Intell Definition

From Sources and Methods:

Summary:

• There is no standard definition of “intelligence”. Popular thinking and the best efforts of legislatures, agencies and academics to the contrary, no generally agreed upon definition of intelligence exists. This problem is exacerbated when the newly formed intelligence communities in law enforcement and the private sector are included.

The Pentagon’s ‘Minerva Initiative’

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced the first Minerva Research Initiative awards, which will fund social science research on key strategic issues.

Seven projects were selected out of a total of 211 proposals. The Pentagon will commit a total of up to $50 million to those research efforts. (Source: Danger Room)

About KPI in Public Organizations

This article in Information Week discusses an innovative idea by the State Department to use Business Intelligence software to establish key performance indicators for the effectiveness of its public diplomacy efforts.  (Source: IntelFusion)

Data Visualization

First – Sources and Methods

John Stasko and the computer scientists at the Information Interfaces Lab at Georgia Tech may not have found the Holy Grail of visual analysis but they have come pretty darn close with their Jigsaw product.

This extraordinary visualization tool automatically extracts entities (names, places, dates, etc.) fromplain text documents. Then, it automatically creates a visualization of the relationships between those entities and the documents containing them. The screenshots below do not do it justice (I hope to have a video of the product in action within a couple of days, though).

The program is fully customizable so you can add or delete data, designate entities or create relationships to modify what the automatic entity extractors come up with.

The real power of the tool comes into play after the data is in the program. You can play with it in a variety of powerful and interesting ways all accessible through a drop dead easy user interface.

The software is continuously improving. On the horizon is the ability to use web input and there is a long analyst generated to-do list that the grad students at GA Tech are cranking through one at a time.

The software runs on a desktop and was developed with a DHS grant so government and academics should reach out to John for a test copy. GA Tech is also home of the Visual Analytics Digital Libraryand well worth checking out.

From a visual analysis conference sponsored by the National Visualization And Analytics Center

Second – Sources and Methods

Yesterday, I posted my initial reaction to an extraordinary piece of software called Jigsaw I saw demo-ed during my visit to GA Tech for the Workshop on Visual Analytics Education sponsored by NVAC. Today, John Stasko and his team uploaded a video of the software in action that is a must-see.

I understand the video is a little old so some of the functions I saw are not in this video. The good thing about John and his band of software wizards, though, is that they are constantly improving the product. 

 

Cyber News in December

These are some cyber news I must read:  from IntelFusion : Cyber Archive / from IntelliBriefs: Evolving Cybersecurity Faces a New Dawn

Intell Analysis Methods

An interesting approach of intell analysis methods on Sources and Methods :

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: What Makes A Good Method?
Part 3: Bayesian Analysis (#5)
Part 4: Intelligence Preparation Of The Battlefield/Environment (#4)
Part 5: Social Network Analysis (#3)
Part 6: Multi-Criteria Decision Making Matrices/Multi-Criteria Intelligence Matrices (#2)