105th Congress                                            Rept. 105-135
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 1st Session                                                     Part 1
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   INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1998

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    Mr. Goss, from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,
                        submitted the following

                              R E P O R T
                               
[...]

                          FBIS Reorganization

    The Committee supports the further establishment and
maintenance of a strong open source capability within the IC. A
comprehensive open source collection, translation, and analytic
effort is crucial to the IC's ability to maintain global
coverage and to understand developments both in "lower" and
"higher" tier countries. Not only do open sources provide
insight into open societies, careful scrutiny of "closed
society" media (e.g., Iran, North Korea) can also reveal
valuable information on trends, new developments, and
leadership plans and intentions.
    The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) re-
engineering strategy calls for using more modern and
commercially available technologies as FBIS's operational
linchpin and to transition from traditional large-scale, static
collection and processing centers toward a more agile and less
expensive architecture. The Committee applauds CIA's efforts to
adapt FBIS's infrastructure and operating practices to
incorporate new technologies and to meet intelligence
requirements more efficiently. The Committee has several
concerns, however, about the current FBIS re-engineering plan.
    First, the Committee is concerned that important resource
allocation decisions are being made without fully taking into
consideration "customer" requirements; there currently is no
formal, direct open source requirements system that can be
tapped to help translate requirements into rational resource
allocation decisions. In addition, it is unclear to many FBIS
customers what regions of the world will be affected by
significant decreases in collection, translation an analytical
activities. The Committee believes that open source customers
must be kept fully informed of what changes in services they
will see as a result of the re-engineering. The Committee also
believes that open source collection should be driven by the
direct input of major customers, particularly the all-source
analysts who best understand where their information gaps lie.
    It should be noted that the Committee will closely
scrutinize any fiscal year 1997 FBIS reprogramming request to
determine whether the request fits into the overall
reengineering strategy. The Committee requests that it be kept
fully and currently informed of the plans and implementation of
the re-engineering effort. In addition, the Committee requests
that the DCI submit a report on the FBIS re-engineering plan to
the intelligence oversight Committees by 1 September 1997. The
report should include the following information:
          What is the timeline for implementing the re-
        engineering plan?
          What is the mechanism for reviewing the progress and
        effects of the re-engineering plan?
          For what countries/regions/issues will FBIS reduce
        its coverage (collection, translation, analysis)?
          What countries/regions/issues will FBIS no longer
        cover?
          How will the "new way" of doing business be managed
        (i.e., telecommuting employees, regional hubs, etc.)?
          What disruptions in service are anticipated? and
          How will FBIS work with "customers" to ensure their
        requirements are being met?