Pirates, Missiles, and Terrorists: Practical Mashup Lessons from the US Intelligence Community

Pirates, missiles, terrorists. There is exponential growth of data-collection systems for areas of interest like these. But this growing collection of information has led to a problem: ‘connecting the dots’ becomes more difficult.

How does an agency encourage and support user-driven information collaboration that support real-time decision-making with the most secure data sources in the world while adhering to the most stringent security requirements imaginable? In other words, what does it take to make a mashup in the US Intelligence Community?

‘Pirates, Missiles, and Terrorists: Practical Mashup Lessons from the US Intelligence Community’ will address important question including:

1. Why bother? What is the fundamental value of mashups to intelligence agencies?

2. What does it take? What technologies, techniques and standards are must-haves to do it right?

3. Why this approach? Why mashups instead of traditional information integration approaches?

4. Why now? What trends and technologies make secure information collaboration a new opportunity?

5. Who builds it? How can the ‘end user’ be enabled to do their own mashup work?

6. Who uses it? If a mashup is created from data originating from 2 or more agencies, who ‘owns’ it? Gets to use (and reuse) it?

Reference examples will include the Intelligence Community Data Layer (ICDL) and the National Senior Leadership Decision Support System (NSLDSS). The presentation will also include demonstrations of mashup efforts from across the US Government.

The lessons from this presentation are applicable to any agency interested in deploying mashups within their workplace.