Determining the Value of Future Information

Companies continuously struggle to quantify the value of their information in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the return on investment of their information technology (IT) architecture. One approach companies have taken to place a numeric value on information is to treat it as a traditional economic asset (e.g. equipment, buildings, and vehicles) that is governed by its own unique set of laws. Once an enterprise understands the behavior of information it can incorporate Skyrme's 10 value adding aspects of information when developing IT architecture, thus maximizing the potential value of their information. Like most enterprises, the Intelligence Community (IC) is continuously trying to assess the value of their Intelligence Sharing Architecture. Currently, work is being done inside the Department of Defense (DoD) using Value Focused Thinking (VFT) to compare the value of different Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) force mixtures. The current ISR force sizing study is very beneficial for evaluating today's ISR force mixtures, but little research has been done to evaluate the ISR force mixtures of the future. This research will present a generic methodology allowing any enterprise to determine the value of future IT architecture; specifically, it will be applied to the IC for determining the value of intelligence gathering capabilities for the year 2040.