LETTER TO THE HONORABLE JAMES R. SCHLESINGER FROM ALBERT C. HALL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82M00531R000400010023-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 22, 2005
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: February 20, 1973
• Content Type: LETTER

25X1 Approved For Release 2005/05/23 : CIA-RDP82M00531 R000400010023-9
Approved For Release 2005/05/23 : CIA-RDP82M00531 R000400010023-9
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13 February 1973
MEMORANDUM FOR:
SUBJECT
COINS
1. The trend towards automated file storage and retrieval
systems within the intelligence community is inexorable, and the
establishment of such systems will probably be substantially accom-
plished in all agencies within the next ten years. It is obviously
desirable, and eventually will become essential, to ensure that these
systems, once developed, are compatible, since there will always be a
requirement for some analysts of one agency to have access to some of
the data banks in others. At the present time, the demand for such
inter-agency access is relatively modest and is unlikely to increase
dramatically until a further period of trial and error with different
data banks reveals demonstrable needs and until a more accurate means
has been established for determining extent of use.
2. Automating file storage and retrieval is an expensive
business for each agency. Providing inter-agency access among these
systems (i.e., COINS) is relatively cheap. Justification for the
establishment of such automated systems in each agency rests primarily
on factors, such as manpower and space savings, unrelated to the
desirability of establishing a COINS system. COINS should be looked
on, therefore, as an added benefit resulting from separate systems
which are developed primarily for the internal management purposes of
each agency rather than as a goad to compel agencies to develop
automated systems at a pace and cost which cannot be justified by
their internal needs.
3. Based on the foregoing rationale, the action priorities on
COINS come out with somewhat different emphasis than in the Malkin
study. The first order of business is to require the separate members
of the community to plan and work towards fully compatible automated
file storage and retrieval systems. Primary Justification for the
introduction of new hardware, however, should not be based on a COINS
requirement, but rather on the internal needs of each agency.
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4. The second priority in the COINS system development is to
resolve the security problem. Until this is done, the separate
members of the community will have serious and justifiable reserva-
tions to the introduction into the system of files of potentially
greatest community interest.
5. The third priority is to determine with considerably greater
accuracy than now exists the size and nature of the requirement for
a COINS system. A way must be found to determine which files from
one agency are needed by the analysts in another, as opposed to files
that would merely be "nice to have." Two lines of action are sug-
gested by the Malkin report. One is to purge COINS of files which
have proved of marginal use and Introduce new files (the report claims
42) for which a requirement has been established. This is essentially
a system of trial and error which, through experimentation, will
reveal is practice which files deserve to be In COINS and which do
not. The second line of action is to improve and refine COINS
reporting procedures so that the use and value of particular files
can be determined accurately and quickly, thus reducing to a minimum
the inherent inefficiencies of the trial and error system.
6. It is evident that no part of the intelligence community
has a predominant interest in the development of the COINS system
and none is peculiarly qualified by function to direct it. It is
air excellence a service of common concern or, more accurately, a
coot namon of separate actions by separate agencies to achieve a
common objective. Because of this, there is little logic in assigning
any one agency as the program manager. Responsibility must rest with
the DCI who, working through the USIB/IRAC mechanism, can propose,
coordinate, direct, and monitor the courses of action required to
realize the COINS concept. For this purpose he should be supported
by a USIB/IRAC task force, chaired by a DCI/IC officer and having as
re resentatives such substantive, as opposed to policy, people as
I harry Eisenbeiss, and Norman Solat.
7. In brief, I can't agree with Malkin's first recommendation
that "the DCI direct that an aggressive program of automated exchange
be undertaken." I think this puts the cart before the horse. I
think more deliberate speed is required and that the chief require-
ment is to ensure consultation/coordination among the archivists,
rather than the hardware types, of the community. Even if COINS as
a program did not exist, it would inevitably come into being because
of technological changes in data handling and the constant require-
ment for inter-agency data exchanges. The proper role for management
should therefore be catalytic rather than Messianic.
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