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(U//FOUO) Challenging Assumptions and Approaches, Together -The SIGINT Information Management Team
FROM: MG Richard Quirk, USA
Signals Intelligence Director
Run Date: 05/05/2005
(U//FOUO) Recently you heard from the SID/ITD team that will help shape a series of major
changes in our approach to information management for SIGINT. (See referenced article .) This
team, hand picked by SID and ITD Deputy Directors and mentored by the senior TDs, is bringing
together the ideas and concepts that will drive our future systems development, architectures,
and overall approaches to how we prosecute our missions. I'm especially interested in their
efforts to explore some of our most basic assumptions and preconceptions about how we build
and operate the global SIGINT system.
(U//FOUO) I think the time is right, maybe even overdue, for us to communally challenge and
debate many of our established approaches and assumptions to systems and developments. I
say this because we are being shaped not only by technologies that are radically changing how
our targets operate, but also by new opportunities and trade-offs for how we design and build
our systems and services. Add to that our current efforts to reshape our mission architectures,
national and tactical systems development, information and infrastructure technologies and
services, and transformation programs, and it's pretty clear that we need to aggressively explore
new approaches to information management.
(U//FOUO) As you think about information management, don't limit yourself to the data,
information, knowledge, or the technology used to store and manipulate them, but instead think
in terms of the end-to-end SIGINT system. And remember that the end-to-end SIGINT system
starts with mission needs and ends with products and services that support these missions. In
between are all the parts and pieces necessary today and more importantly what will be required
in the future.
(U//FOUO) I look to you to help advance and embrace these ideas. From this dialog, I expect to
see even greater innovation and creativity emerge that will in turn let us quickly adopt and
adapt great ideas and accelerate our shift to new kind of SIGINT system; one that is global, selfaware, self synchronizing, agile, and responsive. The SIGINT Information Management Team will
become the conduit and champion for these ideas, creating tools and forums to share and
debate them, and capturing them in documents and actions that move us from concept to
reality more quickly than ever before possible. Our success is dependent on you and your
contributions with this team!
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108