Scale & Speed | An Evolutionary Journey to Modernize Investigative Tools

In 1998 I started training as a police officer in Australia. The #police department was going through a modernization project to use word templates to complete department forms rather than typewriters.? Can you imagine this?? The art of #intelligenceanalysis was still a manual process.? Read information reports, highlight critical details, collate on a whiteboard and draw links; constantly updating, reviewing, and collating.? I only really started to dig into intelligence analysis in the early 2000s, and by this time, there was more modernization with some basic #visualization #software to assist with this.

I eventually left policing, took up a role with a new anti-corruption agency, and was introduced to a new intelligence analysis toolset. It certainly created greater efficiency compared to our past manual methods.? We felt modern and ready for anything.

Many investigations required analysts to examine phone records. What we analyzed back then was relatively clean transactional #data. We sometimes got a peek from the IT forensics teams to see what they could extract from seized phones and computers.? Our minds operated with excitement as we devised ways to mesh this data together to find out what our targets were doing and with whom they were doing it. #Technology allowed us to cast our net wider.

In 2010 I transitioned to the private sector, working for an intelligence software company. During my international travels delivering support and training to police and national security agencies from India to South Korea, New Zealand, and everything in between, I learned that the vast amount of available investigative data had exploded overnight.? Nothing on the market could keep up with the art of the possible.? The underlying tradecraft skills for an intelligence analyst were universal, but the data was becoming more complex, and the volumes continued to increase exponentially.?

I had worked for a small niche #software consulting company to huge multinationals, some with hundreds of thousands of staff.? I felt that the larger the company, the more they promoted being able to do everything. I was as tired as the customers we spoke to of these broad claims.? The client would tell me,? “Sam, I have ten problems. What can you help me with?” I was always honest and reminded them where we truly could help, and I would help connect them with other experts for their other issues.? I wasn’t there to dump a pile of brochures on their desk and promise the world.?

I lost count in the commercial world of the internal conversations with sales and product managers stating, “intelligence analysis is an art. Stop making the tools do things they are not there to do.” We deliver solutions to staff who have received specialized training to do a specific job. How does one evolve as an analyst with the tools you have? We can’t leave this incredible work buried in their intelligence #database; we must ensure that those who need it can access it.? We need a toolset for them to do their job and then an ability for an #investigator or supervisor to reach in and educate themselves on the findings.?

My career path from the public to the private sector gives me a unique perspective. Only a few have practiced the art of intelligence analysis, then worked in various solution providers within this niche world. In 2019, I was given the opportunity to work with some fantastic people to develop a tool that explicitly helps those I have spent two decades working with.? This is where the VA Insight Portal was born.

Our design thinking workshops came up with two primary objectives; the solution must be intuitive/user-friendly and lightweight on the IT infrastructure.? We gave our developers education about the analytical cycle and how an #analyst applies it to their work as a foundation for the tools they were to develop to support this work.? The solution needed to be easily deployed using industry-grade technology yet configurable to adapt to the needs of the workflow or data.??

Users have commented that there is next to no training needed due to the intuitive nature of the user interface.

Notable is the favorites page, where users can save their most used features in an easily organized area, which gives them ownership of their environment.? Configurable alerting is the next important feature for collaboration; it helps keep tabs on targets or work required.? The tactical visualization component allows users to rapidly understand a network in the field or dig a little deeper with the benefit of time in an office.?

Working alongside our partners, I have been privy to the IT discussions pre- and post-deployment. These conversations have been the easiest in my career. The components are easy to explain and demonstrate, and many IT worries subside quickly. We can scale from a handful of users in a small department to well into hundreds of users. We can reuse and adapt to existing infrastructure using the cloud or on-premises.

Due to the nature of the clients' intelligence functions, naming them can be difficult. Still, we are proud to include some notable law enforcement/compliance departments in the Australasian region, an Asian excise agency, and soon-to-be onboarding more not-for-profit wildlife protection organizations.??

I look forward to this journey and hope that we can help so many of my fellow analysts.