OSCOL STATUS REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00509R000100030009-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 4, 2003
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: August 10, 1978
• Content Type: MF

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DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Human Resources Committee
Office of the Chairman HRC-C-78-061
10 August 1978
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy to the DCI for
Collection Tasking
Chairman, Human Resources Committee
STATINTL
SUBJECT: OSCOL Status Report
1. The HRC ad hoc working group on open source collection (OSCOL)
will complete its examination of Community OSCOL activities in early
September, and should be able to formulate its recommendations by
late September or early October. The working group has covered
much of ground already as indicated below, and has identified
a number of problems in this field of activity.
2. Some benefits from this line of inquiry have begun
to accrue as a natural consequence of the fact that man-
agers of some key OSCOL activities are on the working group
itself, and others are participating in its fact finding activities.
For example, selected FBIS personnel will be visiting the Air Force
Foreign Technology Division (AF/FTD) soon to compare methodology,
as a follow-on to the recent working group critique of the AF/FTD-
managed DoD Central Information Reference and Control (CIRC) system.
3? At the risk of over simplification., the working group thus
far has found some limited functional overlap among Community elements,
but nothing that could be termed an obvious waste of resources. From
a Community perspective, OSCOL activities are many and varied but
nothing has surfaced to indicate that management is notably lacking.
The large number of individual OSCOL activities complicates the
coordination task. There appears to be good interagency per5on-
to-person coordination within a given OSCOL function (e.g., analyst
to analyst) and satisfactory coordination amang program managers,
but people at all levels have difficulty keeping abreast of the
OSCOL whole. For this reason analysts may not be aware of all of the
OSCOL materials available to them on a given production task. Further,
there are indications, currently being explored by the working group,
that intelligence analysts may not be using existing data bases to their
full support potential, especially in cross-agency arrangements. Thus
some opportunities far systemic improvement through better interaction.
among Community elements may be going unnoticed.
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4. Since its initial meeting on 20 June, the working group has
examined the document storage and retrieval capabilities STATINTL
'
s
of CIA's Office of Central Reference (OCR) and the CIA
Library; the Library of Congress' Federal Research Division
(LC/FRD);
open source materials
at the Army's Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC); and
functional interaction between those units.
5. The working group also is examining, and will be pre-
paring special reports concerning (a) Intelligence Community and
contractual translation activities, and (b) the network of
library facilities supporting Community OSCOL activities. On the
latter the working group is collaborating with the R.MS' Information
Handling Committee (IHC). The group has prepared and distributed
(to HRC members) OSCOL Briefs on the LC/FRD, FBIS, and the
twin map acquisition and publications acquisition programs,
and other Briefs are in preparation. When completed, this
set of briefs will serve as a primer on Community OSCOL
activities, and as a basis for a Community sponsored OSCOL
orientation course for new intelligence analysts, collection
managers and staff reviewing officers. Before settling down
to draft recommendations, the working group would like a
closer look at the OSCOL activities of the Naval Intelligence
Support Center (NISC); plus additional information concerning use
of OSCOL materials by Community analysts, and the central role
of FBIS's CTS in Community translation activities.
6. During the course of its fact-finding activities the working
group has learned much about a number of problems in the OSCOL arena,
and what program managers are doing about them, or would do if they
had the resources. This knowledge will help shape the group's
recommendations, and will be passed on to the permanent entity to be
formed by the HRC to deal with OSCOL matters of Community concern.
In this category fall problems relating to overseas collection. supportive
of national intelligence production on S&T topics. The OSCOL working
group is coordinating its review activity with the STIC S&T working group
so that the two activities do not cover the same ground. The STIC
S&T working group is targeting primarily on overseas collection
of S&T information, while the OSCOL working group is giving particular
attention to processing (translation, abstracting, extracting, storage,
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retrieval, etc.), distribution and exploitation of OSCOL material that
has been obtained.
STATINTL
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