User Experience with a Government Focus: What the Intelligence Analyst Needs

Erik M. Schwartz, Director, Product ManagementMarch 22, 2007

Government Challenges

• The gap between the amount of content and the time it takes to process is growing geometrically.

• Government Analysts need a tool to automate the tagging, filtering, organization, and reuse of content from a variety of sources.• Data sources are heterogeneous

• Repositories• File Types• Multi-Lingual

• Security is paramount• Decision makers need finished intelligence as quickly

as possible

Apply Known Contexts to similar keywords

• Search Terms: “Ronald Reagan”

Apply Known Contexts to similar keywords

• Search Terms: “Ronald Reagan” US Politician

Apply Known Contexts to similar keywords

• Search Terms: “Ronald Reagan” Actor

Apply Known Contexts to similar keywords

• Search Terms: “Ronald Reagan” Airport

Apply Known Contexts to similar keywords

• Search Terms: “Ronald Reagan” Military

Research - Analysis Workflow

•Asynchronous Queries•Language Processing•Categorization•Geographic Tagging•Entity Extraction

•Metadata •XML •Indexing •Semantic Tagging •Profiling

•Internet Content•Databases•Document Management•File Systems

•Search•Summarization•Fielded Search•Dynamic Facets•Visualization

•Alerts•Collaboration Tools•Analyst Workspace

Trends in Enterprise Architecture

Data Infrastructure

Web Services

Portals / Apps

Analysis & Services

Tools Portals / Apps Tools

Semantic Analysis is seen as critical element of the Analysis Layer

Complementary views on Semantics The Semantic Web“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers]

become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.” Tim Berners-Lee

Convera’s View People will always need computers

to help them semantically understand and make use of the vast sea of information that humans create in the language that humans communicate in.

World Wide Web Technology Trends

Structure: Semantic Network

• Organizes natural language expressions• Frequently visualized in

graph form• Synonym-oriented• Can represent large

number of ontological relations

• Does not have same strict construction/logical consistency requirements as most ontologies

Taxonomies: Extending Semantic Networks

• Hierarchical organization of semantic networks

• Two Types• Organize data:

using high level buckets

• Categorize data: contain semantic networks at each node

AP Poll: Bush, Kerry tied in presidential race, Nader at 6 percent WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer Thursday, March 4, 2004 (03-04) 23:46 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Kerry and President Bush are starting the general election campaign tied, according to an Associated Press poll, while independent Ralph Nader is drawing enough support to make Democrats squirm. The Republican incumbent had 46 percent support, Democrat Kerry had 45 percent and Nader, the 2000 Green Party candidate who entered the race last month, was at 6 percent in the survey conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

Taxonomy – CategorizationAP Poll: Bush, Kerry tied in presidential race, Nader at 6 percent WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer Thursday, March 4, 2004 (03-04) 23:46 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Kerry and President Bush are starting the general election campaign tied, according to an Associated Press poll, while independent Ralph Nader is drawing enough support to make Democrats squirm. The Republican incumbent had 46 percent support, Democrat Kerry had 45 percent and Nader, the 2000 Green Party candidate who entered the race last month, was at 6 percent in the survey conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

PoliticsPolitician

Senator John KerryPresident George W. BushRalph Nader

ElectionCampaign

Presidential CampaignCandidatePresidential Election

Political PartiesDemocratRepublicanGreen PartyLibertarian

Political StatusIncumbentPresident-electNominee

ResearchPoll

Opinion PollAP PollCNN/USA Today PollCoaches’ Poll

Survey

latched

Entity – Extraction

• Entity Extraction takes tokens and associates them with known categories

• People• Places• Organizations• Locations• Dates• Money• Units of Measurement• E-mail Addresses

• Should also be able to identify and extract abstract concepts defined in the ontology.

Disambiguation : Which To Latch?

Politics

Elections First Ladies

Thomas Jefferson John Adams

Presidents

Politicians

Abigail Adams

Music

Composition

Concerto

Philip Glass John Adams

Composers

Musicians

John Adams/Philip Glass: Violin John Adams/Philip Glass: Violin ConcertosConcertos Robert McDuffie/Houston Symphony/ Christoph Eschenbach (Telarc CD-80494)

This superbly produced, performed, and recorded disc puts these two contemporary concertosconcertos together for the first time, and McDuffie and the orchestraorchestra attack both pieces for all they are worth. To these ears, the Glass comes off as the more convincing and entertaining piece of musicmusic, with an especially affecting slow movement. Yes, some of the repetitions in the first movement are a bit too much; however, this is overall a fun piece to listen to, and the overall ...

Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson expected that Abigail Abigail AdamsAdams would read his letters to John, and similarly John AdamsJohn Adams would have expected Mercy Otis Warren to have shared her letter with her husband, James, a political leaderpolitical leader in Massachusetts. Such correspondence was one aspect of the eighteenth-century republic of letters, the public sphere of discussion about social, political, and learned questions that occurred independently of the narrow limits of the family as well as of the overview of the state

John AdamsJohn Adams scored his second goal 1:23 into overtime as the Toronto-St. Michael's Majors defeated the Kingston Frontenacs 5-4 on Friday night.

AdamsAdams' 12th goal of the season beat Frontenacs goalie Dayne Davis, who finished with 46 saves. Cal Clutterbuck, Colin Power and Tyler Haskins also had goals for the Majors (13-20-4-2).

Resolution: Composer

Resolution: President

Resolution: Entity (dynamic)

Facets and classification

• Facet = A type or class of documents

• Provides contextual grouping across topics or domains: What is this document about?

• Ontology can define many facet types:• Roles/Perspectives: conflict, scandal, reviews…

• Common areas of interest: health, shopping, education…

• Genre of sources: encyclopedias, yellow pages, how-to documentation…

• Editorial/Filtering: flag specific content features

The Faceting Subsystem: OverviewQuery End Indexing

[Query:]Al Qaeda

News

History

Tactics

Message Traffic

Triggering

Classification

How does all this help?

Search for: ira

Benefit: Government Agencies are quickly connected to the information that they need when they need it.

Questions?