Concurrent Breakout Sessions 9 Breakout Sessions 12

Crucial Partners for Enhanced Information Gathering and Analysis

While it is commonly accepted that security, confidentiality and exclusivity are essential pillars of the intelligence field, some degree of openness and receptiveness can actually benefit the intelligence community. Realistically, not every skill and ability can be secured internally within intelligence agencies. The number of times that outside experts from academic circles, businesses and scientific communities have been called upon to provide opinions and recommendations during intelligence operations plainly supports this argument. Hence, the intelligence community should encourage much wider participation of other specialists to assist in enhancing the institution’s data collection and organization procedures. Such skills as creative and critical thinking, ingenuity and innovativeness that many scientists, researchers, engineers and other practitioners share with most intelligence analysts and professionals can absolutely facilitate in the identification, gathering and organization of more reliable and accurate information. Strong ties and collaborations with these outside individuals would thereby fortify the capacity of the intelligence community and bring in fresh and modern ideas, technologies and supplementary resources. Joint researches and projects with academic institutions and commercial enterprises, forums, conferences and training workshops on multidisciplinary subjects and related areas as well as direct hiring or recruitment of scientific, technical and other relevant personnel are some of the ways through which the intelligence community can draw upon the expertise of these future crucial partners in the intelligence field. Obviously, prudence and strictness must always be observed in dealing with the above proposed encounters so as to preserve the integrity of the intelligence community but a certain amount of transparency and confidence should also be allowed in order to fully optimize the benefits from such cooperation and alliances.