COMMENTS ON CODIB TASK TEAM V REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01139A000500050004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 9, 2002
• Sequence Number: 4
• Content Type: REPORT

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Comments on CODIB Task Team V Report
1. It was the intent of USIB that this team should "develop
a biographic intelligence processing plan" (see recommendation r,
USIB-D-39.7/5). This major task was not considered by this team.
2. There is an obvious, pressing need for better service by
the agencies in the National Agency Check (NAC) program. This
.activity in the CI/Security systems' (in contrast to the PI systems)
is relatively well structured and amenable to immediate automation.
There is high-volume activity into large, reasonably well-structured
data bases with relatively short unit records. This system could
be completely implemented with clear operational payoff for a
fraction of the cost of the COINS experiment. The DoD is presently
combining and converting the three service security indexes into
common format IBM cards and plans to design a computer-driven
index look-up operation in FY 67. The CODIB and related CI/Secur1
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biographic communities could, by complimentary action, immediately
develop plans for early implementation of an automated communication
network between the appropriate agencies. It now takes several
weeks for the typical determination that there are no records on
a given individual in the various agencies so requested. This
could easily be a one-day response time machine language communioa-
tion system at an unclassified level with probably less (but
certainly no significant increase in) expense than is now involved
with the manual system. In this connection, three points should
be made:
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a. The NAC system could and should, as an evolu-
tionary step, use the basic search strategy of searching
exact name and variations only and not attempt, in the first
phase, to utilize a name variant look-up strategy. This would
be a significant improvement over the present system in
terms of accuracy, consistency and depth.
b, The NAC system using machine language could be
readily so structured that those agencies not to be
automated for some years to come in their internal name
look-up systems could still participate and take advan-
tage of the machine language system. This could be done
by utilizing media (such as punch cards) which can also
be read and acted upon by humans in the manual mode. The
point here is that automation of the NAC system need not
wait for any automation, actual or planned, of the internal
name look-up operations of the various participating agencies.
For further details, see my paper on Evolution of a NAC System.
c. The one-day(turn around response time would highlight
the present additional significant processing time taking place
within each agency, thus accelerating improvement in this area.
3. Although the team considered the problem of standardized
rules for name recording and look-up and it was agreed that this
would be helpful, no such rules were agreed upon by the team. No
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and look-up are being followed by the various CI/Security system
holders. Nothing was determined by the team beyond a mere listing
of the data elements that are included in each agency's system.
4 The team did not produce any documentation concerning
what kind of people (in terms of nationality, professional
activities, relationship to various agencies. missions, position
in government, etc.) are contained in the various indexes and files.
This information would help the respective agencies to determine
which holdings might best be checked for possible results. This
information is, of course, known to varying degrees by a great
number of people in the biographic community, but there is no
clear written statement of such coverage existing today.
5. A fundamental problem in the whole biographic area is
the'one of compatibility as it relates to data elements, data
bases, communication systems, machine programs, and actual equip-
ment. The differentiation between these and the degree of
importance of each were not covered by the report.
6. Both Project White Stork at FTD and Cross-Check at
Library of Congress as well as the Passport and Visa files at
Department of State easily fall within the definition of "major
indices" as defined by the team; however, these were not considered
in the report.
7, The critical need for certain agencies that have not
yet commenced their conversion to machine language was not high-
lighted in the report. It can be shown with information gathered
by the team that it costs approximately 10+ a card to convert to
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machine language. Thus, an agency is literally wasting $100,000
for each million cards that it is presently typing on manual cards.
Since less than half of the approximately eleven million cards
being produced yearly are being put into machine language at the
present time, over one-half million dollars is being lost by the
NAC community each year, by the continuation of the decision not
to convert to machine language, It is suggested that no reason
has been set forth why this half Billion or more dollars yearly
loss should be continued.
8. In view of the above, the following recommendations are
(a) it is recommended that a working group be
established which would "develop a biographic intelligence
processing plan" in accordance with the original intention
of CODIB. It is suggested that this be composed only of
members of those agencies that are concerned in the positive
intelligence biographic activities. This recommendation is'
..:made with the above restrictd6nnbecause it is felt that the,
1?ositiV6'and the CI/Security biographic systems are indeed
discrete "systems" which should develop separately because
of the differing requirements, data bases and organizational
channels. (it is fully expected that as the years progress the
two automated systems will learn to "talk" to each other.
(b) It is recommended that a working group be
established to 1) determine standardized rules for name
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recording to be used for inter-agency NAC queries; 2)develop
a plan for the immediate implementation of an automated
communication network between the appropriate NAC agencies
utilizing exact name queries in the Phase X system.
c. A working group be established to monitor and
report progress to CODIB periodically on the status of the
automation programs of the biographic holdings involved in
the NAC program, This would particularly be pertinent to the
progress of the conversion of the various holdings into
machine language with a goal of saving the one-half million
dollars being lost annually within this community due to
the none-conversion of the new'entries into machine language.
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