i2 CEO Bob Griffin receives Queen's Award from HM Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Hugh Duberly Esq CBE
Dressed in his traditional royal garb, HM Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Hugh Duberly Esq CBE bestowed the Queen’s Award to i2 for the second year in a row. The Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, Mark Lloyd, read from the official royal scroll at a ceremony attended by hundreds of i2 employees at the company’s Cambridge, UK headquarters on 15 July.
The event marked a positive milestone in the company’s two decade history providing solutions for law enforcement, national security, defence and the private sector.
The Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, Mark Lloyd, reads from the the official royal scroll
“Winning this award for the second year running is a fitting tribute to the continuing achievements of the company and our employees,” said i2 CEO Robert Griffin. “The successes of our products in helping our customers collaborate and share information, investigate, predict, prevent and defeat the world’s most sophisticated criminal and terrorist threats has been an instrumental factor in this achievement.”
A day prior, Mr. Griffin and i2 employee Tracey Ellis attended a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace for all the Queen’s Award winners.
When crime and terrorism occur they rarely respect jurisdictional boundaries. To combat these criminals, law enforcement organizations have to be prepared to share information from the bottom-up and top-down. The rise of fusion centers and information sharing initiatives across the nation have paved the way over the years to bridge intelligence gaps and put the right information in the right hands, at their point of need.
At the same time, there are still many challenges to face before information sharing becomes de riguer across local, state, national and international boundaries. To better understand and communicate these issues, i2 hosted an information sharing panel at its Americas User Conference earlier this month.
Panelists included Kathleen O’Toole, the Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate in Ireland, who was previously the Boston, Mass., Police Commissioner. During her time in Boston, she was critical to the founding of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of the nation’s first fusion centers. Deputy Chief Troy Smith of the Grand Junction Police Department in Colorado also offered up his expertise gleaned from his department’s organization in getting Colorado to be one of the states that has successfully established information sharing state-wide. Tim Riley, a current i2 SVP and former CIO for the Los Angeles Police Department, played a large role in establishing information sharing agreements between the LAPD, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Orange County. Chriss Knisley, the i2 Assistant Vice President for the COPLINK product line was also in attendance to discuss the technological standpoint of information sharing. i2’s Director of Corporate Communications Mitch Derman moderated the session.
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i2 CEO Bob Griffin
With the nation’s debt ceiling looming, it has become clear that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will not agree to new borrowing unless government spending cuts are included in that authorization. But when it comes to reducing outlays, the programs that make up the lion’s share of spending, and which are also the most contentious – nondiscretionary spending like entitlements and health care – are often put off for another day. If we’re going to have a meaningful, long-term impact on the fiscal well-being of our economy, this can’t continue. Fortunately, we have an option available that can make an immediate difference on one of the biggest budget busters, without eliminating any programs or forcing tough choices – tackling health care fraud by leveraging existing technologies. READ MORE
I agree with the findings of the National Research Council as reported by Kellie Lunney at Government Executive. Analysts are born rather than taught. A subject matter expert can be a very valuable resource for the Intelligence Community (IC), but may not understand how best to analyze related data. Likewise, a true analyst may have no knowledge of the subject matter, but can quickly interpret the data. An analyst in the IC needs to understand how to take many different types of data and apply various analysis techniques. This may be best done in conjunction with a subject matter expert, who would be able to help the analyst understand the data set and suggest what the analyst’s finding could mean.
I also agree with the report’s suggestion that continuous training is essential for analysts. Training helps analysts stay fresh on their game and understand new techniques.
A true analyst is motivated by the work they do. When I performed analysis for the IC, I was excited to be at work because there was always more data to analyze. Visualizing new data and deciphering it with historic data to help fulfill my team’s mission is what brought me into work early each day. And I now get the opportunity to help enhance the work of other analysts in the IC with new techniques such as Social Network Analysis, and with other data sources such as geospatial data and open source.
This post was developed by i2 as an advertorial for the Spring 2011 edition of RUSI’s (The Royal United Services Institute) Defence Systems.
In 2003, Saddam Hussein was on the run. With his chain of command eliminated, traditional intelligence efforts to track him down were failing. Col. James Hickey, U.S. Army, heading the intelligence operation to find Saddam, determined that the reclusive Iraqi dictator only trusted and communicated with family members of his own tribal group. As Hickey said, “We built a fairly elaborate estimate of who Saddam’s supporters were in the area; though it did provide security, it also worked against them. Once we learnt who did what, it allowed us to work against them.”1
Hickey and his team were using a nascent form of Social Network Analysis (SNA). In its purest form, SNA relies on examining the linkages between people and places within a defined group or locality in order to deduce the key decision makers or vulnerable links and where they are located. In this case, it was the pinpointing of Saddam’s chauffeurs that led to his historic capture.
Figure 1
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On the heels of this week’s announcement that i2 and PPM 2000 have entered into a strategic channel partnership agreement, the two companies co-hosted a webinar showcasing the advanced capabilities of their combined offerings: PPM’s enterprise level investigation management solution Perspective and the suite of analysis products from i2, including Analyst’s Notebook and iBridge. 
Led by Brian McIlravey, co-CEO of PPM 2000, and i2’s Mark Massop, Director and Solutions Specialist, the webinar demonstrated how the products significantly reduce the time and effort required of analysts to turn routine data into actionable intelligence – the key to any successful investigation.
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This was first posted by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an independent campaigning organisation committed to bringing about change that protects the natural world from environmental crime and abuse. Re-posted here with EIA’s permission.
By Charlotte Davies, Intelligence Analyst, EIA
Recently, I was interested to read about a physicist named John Archibald Wheeler. One of Wheeler’s theories was (put very basically) that everything is information. Meaning, literally, everything is information – that the deepest foundations of the universe are ultimately made up of nuggets of information, corresponding to a vast chorus of “yes” or “no” binary choices, from which all physical existence flows.
So this word ‘information’ no longer merely suggests something like ‘facts’ or ‘knowledge’. As information philosophy explains it, the word has now expanded to mean something greater – something that can even be described in biological, metaphysical, even cosmological terms. It’s said we’re living in an information age. In recent times, the concept of information has mutated to symbolise and represent many different things, and come to guide us into myriad new ways of thinking and doing. Likewise, in the enforcement world, the understanding that information exists, that it can be captured, expanded and enhanced to enable appropriate responses to illegal activity has also undergone an expansion in recent years. READ MORE
UK Webinar: 25 November 3PM UK Time
Find out how to quickly unravel criminal and terrorist operations and easily identify their power centers with Social Network Analysis capabilities in Analyst’s Notebook 8.5 from i2. In this webcast, you’ll learn:
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How to quickly identify key players and relationships and the critical roles they may play in an organisation |
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How to uncover potential organizational weak points hidden in high volumes of data to help disrupt criminal or terrorist organisations |
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How to keep track of the rise of potential new leaders and the decline of old ones |
Terrorist and criminal activity can involve seemingly unconnected people, interactions, and organisations. Massive amounts of data can conceal critical relationships, and pinpointing their importance has typically required highly specialised skills—and resources.
Register Now
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