People who communicate for a living know what a struggle it can be to express thoughts accurately. The need to do so is never more important than when creating intelligence documents for defense and homeland security. Presidential Order 13356 directly affects these documents, and institutes a change that will revolutionize how information is passed from one agency to another and ultimately, to the President and his Cabinet.

Traditionally, intelligence is authored for a single audience who has a particular area of interest and an identified set of security clearances. As the intelligence is disseminated and reviewed, it becomes apparent that other audiences will benefit from the information and authors edit or rewrite the documents as necessary to suit the interests and security of these other audiences. This serial method of communication is very slow and prone to the introduction of errors.

The President’s order indicates that intelligence must be written with sharing in mind. The author is responsible for analyzing the appropriate target agencies at the federal, state, and local level, and to author in components that can be automatically disseminated without further editing. While this has the potential to dramatically improve the safety of our nation, it also places new demands on the author that leave many people wondering how it can possibly work.

Realizing the degree of change that will be required of authors, the Executive Order also instructs agencies to incorporate its goals into “the design and use of information systems,” and the Department of Homeland Security has led collaborative efforts to define the roadmap for implementing the President’s orders through XML technology.

This is where In.vision software comes into play—in fact, In.vision has supplied more desktops with software for XML authoring of top secret intelligence than all other vendors combined. In doing so, In.vision has provided a broad range of capabilities that are directly related to fulfillment of the requirements set forth in EO 13388:

• The ability to automate processing and cross-domain dissemination of tearlines on the desktop so that the author may preview the work, on the server for publishing, and with flexible collaborative tools that support internal and external coordination.

• Off-the-shelf support for EO 13388 Policy standards such as IC ISM, CAPCO, and IS MSP.