The United States Intelligence Community A-Space, or Analytic Space, is a project started in 2007 from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's (ODNI) Office of Analytic Transformation and Technology to develop a common collaborative workspace for all analysts from the USIC. It is accessible from common workstations and provides unprecedented access to interagency databases, a capability to search classified and unclassified sources simultaneously, web-based messaging, and collaboration tools. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is the executive agent for building the first phase of A-Space. Initial operational capability was scheduled for December 2007. A-Space went live on the government's classified Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System 22 September 2008. A-Space is built on Jive Software's Clearspace application (which has been superseded by Jive's Social Business Software).
Analytic transformation
The Director of National Intelligence has identified A-Space as a critical piece of "Analytic Transformation":
Within the analytic transformation program, there are several initiatives under way in three areas: 1) enhancing the quality of analytic products, 2) managing the mission more effectively at a Community level, and 3) building more integrated analytic operations across the Intelligence Community (IC).
For contrast, see perceived limitations of CIA information technology at CIA Information Technology.
Assumptions about improving collaboration among analysts
A-Space, according to Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School, is a means of sharing information that, in the normal course of events, might not be seen at all. He pointed out that "companies that rely heavily on innovation" spend considerable effort improving the communications among close colleagues. Mark Granovetter's insight, "The Strength of Weak Ties" (SWT) was that strong ties are not enough for the best innovative environments. Strong ties between people arise from long-term, frequent, and sustained interactions; weak ties from infrequent and more casual ones. A tool such as Intellipedia or A-Space encourages collaboration among people with weak ties, complementing the traditional "team-building" and "cross-functional management" characteristic of strong ties.
"How do you transform analysis?" asked Thomas Fingar, deputy director of National Intelligence for Analysis at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). "One word: attitude. For people to collaborate and bring new and vital skills to the intelligence community, we need to change our attitude." Fingar said "60 percent of all U.S. intelligence analysts have five years' experience or less on the job. They expect to collaborate no matter where they are and without concern for chain of command," he said. "There is a sense of urgency, a push from the bottom that didn't exist before." Fingar said intelligence failures proved the need to transform intelligence analysis.
"Analysts have become risk-averse and because of that, many times that attitude precludes good analysis," Fingar said. "We have had more than one major problem every decade since Pearl Harbor. We fail because we are not willing to collaborate or accept the risks of collaboration."
Security
A-Space is open to all 16 elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
The first requisite for such a system is that it be secure. To minimize the complexity of the first release, the initial operating capability (IOC) is Web based rather than a full desktop client. Information Week stated that A-Space must have 16 different security waivers and move across 16 differently configured firewalls. However, all this information in the browser, even on the secure intelligence Intranet, is bound to raise hackles, presumably for the 16 Intelligence Community agencies, according to Mike Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology.
Even though the system will be available only to users with security clearance for TOP SECRET Sensitive compartmented intelligence (SCI), security, in the world of intelligence, is not a simple matter of clearance. Individual users will be authorized, or not authorized to access specific "compartments". For example, while an analyst might be authorized access to the HUMINT Control System, a major category of SCI, that does not necessarily allow an analyst working on Russia to see data on spies in Somalia. Somalian and Russian information, sometimes down to the granularity of individual spy contributions, are in separate compartments.