Spies work on info sharing

DENVER -- Officials in the intelligence community have started several initiatives related to information technology tagging, collaboration and acquisition to improve data-sharing among personnel of all security levels.

They believe data can be published after information about how it was acquired is removed. "It's all about the data," said Alan Wade, chief information officer for the CIA. He spoke Sept. 29 at the Government Symposium on ISR Transformation.

Officials in the intelligence community started a pilot program that uses control interfaces to share classified and unclassified data among employees, the Defense Department and civilian agencies. The interfaces use standards to filter and more quickly move the data, Wade said.

They also started a program so members of the intelligence community can communicate via instant messaging. "Chat has become an enormously powerful application," he said.

Officials in the intelligence community also identified data-sharing initiatives other agencies are developing that could be useful for those in the intelligence community. They then added funding to those initiatives, Wade said.

The new IT tagging, collaboration and acquisition initiatives mark phase two of the Intelligence Community System for Information Sharing. Phase one of ths system, which was started about four years ago, focused on developing the policies, procedures and standards for sharing data, he said.

Officials in the intelligence community now will take the system to the next level. "It's about more data and the tools and applications to process the data," he said.

While still serving as CIA director, George Tenet had issued a management imperative in June that further emphasized data sharing among intelligence employees, Wade said.