Introduction

Collaboration and Groupware

Elements of Successful Collaboration

Summary

Collaboration Checklist 

Bibliography

Acronym List

This report was prepared by Tamara Hall, Ph.D.
Information Sharing Solutions
Office of Advanced Analytic Tools

Executive Summary 

The Intelligence Community (IC) is increasingly challenged by rapidly changing and diverse threats around the world. Concurrently, the growing demand for accurate, relevant, and timely intelligence from a large customer base, including policymakers, warfighters, and law enforcement entities, is straining IC resources available to monitor, process, and report on an explosion of available information. Increased collaboration among IC organizations is essential for the community to capitalize on its aggregate strengths and effectively tackle the challenges in intelligence collection, analysis, and reporting. 

To date, most of the initiatives within the IC have focused on the technical requirements to support IC collaboration. While connectivity and tools provide the infrastructure for collaboration, business processes and organizational culture ultimately determine the effectiveness of collaboration. In practice, many collaborative networks fail due to a lack of attention to these issues. Efforts to facilitate IC collaboration through systems such as IranLink, Mexico Pilot, and Intelink have all struggled with business process issues. 

The IC Collaboration Baseline Study was commissioned to examine policy, procedural, and cultural barriers to interagency collaboration across the IC. The study was sponsored by the DCI's Community Management Staff, the Executive Agent of the Community Operational Definition of the Agile Intelligence Enterprise (CODA), and the National Intelligence Production Board. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Office of Advanced Analytic Tools served as executor for the study. PRC, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, was placed under contract to conduct the study. The study focused on virtual teams of analysts and collectors collaborating at the TS/SI/TK level across seven IC Agencies: CIA, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Energy, and the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. 

Interviews conducted with IC senior executives identified significant cultural barriers to effective collaboration. Key areas of concern include a cultural tradition inconsistent with information sharing; lack of common goals for collaboration across the community; lack of trust in organizations, individuals, and systems; lack of perceived mutual benefit to participate in collaboration efforts; and inadequate reward systems to support collaboration. The study identified mitigation strategies to these collaboration barriers. Strategies were based on a review of academic research as well as an examination of case studies within industry and government. 

The mitigation strategies are targeted at two levels of execution. The first set of strategies are initiatives that should be addressed at the community or agency level. These strategies include: (1) identifying community collaboration goals; (2) defining the role of communities of interest vice system-high networks to support collaboration goals; (3) expanding cross-organizational knowledge of mission, structure, and processes through increased rotational assignments and community-level training; (4) expanding use of multilevel reporting to broaden distribution of intelligence information; (5) defining a community-level risk mitigation model related to collaboration activities; (6) instituting reward systems to support collaboration; and (7) establishing a network of community administrators to assist in the deployment and maintenance of community collaboration systems. The second set of strategies are items actionable at the individual team level. The team actions are summarized in a "Checklist for Successful Collaborations." The Checklist is intended to facilitate team discussions on organizational and process issues to support effective collaboration. 

Results of this study have been widely briefed in the IC, including presentations to the National Intelligence Council, IC Chief Information Officers, Intelligence Community Collaborative Operations Network (ICON) Program Office, and broad community audiences at the IC Desktop Collaboration Conference and Intelink Conference. Follow-on efforts for this study include application of the collaboration checklist to facilitate community collaboration efforts. Near-term efforts will focus on support to the XLink collaboration program. Results of the study are also intended to guide the execution of collaboration initiatives sponsored under the DCI's Connectivity, Speed, and Volume initiative.