The Principles of Intelligence Transparency for the Intelligence Community are intended to facilitate IC decisions on making information publicly available in a manner that enhances public understanding of intelligence activities, while continuing to protect information when disclosure would harm national security.
These Principles do not modify or supersede applicable laws, executive orders, and directives, including Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information. Instead, they articulate the general norms that elements of the IC should follow in implementing those authorities and requirements.
The Intelligence Community will:
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Provide appropriate transparency to enhance public understanding about:
- the IC's mission and what the IC does to accomplish it (including its structure and effectiveness);
- the laws, directives, authorities, and policies that govern the IC's activities;
- the compliance and oversight framework that ensures intelligence activities are conducted in accordance with applicable rules.
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Be proactive and clear in making information publicly available through authorized channels, including taking affirmative steps to:
- provide timely transparency on matters of public interest;
- prepare information with sufficient clarity and context, so that it is readily understandable;
- make information accessible to the public through a range of communications channels, such as those enabled by new technology;
- engage with stakeholders to better explain information and to understand diverse perspectives; and
- in appropriate circumstances, describe why information cannot be made public.
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In protecting information about intelligence sources, methods, and activities from unauthorized disclosure, ensure that IC professionals consistently and diligently execute their responsibilities to:
- classify only that information which, if disclosed without authorization, could be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security;
- never classify information to conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error, or to prevent embarrassment;
- distinguish, through portion marking and similar means, classified and unclassified information; and
- consider the public interest to the maximum extent feasible when making classification determinations, while continuing to protect information as necessary to maintain intelligence effectiveness, protect the safety of those who work for or with the IC, or otherwise protect national security.
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Align IC roles, resources, processes, and policies to support robust implementation of these principles, consistent with applicable laws, executive orders, and directives.
Chief Information Officer
IC Technical Specifications
CDR: Describe
Overview
The Describe specifications define requirements and provide guidelines for the realization of the CDR Describe Component as a RESTful and SOAP web service and SOAP protocol. The content of these specifications specifies the Describe Service’s behavior, interface and other aspects in detail, providing enough information for Describe Service providers and consumers to create and use CDR-conformant Describe Services.
The Describe Service exposes one required Describe Function for exposing information that describes a content collection. The exposed information, referred to as a Description, is a collection of metadata that refers to the entire content collection rather than individual content resources in the content collection. The Description can be used by Describe consumers to make smart decisions regarding the applicability of a content collection, for example, this type of information can be used by Brokered Search providers to perform type, coverage and/or content-based search query routing.
This specification supports Intelligence Community Directive 501 (ICD 501), Discovery, Dissemination or Retrieval of Information within the Intelligence Community, which establishes policies for (1) discovery, and (2) dissemination or retrieval of intelligence and intelligence-related information collected, or analysis produced by the Intelligence Community.
Compliance with this specification is measured against all aspects of the technical and documentary artifacts contained within the specification release package. This specification is maintained by the IC Chief Information Officer via the Data Standards Coordination Activity (DSCA) and Common Metadata Standards Tiger Team (CMSTT).
Value Proposition
These specifications are designed to fulfill a number of requirements in support of the transformational efforts of the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense Enterprise (IC/DoD). Features of this specification are:
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To provide common service interfaces and a behavioral model to enable Describe consumers, such as Brokered Search providers, to discover relevant content collections from disparate collections across the IC/DoD enterprise.
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To support the implementation of both the IC/DoD Content Discovery & Retrieval SOAP and REST Interface Specifications for CDR Brokered Search 1.1.]
Latest Approved Version
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IC/DoD REST Interface Encoding Specification for CDR Describe, Version 1 (14 Jan 13), [13-1 Baseline]
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IC/DoD SOAP Interface Encoding Specification for CDR Describe, Version 1 (14 Jan 13), [13-1 Baseline])