Today I’m publishing an important guest-essay, with a brief introduction. Last month the Wall Street Journal published a 12-part online series about college graduates and their paths to success, featuring surveys and input from job recruiters. One thing caught my eye, at least when blogged by an acquaintance, Prof. Kristan Wheaton of the Mercyhurst College Institute Of Intelligence Studies. The WSJ’s study included a look at recent graduates’ job satisfaction in their new careers, and as Prof. Wheaton strikingly put it in his own blogpost:
“Intelligence Analysts are Insanely Happy.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not really true by and large; Prof. Wheaton seems slightly dubious as well. Many readers of this blog are intelligence analysts themselves, so I’d love to hear from you (in comments or email) about your degree of giddyness….
We all know that the intelligence-analysis field as currently practiced in U.S. agencies bears many burdens weighing heavily on job satisfaction, and unfortunately weighing on successful performance. Our youngest and our most experienced intelligence analysts have been battling those burdens.
One analyst has now put constructive thoughts on paper, most immediately in response to a call by Defense Secretary Bob Gates asking DoD military and civilian employees to submit their ideas to save money, avoid cost, reduce cycle time and increase the agility of the department (see more about the challenge here).
Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Technology | Tagged: A-Space, AKO, analysis, analyst, analysts, ASpace, blogging, blogs, Bob Gourley, Chris Rasmussen, CIA, DC, Defense Department, Department of Defense, DIA, DoD, espionage, foreign policy, Goldwater-Nichols, IC, Intelink, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Intellipedia, John Bordeaux, JPL, KM, knowledge management, Kristan Wheaton, Michael Tanji, NGA, NSA, Pentagon, politics, SecDef, SharePoint, social networking, social networks, spies, spying, Wall Street Journal, work, WSJ | 11 Comments »
I received an email last week from a DHS friend quietly asking that I “publicize” the listing once it was posted, which was scheduled to be last week. I checked for it online Friday – the first day applications were to be accepted – but must have looked too early for I didn’t see it listed. That’s understandable, given the holidays, so I checked again last night, prompted by a note from Bob Gourley of 
else’s compute capacity, web apps, services, storage, etc. Some others, however, as Amazon and others roll out their branded ability to do that reach, are beginning to call these “clouds” — I prefer to think about them as distinct platforms enabling cloud computing, but that’s starting to become a hazy definition. 
Shepherd's Pi 