An Analyst-Centric Approach to Supporting Integrated Intelligence Production

ABSTRACT: Today"s intelligence analysts are faced with the ever-growing challenge of integrating multiple, disparate data sets into clear, coherent, and actionable products to support a variety of customer needs. Emerging technologies continue to provide analysts with expanded data resources with the expectation that both efficiency and quality of the resultant integrated products will improve. Unfortunately, even when the potential for overload is recognized, analyst-aiding technologies and measures of effectiveness typically ignore the cognitive demands they need to reflect. To address this issue, we will apply recent advances in macrocognitive theory to develop and conduct a multi-faceted analysis of the cognitive demands associated with the development of integrated intelligence products. We will employ a combination of recently developed envisioned world, simulation interview techniques along with novel, macrocognitive elicitation techniques to identify the cognitive demands associated with effective integration. We will also develop candidate effectiveness measures that truly reflect those demands. These findings will directly inform enhancements to existing technologies within multiple intelligence cells at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center as well as the development of novel proof-of-concept analyst-aiding technologies. These technologies will be vetted with the operational community at the end of Phase I, and then fully-developed in Phase II. BENEFIT: Technologies developed under this effort will directly support DMS NASIC, 178th Intelligence Squadron, U.S. Border Patrol, and other government intelligence analysts in exploiting massive, diverse data sets to develop integrated products tailored to customer requirements. The research methodologies and results will inform future R & D initiatives and will provide an analyst-centric foundation to developing future aiding technologies.