Proposers' Day Notice for the IARPA Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program
Solicitation Number: IARPA-BAA-11-11(pd)
Agency: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office: Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Location: IARPA1
Solicitation Number:
IARPA-BAA-11-11(pd)
Notice Type:
Presolicitation
Synopsis:
Added: Jul 01, 2011 2:52 pm
Complete information below the line.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will host a Proposers' Day Conference for the Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program on August 3, 2011, in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation in support of the program. The Conference will be held from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the conference will be to provide introductory information on OSI and the research problems that the program aims to address, to respond to questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities and find potential team partners. This announcement serves as a pre-solicitation notice and is issued solely for information and planning purposes. The Proposers' Day Conference does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals or proposal abstracts. Conference attendance is voluntary and is not required to propose to future solicitations (if any) associated with this program.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
Many significant societal events are preceded and/or followed by population-level changes in communication, consumption, and movement. Some of these changes may be indirectly observable from publicly available data, such as web search trends, blogs, microblogs, internet traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others. Published research has found that many of these data sources are individually useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks and macroeconomic trends. However, little research has examined the value of combinations of data from diverse sources.
The OSI Program seeks to develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters. The Program will aim to develop methods that “beat the news” by fusing early indicators of events from multiple data sources and types. Anticipated innovations include: development of empirically-driven sociological models for population behavior change in anticipation of, and response to, events of interest; collection and processing of publicly available data that represent those population behavior changes; development of data extraction techniques that focus on volume, rather than depth, by identifying shallow features of data that correlate with events; development of multivariate time series models robust to non-stationary, noisy data to reveal patterns that precede events; use of Granger causality, Phase Slope Index measures, or other novel techniques to estimate causality in time series; training of classifiers to weight combinations of time series for generating probabilistic warnings of events.
OSI will not fund research on U.S. events, the identification or movement of specific individuals, collection mechanisms that require directed participation by individuals, or advanced natural language processing. It is expected that performers will use existing, off-the-shelf technologies to extract features of interest in publicly available data, and that research will focus on methods for correlating combinations of data with events.
Collaborative efforts and teaming among potential performers will be encouraged. It is anticipated that teams will be multidisciplinary, and might include social scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, content extraction experts, and information theorists.
IARPA anticipates that academic institutions and companies from around the world will participate in this program. Researchers will be encouraged to publish their findings in academic journals.
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Attendees must register no later than 5:00 pm Eastern time, July 27, 2011 at https://conference.brtrc.com/OSI_pd/Overview.aspx. Directions to the conference facility and other materials will be available on that website. No walk-in registrations will be allowed.
Due to space limitations, attendance will be limited to the first 150 registrants and to no more than 2 representatives per organization. All attendees will be required to present a government-issued photo identification to enter the conference. Foreign nationals will need to present a passport.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The late morning and afternoon will include Presentation & Poster sessions to provide an opportunity for attendees to present their organizations' capabilities and to explore teaming arrangements. Attendees who wish to present organization capabilities for teaming opportunities may submit a request through the registration web site. Details on the presentation and poster formats, and the procedure for submitting a request to present, will be provided after approval to register for the conference has been granted. Time available for presentations and posters will be limited. Therefore, presentations will be limited to the first 15 registered respondents who request an oral presentation, and posters will be limited to the first 15 registered respondents who request a poster presentation. These presentations are not intended to solicit feedback from the Government, and Government personnel will not be present during the presentations. This Proposers' Day is intended for participants who are eligible to compete on the anticipated BAA. Other Government Agencies, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), or any other similar organizations that have a special relationship with the Government, that gives them access to privileged or proprietary information, or access to Government equipment or real property, will not be eligible to submit proposals to the anticipated BAA nor participate as team members under proposals submitted by eligible entities. While such entities are not prohibited from attending the Proposers' Day, due to space limitations, preference will be given first to those organizations that are eligible to compete.
IARPA will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred to participate in this conference.
Questions concerning conference & registration can be sent to dni-iarpa-events@ugov.gov .
Questions regarding the program can be sent to dni-iarpa-baa-11-11@ugov.gov.
Contracting Office Address:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Washington, District of Columbia 20511
United States
Primary Point of Contact.:
Jason Matheny,
Program Manager
dni-iarpa-baa-11-11@ugov.gov
Phi Beta Iota: Project GRANDVIEW under Tim Hendrickson at NGIC in the 1980's was far ahead of the current mind-set. CIA OSC has wasted at least $250M, STRATCOM at least $50M, various other parties close to a billion if you count all the butts in seats doing nothing useful. The lunacy continues.
See Also:
Graphic: Intelligence Maturity Scale
Graphic: Pre-Conditions of Revolution
2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings
2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated
2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability
