Comment: Business thrives on intelligence

Recent events in Indonesia serve to remind us that the War on Terror is very far from being won. Meanwhile, people are asking why more was not done to anticipate the dangers of the attack and take steps to prevent it, or at least to issue warnings. US intelligence agencies have been accused of ignoring crucial information that might have saved lives.

However, if you look at things from the US intelligence agencies' perspective, you may have more than a little sympathy for them. First, US intelligence is highly fragmented, relying on information from 20 federal agencies, including the Coastguard, the FBI and the Department of Transportation. Second, these agencies receive piles of information and alerts every day from contacts throughout the world, and if they issued warnings for every threat, the chances are that you wouldn't want to go anywhere.

Following 11 September, it was found that the agencies had received warnings from various sources, but had not strung the information together in a coherent way to form a deeper understanding of the dangers.

The new US Office of Homeland Security, set up following 11 September, has grappled with this prioritisation problem, and has formed a new weapon to help in its war on terror. It is not based on nuclear force, it is not based on conventional arms, nor does it rely on the development of a new generation of real-life James Bonds.

Data fusion

The latest weapon in the war on terror is IT based - the US Office of Homeland Security is looking to data fusion to fight the terrorists.

Data fusion is the art of sifting through tonnes of data from disparate sources to pick out loosely related nuggets of information that may not mean much on their own but start to form a more significant picture when viewed together.

The US government has just agreed a huge contract with Autonomy, which will supply software to collect and analyse intelligence. The software works by collating and categorising unstructured data such as Web sites and emails and will be deployed across the desktops of more than 200,000 government employees. The software extends search capabilities to text, video or voice messages, before linking information together, summarising it and creating reports.

The US government is tackling a problem that is familiar to many firms. Companies can only take stock of their market, and anticipate future threats and challenges if they too are able to thread useful bits of information together into a coherent view of the clear and present danger. This data may relate to customer buying trends, supplier selling trends or even information about where competitors are likely to strike next. Firms should get used to sifting through their data wherever it is kept in order to build up a coherent view of their business.

Of course, mining data sources such as emails might bring firms into conflict with data protection laws in some cases. But it is worth considering the issues now so that workable systems can be set up to cash in on what is the most crucial asset of many companies - their knowledge.

Whether you call it data fusion, business intelligence or knowledge management, the need for such systems is clear. To stay competitive, firms must exploit their knowledge, otherwise their chances of failure will increase.

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