SDSG Integrated Analytics Workshop

SECRET SDSG Integrated Analytics Workshop (14 Oct 2011) Palantir Opportunities & Strengths Risks & challenges Easy to share / publish knowledge amongst Collaboration capabilities less mature than the analytical community Mamba offering Timeline capabilities are visually appealing Analyst education about value and use of target knowledge versus target data Effective navigation through target knowledge (right-click & explore around) Dealing with high volumes and big indexes Sensible division between searching around entities for target knowledge and searching for events or ‘raw’ data Concern that the tool gives the analyst greater potential for going down too many analytical paths which could distract from the intelligence requirement Collaborative app and ‘step-back in analytical path’ offers potential for sharing tradecraft Mindset change for analysts surrounding any platform for analysis and collaboration Easy to do data integration – quick to deliver an 80% solution Restricted potential (due to being commercial product) – it develops how the owning company want it to develop Could take any data 
 Flexibility Openness of commercial ‘black box’ Code could be better commented Usability / intuitive interface appears to be a How many ‘versions’ of Palantir would the strength (at least relatively) company support? International user community including SF and DSD Integration – with other platforms? Tool responsiveness Mature stage of development User Interface and usability Presentation capabilities Accountability Mamba Opportunities & Strengths Risks & challenges Talks to the vision (and thus is powerful) Are hard coded-questions restrictive? Great data integration Usability, usability, usability Has the potential to deliver more effective and efficient QC’ing capability than current systems provide Appears to be fairly complex with a steep learning curve 1 of 3 SECRET

SECRET Opportunities & Strengths Risks & challenges Allows the analyst to filter the data prior to Complexity – what skill levels would be importing it onto the chart – means analysts necessary or could different levels of access aren’t wasting time deleting be matched to analyst skill levels Potential for very intuitive exploration of data and relationships between QFDs Deliverability and complexity of eclipse userinterface Strong on sharing of analysis Challenge of uniform data models Potential for on-line coaching via screen sharing Relative immature progress on graph change Integration agenda – flexibility and illustrates the art of the possible Open architecture Has the concept of a ‘hypothesis’ Offers good potential for bringing more collaborative opportunities between Ops and JTRIG Rich layered model allows unique navigation and viewing of details of the events, especially multi-participant c2c events Mamba potentially offers greater potential for closer sharing and collaboration with NSA Though currently doesn’t deliver this Mamba and Palantir ‘summing-up’ feedback “A completely commercial product, in this instance Palantir, is clearly more polished and delivers more in terms of usability, compared with the in-house built offering (i.e. Mambabased products) which offers complete flexibility, arguably thus more potential but ‘Eclipse’ doesn’t sell simplicity.” • • • • • • • • • • • External collaboration is at least as important as internal collaboration Interoperability important between whatever tool(s) are progressed A desire where at all possible to avoid local specialism (if the applications can support that) Concerns over what capabilities truly work at scale Consider competition with tools already ‘bedded in’ in the business Attendees acknowledge the best assessment is realised through using any capability rather than demonstrations alone Visual representation of the data is a key component to explore Usability / complexity / polish will have an impact on the users Could whichever tool have an ‘unlock’ application features based on analysts skill level, hiding buttons and features until needed and capable of utilising Experiment with diverse range of analysts, from Skill level 0 up to L3’s Fully understand and consider the time necessary for analysts to change / take on new tools and ways of working Some concerns expressed that there is still a very real risk that as CDO / CDL roles continue to develop across the 4th floor that such analysts will need to become users of a vastly growing tool set and that decisions / agreements on tool choices and tool mix will be hard 2 of 3 SECRET

SECRET A ?shared? decision going forward is needed Concern over the data model implemented around the collated /fused data and how it supports and integrates itself with a data model around conducting actual analysis and the building of intelligence pictures Performance of any application tool /framework is always a key consideration Can any tool cope with the diversity of data types? Vision and Principals (feedback) No broad concerns over vision or principals Action for ADS: But simplify vision and key principles Action for ADS: Can the principals be condensed from its current two pages? Action for ADS: Can it be shared more broadly, perhaps on GCwiki and linked to from these workshop pages IAC (feedbackl Requires a clear future and decisions Generic statements that could be considered Ops requirements: More independence between front-end user-interfaces and the back-end data, i.e. build service tiers (helps future proofing against new capabilities) Easier linkages between social media collaborative tools applications) and the tools applications that support analysis and data exploration Don?t necessarily deliver the capability in the engineer?s current favourite technology Usability for the ?whole? analyst community is key (avoid future kerfuf?es) There is a need to really understand the user base amongst the analyst community for any capability going forward The CapDev community need to give quick assessments to ISD over particular new capabilities, especially to ensure the right tool choices are made and roadmaps are not stove-piped Another concern Concerns that the Olympic questions for Rumour Mill have not been broadly enough shared, at least some attendees had not had visibility of them Action: ADS to circulate (included in email with these minutes) and available atF Attendees 3of3 SECRET