I am currently studying for a Certificate in Criminal Intelligence and this semester am doing a subject called Strategic Intelligence Practice. I was reading my study materials last night and was amazed at the all too familiar issues raised by the authors in regards to intelligence analysts. They are facing a challenge to retain their place in organisations due to access to the internet and open source intelligence materials. Educators are impressing on analysts the importance of adding value to their products by including recommendations in their assessments. There are several reasons why they have been reluctant to do this in the past and due to the increase in freely available material, policy makers and managers have started doing their own research and bypassing intelligence analysts.
They face the same dilemma as librarians, is it our job to answer client questions or provide access to sources only. Analysts know that forecasting is difficult to guarantee and so may prefer to provide facts and conclusions and stop short at supplying recommendations. We are often faced with a similar problem with clients asking a research query (often one they don't fully understand) and hoping we'll provide an answer rather than advise them on sources to consult.
It seems that intelligence analysts are striving to gain recognition as a profession, such as librarians (yes, we got a mention), lawyers and doctors have. Much of what they do is very similar to our research function. They liaise with clients within an organisation, gather information, data and intelligence (all of the usual problems with definitions apply) and organise that material into a strategic intelligence assessment or some other type of product or report. The tools, raw data and methods they work with may differ from ours but the imperitive to market themselves, increase their skills and gain recognition are very similar to ours.
