelligence community, I would mention sharing but also that without incentives they won’t be making the highest and best use of your topic map solution.