DIA posts HLT RFI

On August 23, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) posted a request for information (RFI) for a human language technology workflow management system. Responses are due by 12:00 p.m. Eastern on September 24.

DIA Science & Technology Directorate (S&T))/National Media Exploitation Center (NMEC) is seeking information from industry to assist with the development and planning of a workflow management (WM) system.

NMEC is exploring the use of a currently available commercial solution to develop a WM system appropriate to deploy within the Foreign Language Exploitation Branch which is responsible for processing multimedia in multiple human languages so that exploitable content is easily disseminated and accessed within the intelligence community (IC).

The workflow leverages an array of human language technology (HLT) tools and applications to identify, triage, and translate foreign intelligence. However, many of the tools employed are not interconnected which can cause bottlenecks, and in turn degrade the overall productivity of the center. A federated WM system that enables information and metadata to be effectively interchanged between applications will mitigate productivity impediments and henceforth increase the exploitation capacity of NMEC.

The WM system should be able to broker HLT tasks and synchronize tasks across multiple application programming interface (API) instances online (when on the same domain) and offline (when instances reside on different domains). The WM system should interact with multiple data layers and ultimately aid in work assignments, workload balances, and staff management across multiple managers. The reporting capabilities would give immediate insight into current and historic workloads, as well as the subsequent staffing and required skillsets, allowing for more timely reporting to management.

The types of tasks being worked, the languages encountered, and staff subject expertise (e.g., military, biology) should also be readily apparent to management. The example below depicts basic functions of a WM system with one manager, but the desired solution needs to address asynchronization operations across the application with multiple managers.

Take a look at the full DIA HLT RFI.

Source: SAM