23 April 2015

INTELLIGENCE DATA MANAGEMENT: THERE’S NO APP FOR THAT … BUT THERE SHOULD BE

April 22, 2015
For some reason, the idea hit me on a chilly afternoon in northern Virginia while I was heading out to a DC United match with my oldest son. The boy loves his sports, for sure, and I started thinking about how much awareness he had already acquired on the topic. For months, when he got his precious iPad time, he would immediately go to my sports app, theScore, and start memorizing. He probably still knows the score of last year’s Tennessee-Vanderbilt football game as I type this. (Note: I just checked, he does.)

My five year-old’s ability to find sports scores on an iPad contrasts rather sharply with my inability to rapidly sift through mountains of intelligence data from my desk in the Pentagon. This leads to an intriguing question: How might the sports information model be applied to intelligence dissemination? I recognize there are all sorts of hurdles that would need to be overcome, but suspend disbelief and bear with me.

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