ABSTRACT
Regardless of how much guidance is put out to agencies, and the numerous benefits that have been expounded with regard to taking a more proactive approach to gathering and exploiting intelligence, the inability of many agencies and their members to change to meet evolving circumstances means that they continue to cling to the outdated methods of the past. As the old adage says, you only get out of it what you put into it. Every agency needs mechanisms to lawfully collect information for intelligence purposes, to process that information as it is received, to integrate and evaluate it, and then to lodge the intelligence that is produced in an intelligence repository. The information received will originate in many different places, and processes must be established to deal with these varied circumstances. Intelligence must be created and reposited against agreed criteria and in a standardized way. This chapter builds on the framework outlined in Chapter 6 on the intelligence cycle. There are four parts. The first part deals with the practicalities and benefits of building an effective intelligence management system. This involves drilling down into what is required and how to build a system. The second part puts the “meat on the bones” of the newly created system, identifying further steps that need to be taken and considerations to be made. The third part discusses the computerization of the system, and the final part looks at security implications. While it is impossible to outline every possible step that needs to be taken to create an effective system, the chapter provides clear indication of the volume of work that needs to be undertaken and the depths that need to be gone to.
