New standards coming for open source analysts

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The Open Source Center in the Office of the Director for National Intelligence has been around for three years. But at that time it was created, the center focused on showing intelligence analysts the value of open source information.

Now in the next step of the open source evolution, the National Open Source Committee, which oversees all open source collection rules of the 16 intelligence community, has developed four goals to make this type of information easier to use and gather.

Doug Naquin, director of the Open Source Center and chairman of the committee, says the new goals have come about because of the need for a more specific strategic plan laying out what can be accomplished over the next 12-to-18 months.

“What is the sweet spot we need to focus on?” Naquin says on what the goals are trying to answer.

The committee, and some non-national intelligence members, including the FBI and the Homeland Security Department, agreed upon four goals:

• Universal Domain Access, which is information sharing to make the use of open source data a priority;
• Integrated mission management, which is ensuring open source intelligence is a part of all intelligence gathering;
• Governance, which focuses on not so much telling people what to do, but facilitating discussions and communications around the benefits and value of open source;
• Building open source expertise in the community.

The committee already has plans for how they will build expertise in open source analysis.

Naquin says the community will change performance standards that will require analysts to demonstrate certain skills.

“In the past, we focused on librarian or geospatial or linguist skills, but now that is not enough,” Naquin says. “We are finding as a result of new media that it is not just the content we are looking at, but how people interact. And that requires new and different skills.”

Naquin says the new standards likely will be in place after Jan. 1 in order to give analysts time to meet the new requirements.

“We are adding methodology or operations training and collections management so in a crisis we know who is collecting what,” he says. “A lot more technical skills are required as well.”

To get to GS-13 level, the analysts will be expected to have served in other components, and understand collections management and several aspects of open source.

Naquin says the intelligence community is focusing more on a team based approach and much less on the oral analysts to solve problems.

“What we are doing is trying to encourage specialization, but a broad enough general outlook to know that my colleague up the hall can do that,” he says, “So we are getting much less component based and must more skills based.”

Naquin adds that the committee does not yet have a clear path on how to accomplish the other goals. There will be working groups set up to “get into the fine print” of what each of them means, he says.

“Open source is as reliable as any other intelligence,” Naquin says. “It is vetted, and its foundation is source analysis.”

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On the Web:

Congressional Research Service – Open Source Intelligence: Issues for Congress (pdf)

FederalNewsRadio – Intelligence agencies leaning more heavily on open source data

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