It's easy to think the intelligence community is all-knowing. But there's a HUGE gap in its knowledge that is hurting it--and us. The IC is an $81.5 bln dollar enterprise, yet is does not measure the value of the intelligence it produces. This has to change. Here's why: (Thread)

Despite what the IC may know about other things (LOTS) it tracks almost no data about who uses its products. This means the IC cannot observe patterns and trends, understand what its customers value, know which collection platforms will yield the highest return on investment. 2/

This means the IC is making costly decisions w/impact on U.S. security, global governance, and civil liberties and privacy all without a solid understanding of which of its tools offer the most value for policymakers and the largest return on investment for taxpayers. 3/

Why does this matter? Because the IC is currently positioning itself to acquire more tools to analyze more data (commercial data, publicly available data, you name it) and assuming that more data will = more insights, even though that may not be true. 4/

The IC needs to adopt a new, comprehensive approach to collecting and analyzing information about ITSELF. A comprehensive understanding of who is accessing and using IC reports and products will provide valuable insights about what policymakers and warfighters need. 5/

Perhaps most importantly, business analytics can help the IC as a whole understand where each component is adding unique value. That can help inform the allocation of scarce resources, align collection capacity to where it can have the biggest impact, and make tradeoffs. 6/

Systematic, high-quality business data should be a top priority for the IC going forward. That will require the DNI and Congress to create and maintain a loud demand signal for it. The NSC may also need to help. 7/

But whatever it does, before the IC invests billions of dollars in new tools and technologies, it should first invest in understanding its own business model so it can make objective and data-driven decisions about where to invest in the future. /END