LETTER (SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01116R001102090015-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: May 30, 1986
• Content Type: LETTER

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REMOVE FROM DOCUMENTS' THANKS...
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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
STAT
Exqutive Secretary
11 June 86
Date
ACTION
INFO
DATE
INITIAL
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DCI
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DDCI
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EXDIR
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D/ICS
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DDI
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DDA
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DDO
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DDS&T
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Chm/NIC
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GC
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IG
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Compt
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D/OLL
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D/PAO
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D/PERS
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VC/NIC
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D OIT DA
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P.O. Box 1328, Boca Raton, FL 3343:STAT
May 30, 1986
Executive Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
Thank you for your letter updating me on our progress with you since our
last meeting and for your positive comments regarding the briefings and
support from my staff.
I appreciate your suggestions regarding our high end office automation
strategy, particularly as it relates to text, graphics and pictorial
representations. As you may know, earlier this year my division
acquired additional resources from our Hursley development laboratory
to complement our workstation efforts in this area. I understand you
will be meeting with Dick Hanrahan on June 16, 1986 to discuss our strategy
to provide integrated products with text, graphics and pictorial
capabilities.
I appreciate you taking the time to write to me directly and look forward
to our continued exchange.
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
~-o?Go ~,P
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STAT
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
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STAT
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Central Intelligence Agency
IBM Corporation
Building 236
P.O. Box 1328
Boca Raton, Florida 33432
Last December, you and your colleagues kindly met with me and a group
of senior Agency executives to discuss IBM's plans for the 3270 PC family.
On 10-12 February, a group of our technical officers had the opportunity
to meet and engage in a spirited and fruitful technical exchange with
Entry Systems Division personnel in Boca Raton. They received, under non-
disclosure agreements, excellent presentations on IBM's future directions
in the intelligent workstation arena. Your personnel discussed their plans
for the evolution of the Personal Computer. Overall, these briefings
indicated a convergence of the AT and 3270 AT directions into a single
intelligent workstation product family. This is a direction we fully
support.
On the basis of what we have learned, however, there is one area of
keen interest to this Agency that IBM does not plan to address. This area
is "high-end" office automation. We define this as a system designed to
enhance the productivity of a professional whose work products are complex
documents. I have enclosed a summary of a typical work scenario for an
intelligence analyst. To automate such work in our environment requires
an intelligent workstation that can attach to our host systems--large,
primarily VM systems, using 3270 protocols. This workstation must be able
to create, display, print, and communicate compound documents combining
text, high-quality graphics, and pictorial information; and it must be able
to display multiple documents simultaneously.
High-end automation requires both software and hardware that are not
included in the PC plans disclosed to us. Software to handle multiple-
object documents and multiple documents in a "desktop" presentation appears
absent, along with formats and architectures for interchange of such complex
objects. We require a larger range of display options--up to 19" diagonal
screens with resolutions in the 1200 x 1000 pixel range. Color and gray
scales should also be available. This size is needed for handling multiple
document displays in legible type.
MAY 1986
OIT #0330-86
STAT
STAT
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STAT
While ESD is concerned with hardware almost in this range, your
orientation appears to be in the graphics, CAD/CAM arena. At the time of
our meetings, the graphics direction to be taken by ESD was still being
debated and not disclosed, but it is clear from all indications that the
trend is toward continuing to view graphics as a discrete CAD/CAM-like
market rather than as intimately relating to documents. This is reinforced
by the continuing idea that the 3270 AT requires special hardware to do
any sort of host graphics, neglecting the possibilities for doing some
graphics in the basic unit itself. It is not clear that the trend to special
graphics units and the desire for a family of integrated office automation
systems to handle text, graphics, and pictorial information are mutually
compatible.
I hope it is clear from our visits and other discussions that our
interest in these areas is very active. Disclosures on directions in the
graphics arena would be of great interest, as are any indications of direc-
tions in office automation utilizing intelligent workstations. The particular
interest in high-end document production is an important one in our planning.
Equipment that does this kind of work is available from various sources,
although without the required full integration into the IBM architecture.
We note the lack of an IBM entry in this arena to set standards. If
capabilities such as those described were available in a member of the 3270
AT family or even the standard AT, it would significantly enhance the attrac-
tiveness of that family and related IBM products.
I hope this discussion helps to clarify some areas of mutual interest.
We are encouraged by planned convergence of the IBM AT and the 3270 AT. This
directly addresses a major area of concern in large user organizations such
as CIA. I want to thank you and your obviously very capable and dedicated
personnel for sharing their plans with us. We appreciate the opportunity
to learn about Entry Systems Division and thank you for the courtesy and
hospitality extended to us. The dialogue to date has been extremely valuable,
and I hope it will continue.
Sincerely,
STAT
Enclosure:
As stated
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Intelligence analysis spans virtually all disciplines from largely
qualitative political assessments to the mostly quantitative analysis of
scientific and technical subjects. Analysts' data processing needs
likewise range from word processing and complex document creation to
large-scale physical simulation and modeling. The common finished
product is words -- lengthy reports, short memoranda or briefings. The
most common format today for the intelligence product is paper, but the
Agency is exploring the possibility of presenting analysis in automated
form as well.
The analytical process itself involved synthesizing large amounts of
information from numerous sources in a variety of formats -- text,
numbers and equations, maps, graphics and photographs. During the
process, analysts construct, combine and communicate text, graphics,
pictures and spreadsheet data (either in tabular form or as graphics) in
compound documents. Thus the "desktop" user interface has strong appeal
-- analysts have reacted favorably both to commercial products that use
such a metaphor as well as internal Agency prototypes. The key
ingredients in the "desktop" interface include:
1. A high-resolution display large enough for two full
pages of text side-by-side. Our experience is that 1000 dots
horizontally is the minimum resolution required. A screen
size of 15-inch is the minimum size required to display two
pages of text in a font large enough to read easily; a 19-inch
screen is preferable.
2. The ability to display parts of several different
documents on the screen at once with separate scrolling for
each document.
3. The ability to cut and paste between the different
documents displayed.
Intelligence analysis requires quite sophisticated graphics.
Analytical products often include maps overlayed with symbols,
photographs, diagrams, charts or other forms of graphics. The same
workstation the analyst uses to produce text should also be able to
store, transmit and manipulate all forms of graphics and pictorial
information as well. Some production tools are also used in the
analytical process. Graphics, for example, help analysts understand
many problems through illustration or by precise measurement, and
spreadsheet software is useful for economists or any analysts who
require mathematical, sorting or counting operations or tabular data.
Obviously, analysts also need the ability to directly generate graphics
from spreadsheets and incorporate both the table and graph into textual
documents.
Although intelligence analysts require sophisticated office
automation tools for production, their need for advanced analytical
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tools is even more important. Analysts would like to be able to make
use of the techniques being developed by the Artificial Intelligence
community as these become available -- expert systems, natural language
understanding, and pattern recognition, for example. Any analyst
workstation should be able to run such software using the same user-
friendly, desktop interface that accesses the production tools.
Because many of the analytical tools needed will never be available
"off-the-shelf," any advanced analyst workstation should be amenable to
personalization and end-user programming so that those analysts capable
of doing so can develop their own analytical programs. Finally,,.the
workstation software should have an open architecture with powerful
applications development and programmer productivity tools that will
allow analysts to develop their own applications as the need arises.
Intelligence analysis is a creative process. A hardened and inflexible
group of tools will encourage analysts to do only what the tools permit,
while a flexible and creative atmosphere will encourage analysts to
probe for new insights and deeper understanding.
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MD/OIT
k14 May 86)
Distribution:
Original - Addressee (w/enc)
/X- ER (w/enc)
1 - D/OIT (w/enc)
2 - OIT Registry (w/enc)
2 - MD/OIT (w/o enc)
1 - DDA (w/enc)
1 - C/ASG (w/enc)
STAT
STAT
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