Current Affairs
The Character of Intelligence
The Business of Intelligence
Consumers of Intelligence
The Threat
The Intelligence Community at Work

National Centers
Examples of Community Collaboration

Counterintelligence
Intelligence Over the Years
Recommended Reading

Each of the members of the IC works internally at the business of intelligence. Each has its own area of expertise and responsibility. For example NGA focuses on geospatial intelligence processing, NSA focuses on SIGINT processing, CIA deals with HUMINT, NRO designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites, and so on. See the Who We Are Section for more detail.

Personnel from these IC member organizations also collaborate together extensively, both to meet their own organizations’ missions and to satisfy overall Community objectives. This collaboration takes many forms, including electronic communication from desk to desk, shared information technology resources, ad-hoc joint working meetings, and set-term task forces composed of personnel from multiple agencies.

National Centers
More permanent collaborative structures are the National Centers, created to address specific non-traditional threats. Personnel from organizations across the IC staff these Centers, together with substantive operational personnel, on a long-term basis. In most cases they are physically located together in specially designated Center facilities.

Examples of Community Collaboration
All members of the IC work together in operations, studies, and reports of national importance.

Extra-Community Collaboration
The IC often reaches out to industry and academia for assistance on joint projects. The Strategic Assessment Group at CIA is a case in point. This organization collaborates not only with professionals selected from IC member ranks, but also with an extended family of outside experts. Coalitions of very senior expertise enables the group to address complex issues of broad scope such as regional security dynamics, foreign military strategy and innovation, the global economy, and the long-term strategic environment. Through external collaboration of this sort, the IC provides senior US policymakers broad vision, creative thinking, and a long-term perspective.