National Intelligence Estimate - Challenges To The Production of NIEs

Challenges To The Production of NIEs

The IC must overcome several challenges to produce accurate and useful strategic intelligence assessments, including: Urgent Requests vs. Lengthy Process: The process of interagency coordination and an insistence on analytic rigor normally push the completion of NIEs to several months or even more than a year. Per Congress’s request in the fall of 2002, the IC rushed to complete the NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs in less than a month. Since a rushed product can result in poor or inaccurate assessments, the IC must balance the urgency for a requested assessment with a commitment to analytical rigor. Interagency Collaboration: Because NIEs represent the consensus view of the IC, all 16 agencies have input on each NIE. Such collaboration can lead to: Gridlock, where many different interests slow the analytic process. Compromise, where the estimates contain only “lowest common denominator” language. Groupthink, where opposing views are subconsciously discouraged.

Read more about this topic:  National Intelligence Estimate

Famous quotes containing the words challenges and/or production:

    The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
    André Breton (1896–1966)

    The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)