IARPA looks to the crowd

WHAT: A plan to harness the crowd to improve evaluation and analysis.

WHY: The intelligence community is looking to improve its analytical capabilities via a new program called CREATE, short for Crowdsourcing Evidence, Argumentation, Thinking and Evaluation. CREATE is in its vague, pre-solicitation infancy, but basically the intelligence community's internal skunkworks IARPA is hoping to establish a structured method of assessing ideas across disciplines, forming arguments and counterarguments, and develop a platform for crowdsourcing the development and refining of arguments.

CREATE is hoping to draw on the expertise of industry and academics, and expects that teams from across disciplines -- including social and behavioral scientists and computer scientists -- to create methods that can reason using quantitative and qualitative information. Ultimately, such a system could be used to harness experts across disciplines inside and outside of government to contribute analysis and expertise to breaking intelligence problems in a structured and secure way.

Click here to read the IARPA announcement.