The information regime of Fusion Center

Abstract:

The Fusion Center is a new concept of intelligence activity that brings together people and organizations in order to enhance the use of information to combat terrorism and organized crime. The research aimed to analyze whether these Centers represent a real change for issues of obtaining and processing data from multiple sources of information, as well as for improving the flow of sensitive information within the government. A case study was conducted, exploring extensive documentary and bibliographic material related to the network of Fusion Centers in the USA. As a theoretical and methodological contribution, the information regime was the analytical key, assisting in the task of understanding the ecosystem studied, from the perspective of Information Science. The study revealed the informational regime of the Fusion Centers, describing: the social actors; technological artifacts; the technological apparatus of information and the informational flow. It was possible to conclude that the Centers represent an innovation to achieve the real fusion of information, based on the use of technology combined with information sharing across relevant actors. The latter was made possible by the institutionalization of collection and sharing based on a collaborative redesign. In addition, a political change, emphasizing the perspective of intelligence information as an asset of society, to the detriment of the ownership assumed by organizations, individually, for the purpose of consolidating space and power. This set of changes presented itself as a concrete way to reduce human and organizational barriers to the flow of sensitive information.

Keywords:
information regime; information Fusion Center; information fusion; state intelligence; information processing