Phi Beta Iota: STRONG ANGEL was the other major innovation besides CATALYST, Analysis 2000, and MCIA JNID. Below is Round II from STRONG ANGEL, with Round II from M4IS2 soon to be made public, built around SILOBREAKER (actually, Son of SILOBREAKER). We considered forcing visits to the Synergy Strike Force home page, but decided that the richness of the content there needed to be displayed here.
I. Introduction
Welcome to the MESS-KIT wiki: Minimum Essential Software Services for Knowledge and Information Transfer
Users — What skills are needed to use the MESS-KIT
II. Structure
The MESS-KIT system is composed of three basic components — the software package, the virtual environment and the hardware:
a. APPLICATION SOFTWARE PACKAGE: One or more Virtual Machine Instances that package together an operating system with a web server environment and all free-and-open-source/commercial-off-the-shelf software modules. Example: A VMware instance of an Ubuntu Linux installation with a full LAMP web server hosting environment and associated web software.
b. VIRTUAL MACHINE CLIENT SOFTWARE: One Virtual Machine Software Client to package, distribute, and host one or more Application Software Packages and abstract the application software from the host operating system. Examples: VMWare Fusion and Sun VirtualBox.
c. HARDWARE: Hardware on which the Virtual Machine Client Software and Application Software Package will run. The Hardware will include a host operating system. Examples: MacMini running OSX, ASUS eeePC Netbook running eeeBuntu Linux.
The search term brings up appropriate results, but the fact of the search gives us an opportunity to provide comment.
1) Nothing now being used by governments, and certainly not iBase or Palantir, both aging technologies that do not scale and have too many fat-finger handicaps, fulfills the originial requirements documents crafted in the late 1980's.
2) The ONLY programs that have gotten anywhere close are COPERNICUS plus plus, and SILOBREAKER. However, both of these have been slow to recognize the urgency of integrating–fully integrating–capabilities that address each of the eighteen functionalities. Below is the list of softwares now in use by US Special Operations Command J-23 Open Source Intelligence Branch along with the STRONG ANGEL TOOZL and a couple of other things.
The global standard for multinational information-sharing and sense-making is in the process of being designed, funded, and distributed. If you think you have something relevant to that, generally only open source software will be considered, get in touch with any of the individuals above.
Phi Beta Iota: Including Rand Beer and Jim Clapper is what causes this search to fail. Dr. Dr. Dave Warner, one of the co-founders of Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), is the originator of this idea. Dr. Dr. Warner is too much the diplomat to point out the obvious: the concept requires open minds, a shelving of rankism, multinational engagement, and a raft of other minor but vital accommodations that are simply not in the DNA of those now serving. They are all good people who mean well, but innovation like this is on the margins and receives lip service (much as the Open Government initiative has received lip service).
Dr.Dave Warner, a medical neuroscientist, has an MD/PhD from Loma Linda University, is the director of the Institute for Interventional Informatics and has gained international recognition for pioneering new methods of physiologically based human-computer interaction. The rest of us know him as one of the leaders of STRONG ANGEL, as the pioneer of the one-ounce laptop TOOZL, and more recently, as the lead definer of of Whole of Government and Multinational Multifunctional Information Sharing & Synergy Capabilites.
In 1985 CIA knew all it needed to know to create the all-source analytic workstation. It never happened for all the reasons that continue to incapacitate the DNI today.
