John Edwards: CIA Should Update Tech Platforms to Expedite Data Collection, Analysis

John Edwards, chief information officer at the CIA, has said the agency should update its technology platforms and optimize its workforce to accelerate data collection and generate insights from gathered information, FedTech Magazine published Tuesday.

“Increasing the edge over our adversaries, our operational advantage will be determined by the speed at which we sense, collect, ingest, condition, analyze and characterize data of the representative threat,” he said in his speech at the FedScoop Public Sector Innovation Summit held Dec. 4 in Washington, D.C.

“Computing at the edge, the point of mission execution, is increasingly important,” he noted.

Edwards cited a platform of shared services delivered through a private cloud, dubbed Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise, and the IC’s effort to migrate ICITE to a common reference architecture.

He called on the IC to implement agile development models and the CIA to adopt agile procurement vehicles in order to keep pace with industry innovation.