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CRS-17
Open source acquisition and use at DHS appears to be in the formative stages, a situation similar to that existing at many agencies. There is an acceptance of the need for greater use, but the infrastructure is incomplete and observers believe that full utilization of available sources has not been obtained. Metrics for Open Source Use One of the key challenges to managing the use of open source is the absence of widely accepted measurements or metrics. Intelligence Community managers seek quantifable measures for day-to-day administration. Counts are made of the occasions in which open source analyses have been included in the President's Daily Brief, one of the Intelligence Community's most important products. Other products are published by the Open Source Center based solely on open source information and disseminated to intelligence analysts and outside experts. Use of the website opensource.gov is also monitored. Inasmuch as open source information is used by all-source analysts in connection with information from classified sources, it is difficult to measure how much open source information contributes to a specific intelligence product. It is anticipated that open source information will increasingly be relied upon given its greater availability, the nature of issues that today's analysts must cover, and the heavier emphasis placed on it by senior intelligence leaders. The ultimate metric for the Intelligence Community is, however, the quality of analysis. Today's analysts work with the awareness that products reflecting ignorance of information contained in open sources will discredit the entire intelligence effort. This will be especially the case when intelligence products are made public and are scrutinized by knowledgeable outside experts. Congressional Oversight of Open Source: Potential Options Congress has been an important advocate of greater use of open source information; as noted above, it created a statutory requirement for increased use of open source information. In addition to ongoing oversight, some observers suggest that there are also a number of specific issues that Congress might address to further the goal of its greater use. These issues include: " Identifying open source activities " Copyright issues " Moving the NOSC to the Office of the DNI Identifying Open Source Activities It is not clear that there are adequate reporting mechanisms to allow Congress to evaluate the implementation of mandated open source efforts. This creates uncertainties about how the mandate is progressing. For example, while the DNI currently has the statutory authority to ensure the effective execution of the budget,
