Knowledge Management and Intelligence Work: A Promising Combination

Background: Intelligence Analysis

The ultimate goal of Intelligence analysis is to provide a customer, military or civilian, with the best possible information to help in taking policy, strategic and tactical decisions that affect national security¹. In this task, “Intelligence” is used to refer to knowledge and information, the basic end product of the analysis. Such analysis is carried out by highly trained analysts, who work in a continuous process involving the following steps²:

Need Analysis. Customers (policymakers and others) make requests that the analyst must translate to specific requirements and tasks, in order to make sure that the final product answers the needs of the customer. Customer demands often need interpretation or analysis before they can be expressed as an Intelligence requirement (Krizan, 1999). The customer may have additional constraints on the Intelligence product; the request may have time constraints (short-term versus long-term) or scope (broad or strategic versus narrow or tactical).

Collection. This refers to the gathering of raw (uninterpreted) data. Nowadays, there is an abundance of data, due to the variety and richness of sources: