WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. intelligence agencies are conducting an unprecedented outreach effort to outside experts.
The outreach also includes using blogs and wikis to improve their analysis.
The magazine U.S. News and World Report said that a series of outreach projects also included "millions of dollars in contracts, fellowships, (and) conferences ... directed at scholars and other outside experts."
The effort is laid out in a document produced by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. The document, dubbed "A Strategy for Analytic Outreach," calls for a major effort at building 'communities of interest' with outside experts and revamping security regulations to allow far greater contact with the outside world by intelligence analysts, the magazine reported Sunday.
The report says that targets of the outreach included "academics ... experts at think tanks, international groups, foundations, and businesses, as well as medical doctors and scientists."
"The intelligence community will never be big enough, will never have enough analysts," the magazine quoted Thomas Fingar, Negroponte's head of analysis, as saying. "There's an absolute need to go outside," he said.
The magazine said the effort also included the use of Web logs and wikis -- Web sites that allow users to collectively add and edit content, like "Wikipedia," the online encyclopedia. The magazine said analysts would try to use a wiki to write a major intelligence assessment of Nigeria.
