An intelligence collection plan (ICP) is the systematic process used by most modern armed forces and intelligence services to meet intelligence requirements through the tasking of all available resources to gather and provide pertinent information within a required time limit. Creating a collection plan is part of the intelligence cycle.
While an ICP has no prescribed doctrinal format, it must use all available collection capabilities to meet the decision maker's priority requirements. It must be precise and concise, yet a working document that is flexible enough to respond to changes as they occur.
Famous quotes containing the words intelligence, collection and/or plan:
“... perhaps there exists only one intelligence from which the world sublets, one intelligence toward which each person, from the depths of his individual body, directs his gaze, as in the theater where, though each has a seat, however, there is only one stage.... But if it we all shared the same intelligence, [Bergotte] would, upon hearing me express [my ideas], remember them, love them, smile at them....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“We’ll never know the worth of water till the well go dry.”
—18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in James Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs, no. 351 (1721)
“As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)