The intelligence community must embrace full integration across multiple agencies and departments in order to best satisfy national security requirements, ESRI’s director for national security business development has proclaimed.
Speaking to MT at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) conference in London on 20 January, John Day described how a more integrated approach would enable a better understanding of national security threats, both domestically and internationally.
Referring to recent events in Ukraine, the Horn of Africa and humanitarian aid/disaster relief around the world, Day said: “The ability of security organisations is critical to understanding the terrain and environment and national security requires multi-jurisdiction and multi-agency undertakings and this is much bigger than expeditionary warfare on its own.”
According to Day, requirements now demand calls for a “framework of shared situation awareness and unity of action,” explaining: “There is an abundance of multiple ISR assets [in the contemporary operating environment] but they are not integrated. So we need an integrated framework to bring those sensors into a common environment with sufficient fidelity to support tactical operations.”
As an example, Day highlighted the US Army’s DCGS-A programme which sees topographic engineers; imagery analysts; HUMINT intelligence collectors; EW and SIGINT analysts; cyber analyst; and signals collector analyst; all reporting to an all-source intelligence analyst.
“This is how to break down the ‘ints’”, Day proclaimed. However, he added that information must be shared at “machine-speed” as opposed to “human-speed.”
“We need to combine the intelligence, integrate technology early, fuse classified and open-source intelligence and share information as fast as possible,” he continued.
Referring to Web-based Geospatial Intelligence Systems (GIS) such as ESRI’s ArcGIS, Day described how standard Defense Mapping material could now be integrated with vehicle locations, imagery, news feeds and social media into a single application.
Describing this as ‘Geo-enrichment’, he said: “Through open sources globally, we have more information available to us and we can enrich information before we analyse it.”
However, he warned that the idea of processing, exploiting and disseminating (PED) of data was now obsolete with modern processes allowing operators to process information at any particular time they required rather than trawling through fields of data after it had been collected.
Furthermore, he said intelligence would no longer remain focused on forensic analysis but would now also incorporate predictive analysis, again following the enrichment of data before exploitation.
“By integrating multi-intelligence data and bringing it into a common environment, we are bringing those people together and collapsing those internal organisations and stovepipes. We need to get out of the mentality where we are self-serving and have an intelligence community which not only serves ourselves but also our ultimate customers. Intelligence can be transformed for the entire National Security,” Day concluded.
Speaking to MT at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) conference in London on 20 January, John Day described how a more integrated approach would enable a better understanding of national security threats, both domestically and internationally.
Referring to recent events in Ukraine, the Horn of Africa and humanitarian aid/disaster relief around the world, Day said: “The ability of security organisations is critical to understanding the terrain and environment and national security requires multi-jurisdiction and multi-agency undertakings and this is much bigger than expeditionary warfare on its own.”
According to Day, requirements now demand calls for a “framework of shared situation awareness and unity of action,” explaining: “There is an abundance of multiple ISR assets [in the contemporary operating environment] but they are not integrated. So we need an integrated framework to bring those sensors into a common environment with sufficient fidelity to support tactical operations.”
As an example, Day highlighted the US Army’s DCGS-A programme which sees topographic engineers; imagery analysts; HUMINT intelligence collectors; EW and SIGINT analysts; cyber analyst; and signals collector analyst; all reporting to an all-source intelligence analyst.
“This is how to break down the ‘ints’”, Day proclaimed. However, he added that information must be shared at “machine-speed” as opposed to “human-speed.”
“We need to combine the intelligence, integrate technology early, fuse classified and open-source intelligence and share information as fast as possible,” he continued.
Referring to Web-based Geospatial Intelligence Systems (GIS) such as ESRI’s ArcGIS, Day described how standard Defense Mapping material could now be integrated with vehicle locations, imagery, news feeds and social media into a single application.
Describing this as ‘Geo-enrichment’, he said: “Through open sources globally, we have more information available to us and we can enrich information before we analyse it.”
However, he warned that the idea of processing, exploiting and disseminating (PED) of data was now obsolete with modern processes allowing operators to process information at any particular time they required rather than trawling through fields of data after it had been collected.
Furthermore, he said intelligence would no longer remain focused on forensic analysis but would now also incorporate predictive analysis, again following the enrichment of data before exploitation.
“By integrating multi-intelligence data and bringing it into a common environment, we are bringing those people together and collapsing those internal organisations and stovepipes. We need to get out of the mentality where we are self-serving and have an intelligence community which not only serves ourselves but also our ultimate customers. Intelligence can be transformed for the entire National Security,” Day concluded.
Andrew White
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