Intelligence collection management

Intelligence collection management is the process of managing and organizing the collection of intelligence from various sources. The collection department of an intelligence organization may attempt basic validation of what it collects, but is not supposed to analyze its significance. The difference between validation and analysis is argued in the U.S. intelligence community, where the National Security Agency may (in the opinion of the Central Intelligence Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency) try to interpret information when such interpretation is the job of another agency.

Disciplines which postprocess raw data more than collect it are:

At the director level and within the collection organization (depending on the intelligence service), collection guidance assigns collection to one or more source managers who may order reconnaissance missions, budget for agent recruitment or both.

This may be an auction for resources, and there is joint UK-US research on applying more formal methods. One method is "semantic matchmaking" based on ontology, originally a field of philosophy but finding applications in intelligent searching. Researchers match missions to the capabilities of available resources, defining ontology as "a set of logical axioms designed to account for the intended meaning of a vocabulary." The requester is asked, "What are the requirements of a mission?" These include the type of data to be collected (distinct from the collection method), the priority of the request and the need for secrecy in collection.

Collection system managers are asked to specify the capabilities of their assets. Preece's ontology focuses on ISTAR sensors, but also considers HUMINT, OSINT and possible methodologies. The intelligence model compares "the specification of a mission against the specification of available assets, to assess the utility or fitness for purpose of available assets; based on these assessments, obtain a set of recommended assets for the mission: either decide whether there is a solution—a single asset or combination of assets—that satisfies the requirements of the mission, or alternatively provide a ranking of solutions according to their relative degree of utility."

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