Intelligence Communication in the Digital Era: Transforming Security, Defence and Business

Transforming Security, Defence and Business

R. Arcos,R. Pherson

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137523792
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume argues that producers of analysis need to shift from producing static, narrative products to much more dynamic, digitally-based platforms in order to remain competitive and relevant.

1

Communicating Analysis in a Digital Era¹

Rubén Arcos

Abstract: Communication is one of the cornerstones of the intelligence process, and recent developments in multimedia communication are likely to have a major impact on how intelligence analysis is presented to the user of the intelligence product. Digital communication is driving deep changes in the way information is produced and consumed globally and across industries, posing challenges to how intelligence analysis is delivered from the perspective of both the producer and the consumer. These changes will affect the concepts of usability, user experience, interaction design, and information design. Although intelligence agencies have their own distinctive features in relation to intelligence clients at the corporate level as well as certain security standards and counterintelligence imperatives to guarantee, they will need to adapt their intelligence products to the digital era to remain competitive.

Keywords: intelligence analysis; intelligence product; multimedia communication; user experience

Arcos, Rubén and Randolph H. Pherson, eds. Intelligence Communication in the Digital Era: Transforming Security, Defence and Business. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137523792.0006.

The changing communications environment

In the intelligence studies literature, academic discussion, and even professional practice, the communication of analytic products to government decision makers as a step in the intelligence process has traditionally received much less attention than intelligence collection and analysis. Without the effective communication of intelligence to policymakers, however, all the previous efforts in collection and analytic production are futile. This process involves activities that require the acquisition of specific competencies to be conducted successfully.

The communication domain is driving huge transformations around the world in virtually all industries, changing the ways we interact, build, and conduct relations with others. It is difficult to imagine a field of human experience that has not been transformed by digital information and communication technologies. The editorial staffs of newspapers, news agencies, and other traditional media all over the world have witnessed and are experiencing major transformations driven by technological innovations while they struggle to adapt the processes of producing and delivering news and information of relevance to their readers.

Multimedia communication among individuals is nowadays usual in both professional and private spheres. Multimedia can be defined as “any combination of text, graphics, video, audio, and animation in a distributable format that consumers can interact with using a digital device.”²

Newspapers provide highly attractive interactive infographics in their digital editions, presenting data and information in a digestible format. Videos increasingly are being introduced in digital publications. People are growing increasingly familiar with digital technologies and are both consumers and producers of digital photography, video, and blogging and micro-blogging platforms. They are consumers of information but are also learning how to produce content for others.

Coincident with this ongoing transformation, people are getting used to new ways of consuming information and interacting with that information. They are assuming a more active role in the process. Consequently, decision makers in government and industry are demanding – and will increasingly demand – analysis and intelligence products adapted to this new era of digital communication. As the threshold of usefulness for new information decreases, the consumer of intelligence analysis is expecting shorter timeframes for receiving intelligence products (see Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Characteristics of the emerging communications environment

The intelligence user experience (UX)

As reported in the Washington Post, the iPad has already been used to disseminate intelligence to US President Obama, “allowing analysts to add video and audio clips and interactive graphics.”³ The article quotes Shawn Turner, Director of Public Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, describing tablets as a proper and secure alternative way to provide intelligence and likely be used more frequently in the future to represent multimedia information in the PDB.⁴

Although it is the responsibility of each nation’s intelligence community to establish its own communication standards for analytic products, the very purpose of the intelligence is to deliver the best possible analyses in a timely and usable way to facilitate the decision making of the policymaker or consumer. Intelligence products are useful only if they provide information and analytic insights on time to the decision maker, reducing their uncertainty and the tension that it produces while facilitating decisions and posterior actions. Independent of whether the intelligence product is conceived to be delivered in a printed or in a digital and interactive format, the product needs to be delivered to the user in a timely fashion.

In principle, immediacy is one of the advantages of digital communication compared to printed media. In the absence of the necessary skills to design information (or intelligence), combine and integrate media in a meaningful way, and anticipate sequences of interaction by the user, however, the results can be counter-productive. Although the traditional principles of analytic writing remain essential, a core difference exists between textual reports and digital intelligence products:

All traditional text, whether in printed form or in computer files, is sequential, meaning that there is a single linear sequence defining the order in which the text is to be read [ ... ] Hypertext is nonsequential; there is no single order that determines the sequence in which the text is to be read [ ... ] Hypertext presents several different options to the readers, and the individual reader determines which of them to follow at the time of reading the text. This means that the author of the text has set up a number of alternatives for readers to explore rather than a single stream of information [ ... ] hypertext consist of interlinked pieces of text (or other information).⁵

A “digital turn” in the field of intelligence communication needs to take into consideration the fields of information design and interaction design, as well at the concept of user experience (UX). All of them provide a framework that sets the stage for digital communication and design for interactive media that can be useful for intelligence communication in the 21st Century.

As noted by Hartson and Pyla, the concepts of UX and design do not necessarily entail high-tech artifacts; technology is rather a design context.⁶ Similarly, the concept of usability is critical. The user experience can be influenced by perceptions of the producing organization and past experiences. According to Nielsen, usefulness, defined as the capability of a system to be used to achieve a goal, can be broken down into two categories: usability and utility. Specifically:

Utility is the question of whether the functionality of the system can do what is needed, and usability is the question of how w...