Guidance

Professional Development Framework for all-source intelligence assessment (HTML)

Published 4 April 2023

Foreword

by the Director of PHIA

The Professional Development Framework (PDF) recognises professionalism in Intelligence Assessment. The framework underpins an analyst’s career pathway by clearly setting out what is required to meet each skill level.

The framework will enable analysts to deliver high quality work in complex and challenging roles by providing a mechanism for analysts to develop skills and expertise in intelligence assessment, form solid ‘career anchors’, and ultimately become skilled managers of multi-discipline teams.

The PDF is part of the PHIA commitment to establish a career pathway in the wider Intelligence Analysis profession. The framework is designed to encourage analysts to develop their learning, the management of teams, and attract and retain talented individuals. In due course the PDF will become fully accredited and will be recognised as a formal qualification.

Ultimately, career pathways - supported by a significant commitment to learning and development

• will ensure the Intelligence Assessment community is equipped and trained with the right expertise for future generations.

The framework has been designed to be relevant and applicable to professionals from across the Intelligence Assessment community, in organisations of all shapes and sizes, enabling members to plan their future career and development needs, as well as gaining recognition for their achievements.

Charlie Edwards

Director, Professional Head of Intelligence Assessment

What is PHIA?

The Professional Head of Intelligence Assessment (PHIA) team was established as part of the Government’s response to Lord Butler’s 2004 Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Civil Service Intelligence Analysis Profession was created in 2013.

The Intelligence Analysis Profession is maturing and is focused on supporting those undertaking intelligence assessment across government. This Professional Development Framework describes the skills required of an analyst to conduct effective all-source assessment, irrespective of department or subject matter. The framework will help us develop effective Career Pathways and a Talent Strategy for the Profession.

All members of the Intelligence Analysis Profession conducting all-source assessment are subject to the PHIA Common Analytical Standards and will be using the PHIA Probability Yardstick in their products.

If you would like to get in touch with the PHIA team, please email us at phia@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

What is ‘all-source intelligence assessment’?

Intelligence analysis is the detailed examination of intelligence. Intelligence assessment adds a layer of judgement to this analysis, adding the ‘so what?’ to support and inform the customer’s decision-making. In essence, analysis can be thought of as identifying and fitting together the pieces of the jigsaw, whilst assessment provides an understanding of the overall picture, even when some of the jigsaw pieces are missing.

Assessment cannot be done without analysis, but analysis is frequently done without the need for assessment. The focus of intelligence assessment is to provide that final judgement; in practice, with intelligence assessment, analysis and assessment are typically performed in parallel.

‘All-source’ simply means that the intelligence analysis and assessment uses all available information, secret and non-secret. The latter includes non-secret government information as well as academic journals and media reports.

Intelligence assessment relies on information from a range of sources and the profession will continue to evolve its capabilities to best harness developments in technology.

What is the Framework and what does it do?

This Professional Development Framework defines the skills required to conduct all-source intelligence assessment. Each category shows the skills across four ability levels: Foundation, Proficient, Highly Proficient, and Advanced.

Analysts should use the framework to self-evaluate and agree with their line managers their own levels of proficiency under each skill. This process will support end of year performance assessments and setting of objectives at the beginning of the reporting year. Analysts should also use this process to identify learning and development requirements and opportunities throughout their career in intelligence assessment.

Recruiting managers and line managers of analysts in assessment roles should use this framework to define the skill levels required for roles in their assessment teams, with the understanding that these standards will be applied consistently across departments.

The consistent application of this framework is vital to support recruitment of staff, as well as enabling the profession to grow the skills needed for talent pipelines. It will support the building of a flexible model to surge staff with the right skills when needed, for example during times of crisis response.

How do the Civil Service Success Profiles link in?

In January 2019, Success Profiles were introduced across all Civil Service departments. The Success Profiles framework was created as part of the Civil Service HR’s ‘Attract and Retain’ programme in order to make recruitment and selection across the Civil Service more modern, fairer, more diverse and inclusive.

The Success Profile framework enables line managers to decide which section to use to recruit from, on a vacancy-by-vacancy basis. This framework sits under the ‘Technical’ element of the Success Profiles and gives line managers a consistent set of skills that are directly relevant to an intelligence assessment role against which they can recruit. Some recruiting line managers may choose to recruit partly or exclusively under the experience element, as they primarily need subject matter experts; others, who routinely take in direct new-to-government entrants, may choose to take a blended approach, recruiting more heavily under the ‘Ability’ element.

Why do we need this Framework?

Lord Butler’s Review recommended that the Government consider creating a specialism of analysis with a career structure and room for advancement. This framework establishes the foundations to develop such a career pathway for those undertaking intelligence assessment.

By agreeing the common skills required by intelligence analysts across government (whether they be working in law enforcement, defence, or other assessment role) this framework enables individuals to progress and develop.

It also makes it easier to understand the function of other parts of the intelligence assessment community; this in turn facilitates the easier transfer of trained intelligence analysts between different parts of the intelligence assessment community.

Who is this Framework for?

This framework supports anyone in a government role conducting all-source intelligence assessment. This includes anyone from junior grades through to senior civil servants who are in assessment roles. The framework is designed to be grade agnostic and it is recognised that some junior roles may demand a higher level of proficiency in some skills than more senior roles.

For example, a senior manager may not be required to be ‘highly proficient’ in Analysis, Tradecraft & Assessment if they have a highly proficient team supporting them. Equally, individuals will have different proficiency levels across the skills, with some roles at the same grade demanding different proficiency levels from one another.

How to use the Framework

As an analyst this framework will:

• help you articulate your current skill levels, using language that is recognised across the intelligence assessment community;
• help you identify learning and development gaps;
• support you if you wish to move between intelligence assessment organisations more easily.

As a line manager/team leader of analysts it will:

• help you recruit analysts more effectively;
• facilitate career development conversations;
• enable the increasing professionalisation of your team.

Each skill has a narrative description followed by descriptors for four skill levels: Foundation, Proficient, Highly Proficient, and Advanced.

Foundation: You have applied some of this skill in a low complexity way, under supervision, or have used this skill to support others.

Proficient: You have applied this skill independently to low complexity work and/or under supervision on more complex work. You follow existing practices, standards and procedures. You respond to priorities and deadlines set for you by customers or supervisors. You collaborate with peers across your community, supporting the co-ordination of projects, teams or tasks.

Highly Proficient: You apply this skill independently to complex work, with minimal supervision. You exercise judgement in selecting the best approach to achieve the task while meeting existing standards and procedures. You negotiate priorities and deadlines and tailor your approach to best meet them. You collaborate across the community, leading on co-ordinating projects, teams or tasks.

Advanced: You apply this skill independently to highly complex tasks and non-routine/crisis situations. You determine and plan the best way to accomplish your tasks, taking alternative courses of action and overcome barriers when required. You shape standards of best practice and ensure community-wide lessons are learned and applied. You pre-empt goals, priorities and deadlines of customers and adapt to unique or rapidly changing situations. You collaborate across the community and with other stakeholders to shape initiatives, leading expert teams, and pooling resources when required. You scan the horizon for new approaches and opportunities, constructively challenging the status quo to enable the improvement of the intelligence assessment community

It should be noted that the skill levels are cumulative: in order to be considered Proficient, an individual must demonstrate all the skills listed under Foundation in addition to Proficient, and so on.

The vast majority of job roles throughout the community, at most grades, will have skills that fall into one of the first three skill levels. Advanced as a level for any particular skill is usually only applicable to a small number of people conducting specialist roles or with considerable experience and expertise.

Line managers will define which skills and corresponding proficiency level is applicable to specific roles and grades within their own organisation. Different roles at the same grade, even within a team, may demand different mixes of skills and it should not be assumed that all analysts across the whole assessment community should be looking to achieve Proficient in every skill.

Line managers should refer to their departmental professional lead if they need help to establish what skills and levels are applicable for their current staff/teams.

The Professional Development Framework Skills

The Professional Development Framework describes six technical skills required by those undertaking intelligence assessment:

Informing Decision-Making

You understand the customer’s requirements, the decisions that customer needs to make, and why the assessment is required in order to ensure the end product can assist and inform the decision-making process.

Gathering, Organising and Evaluating Intelligence & Information

You plan and gather suffcient intelligence and information required to answer the customer’s question. You organise and evaluate your sources, recording them clearly, to facilitate effective audit.

Analysis, Tradecraft and Assessment

You use creative and critical thinking skills to ensure assessments are robust, applying appropriate structured methods, techniques and approaches that are relevant to the intelligence requirement.

Written and Visual Communication of Intelligence Assessment

You articulate complex matters clearly and concisely. You present information in a way that aids comprehension as well as using visualisation effectively in your products.

Verbal Communication of Intelligence Assessment

You verbally articulate complex matters in a manner appropriate to the audience.

Co-operation, Co-ordination and Challenge

You build a range of effective working relationships with the most relevant individuals and organisations, both inside and outside of government. You enable and encourage effective challenge from across the community, to ensure the production of the best assessments possible.

Informing Decision-Making

You understand the customer requirement, producing assessments that aim to help reduce any level of uncertainty, and make explicit what uncertainty remains, for the customer.

You work with your customer to refine their requirements to ensure your assessment will deliver against them within the customer’s timeframe.

You maintain your analytical integrity in the face of challenge from your customer.

Foundation

At Foundation, you produce assessments that respond directly to a customer requirement. You work with your manager to communicate findings that emerged through your work, but that go beyond the specific requirement.

Proficient

At Proficient, you identify when customer requests require an intelligence assessment, compared with other products (e.g. a media/open source review). You work with the customer to refine the requirement, including what questions require answering and in what timescales.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you provide an early-warning function on developments in your area that are emerging and that may be challenging or unwelcome for decision-makers, ensuring the messages you deliver have been received and understood. You adapt and prioritise in line with multiple changing customer requirements. You identify and challenge any customer attempts to exert inappropriate infuence on assessments.

Advanced

At Advanced, you approach customers, pre-empting their likely requirements. You manage the most demanding customers (for example, ministers).

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Understanding Customer Requirements	You liaise with established customers at desk-level to fully understand their requirements and check understanding before starting an analytical task.	You refine customer requirements and manage expectations by identifying where and how intelligence assessment can and cannot add value.	When addressing intelligence assessment questions, you provide warnings to relevant UK and allied partners on aspects that are not immediately captured by existing customer requirements.	You anticipate future customer requirements, liaising with key decision- makers to ensure they are addressed.
Refining Customer Requirements	You understand the process to refine and classify a question.	You structure conversations with the customer to refine and classify questions to ensure you have fully captured their requirement.
Delivering Customer Requirements	You raise possible delays to delivery of assessments in time for negotiation with the customer and allow for mitigations to be put into place.	You negotiate with customers throughout the assessment process to keep them informed of any issues that affect meeting the deadline.
Delivering Customer Requirements	Your assessments present all judgements that would be useful to customers, including those that go beyond the specific or stated requirement.	You provide early warning of developments that are not captured by existing customer requirements but could threaten UK or allied interests.	Your assessments explore opportunities, costs and risks associated with relevant UK policy options or decisions, without straying into policy formulation or decision- making.	You understand the delivery requirements of senior customers, assimilating analysis and assessment from multiple products to deliver a holistic overview for your customer.
Delivering Customer Requirements	You ensure your assessments only provide information and insights that are relevant to UK or allied customers.	You confidently present assessments that are challenging or unwelcome for decision-makers, ensuring key messages are received and understood, in a timely fashion.
Analytical Integrity	You maintain analytical integrity, ensuring your assessments refect the findings of your analysis and evidence. You escalate all issues and concerns.	You resist pressure to portray the world as policy-makers might wish it to be, judging when it is necessary to escalate issues and concerns.	You resist pressure (conscious or otherwise) from others to exert infuence on assessments. You judge which issues require escalation to the highest levels of your organisation, and you support others through the process.	You champion analytical integrity and robust assessment, maintaining awareness of the political and strategic environment to identify where customers may attempt to exert infuence, enabling you to advise staff and leaders in advance on the best way forward.

Gathering, Organising and Evaluating Information & Intelligence

You systematically identify and plan the collation of intelligence and collection and collation of other information required to answer the customer’s questions. You review and apply lessons learnt.

You use the technology available to you in the most appropriate way, selecting the best tools based on the intelligence sources available. You organise information to facilitate analysis.

You record clearly all sources of intelligence reporting (both secret and non-secret) in a manner that facilitates easy access and retrieval.

You are proactive in identifying gaps in the intelligence and you follow the relevant guidance and legislation to work with collection assets/agencies to fill those gaps.

You evaluate sources, both of intelligence and other information. You evaluate information sources for bias, and seek to mitigate it.

You manage storage or recording of your source information and analysis for all your assessments, so that they can be audited, applying the appropriate PHIA Common Analytical Standards.

Foundation

At Foundation, you may have demonstrated these skills in another profession or role, but are still developing your understanding of how your intelligence assessment workplace arranges and records information and intelligence. You adhere to managing information guidelines, in accordance with classification and handling procedures.

Proficient

At Proficient, you identify the intelligence required to answer the questions posed by the customer, where to find it, identify gaps, and task collectors to fill them. You use your available tools to maintain a coherent, logical record of information which can be easily understood and accessed by others. You are aware of biases in information and intelligence sources, and seek to mitigate them.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you seek novel methods to fill intelligence gaps and use the wider intelligence community to do so. You are adept at extracting key, relevant information from large sources of intelligence and information.

Advanced

At Advanced, you are a community expert and liaise at a senior level with intelligence and information providers. You infuence strategic collection priorities to support intelligence assessment requirements. You champion the use of novel sources of information and promote the use of novel tools and methods to exploit intelligence and information sources.

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Planning	You plan assessment projects including information requirements, relevant milestones, checkpoints and reviews.	You plan and prioritise multiple, competing assessment projects, applying lessons learned from previous projects.	You lead planning and co-ordination of joint assessment projects in your workplace.	You lead planning, co-ordination and delivery of complex, cross-community assessment projects.
Organising	You organise intelligence and information in a format that can be shared with and understood by others, in line with workplace guidance and audit requirements.	You organise intelligence and information, ensuring you avoid duplication of effort, recognising where various sources can be used across a range of assessment products.	You ensure that information and intelligence across your workplace is organised correctly in accordance with audit requirements and that there is parity of approach with other organisations.	You lead the design and delivery of intelligence collation within your workplace, ensuring that it is easily accessible and auditable.
Handling and Releasing	You handle sensitive intelligence and information in accordance with the relevant workplace handling requirements.	You anticipate releasability requirements and engage with originators early to ensure timely production. You know who your organisation’s key partners are and seek additional information from them.
Identify Gaps	You identify intelligence and information gaps that have a significant impact on your ability to meet a customer requirement.	You feed significant intelligence and information gaps into the collection process and inform customers where they have a significant impact on the analytical confidence you have in your judgements.	You prioritise the most important intelligence and information gaps in the collection process, highlight them to customers and carefully and consciously use assumptions to help you to bridge these gaps.	You inform intelligence collection planning at a national level by shaping cross- workplace requirements through the relevant processes.
Source Evaluation	You articulate the main source strengths and weaknesses in the information base used in your assessments.	You identify the various source strengths and weaknesses in your information base and caveat your probabilistic judgements and analytical confidence statements to take account of them.	You actively take into account the strengths, weakness and biases in source information, ensuring these are fully understood across your workplace.	You lead on the application of methods to evaluate sources across your work area, ensuring that there is parity of approach across the community.
Audit	You create and retain, for each assessment product, a robust audit trail to evidence your analytical argument, in line with community standards.	You maintain an appropriate, coherent, logical, up-to-date log of information and intelligence which can be easily understood and accessed by others.	You employ technology to improve the way you organise information and intelligence to aid analysis audit.	You take responsibility for ensuring that assessment across your work area adheres to audit requirements, and that each assessment can be replicated if necessary.

Analysis, Tradecraft and Assessment

You apply a wide range of critical and creative approaches and techniques to help answer the question for the customer, abiding by the PHIA Common Analytical Standards at all times.

You are imaginative and innovative in the implementation of processes, methods, tools and techniques in order to provide a comprehensive assessment.

You make probability-based objective judgements and appropriately articulate analytical confidence in sources and judgements in your assessments, setting out the ‘so what?’ from your analysis for the customer within agreed timescales.

Foundation

At Foundation, you are trained in the use of structured analytical techniques and use creative and critical thinking to apply them on a routine basis at an individual level.

Proficient

At Proficient, you apply probabilistic reasoning and logic to your assessments and use structured analytical techniques, bringing in others, to produce your assessments.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you proactively and constructively challenge conventional thinking and assessment, as well as inviting challenge of your own assessment.

Advanced

At Advanced, you are a thought-leader for the community, scanning for new methods of conducting analysis, tradecraft and assessment. You liaise with experts on intelligence analysis techniques and promote the use of novel approaches in the community.

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Analytical Integrity	You present the outcomes of your analysis honestly, even if your assessment could be contentious.	You support and champion analytical integrity within your team.	You support and champion analytical integrity within your organisation.	You support and champion analytical integrity across the community.
Hypothesis & Scenario Generation	You identify one or two hypotheses or scenarios which are consistent with available intelligence and information.	You generate multiple, distinct, plausible and falsifiable hypotheses or scenarios to address the intelligence question.	You generate a comprehensive selection of distinct and plausible falsifiable hypotheses or scenarios to address the intelligence question.
Hypothesis Testing	You routinely evaluate hypotheses against the available intelligence.	You critically evaluate and test multiple, falsifiable hypotheses, articulating the respective strengths and weaknesses of your hypotheses in relation to the relevant intelligence and information available, which guides further research and analysis related to the intelligence question.
Scenario Testing	You routinely monitor and evaluate scenarios by identifying indicators and triggers to provide early warning, seeking information and intelligence relating to the indicators.	You routinely monitor multiple scenarios by identifying indicators and triggers to provide early warning.
Selection of Analytic Techniques	You think creatively and critically about the problem and select the most appropriate structured analytic technique, with support.	You think creatively and critically about your problem, independently selecting the most appropriate structured analytic technique.	You adapt creative and critical thinking techniques and introduce innovative approaches that best suit the question and timeframe you face.	You research new analytic methods and apply them across the community.
Application of Analytical Techniques	With guidance and support from peers, you apply structured analytical techniques to improve the rigour of your analysis.	You independently apply a range of structured analytical techniques.	You promote the benefits of structured analytical techniques and facilitate their use by others, including in workshops.	You identify opportunities to improve tradecraft with emerging technologies, seeking to mitigate the risks and harness opportunities.
Reasoning and Judgement	You understand the purpose and principles of critical thinking.	You show logical and coherent reasoning that justify your analytical judgements. You make analytical judgements, based on evidence and reason, without concerns about being proven wrong.	You test and challenge the reasoning and analytical judgements of others, supporting your team, organisation or analytical community.	You create an environment in which analysts are empowered and supported to make analytical judgements, based on evidence and reason, and are confident to take calculated risks and posit hypotheses that are falsifiable.
Judging Probabilities	You make probabilistic judgements on well sourced and simple issues and provide an analytical confidence assessment.	You make probabilistic judgements and associated analytical confidence assessments, even where intelligence gaps exist.	You construct sound probabilistic judgements and associated analytical confidence assessments where uncertainty is high, possibly due to a lack of intelligence and information.
Identifying Assumptions	You can identify the assumptions relating to your hypotheses, and proactively challenge these to understand the extent to which they are supported.	You use a range of techniques which robustly test your assessments to identify subtle or hidden assumptions, routinely challenging and reviewing assumptions.	You proactively challenge firmly held assumptions across the intelligence community, including where information sources remain incomplete or ambiguous.
Identify and Mitigate the Risk of Bias	You are proactively aware of biases and basic mitigation strategies.	You are conscious of internal and external existing assessment and you evaluate them on their merits, not being constrained by them when developing your own assessments.	You mitigate the infuence of existing assessment by using techniques to expose assumptions and challenge conventional thinking.	You have a wider awareness of the intelligence community and proactively revisit the existing analytic position on core documents to mitigate biases in light of new information / intelligence.

Written and Visual Communication of Intelligence Assessment

You write clearly, succinctly, and in plain language, to articulate your assessment, using the PHIA Probability Yardstick to communicate uncertainty.

You use visualisation tools effectively to communicate your assessment.

Your written assessment answers the questions presented by the customer in a way that can be clearly understood by them.

Foundation

At Foundation, you construct assessment in a logical manner and in coherent English.

Proficient

At Proficient, you communicate complicated issues in clear and concise language, articulating uncertainty using the PHIA Probability Yardstick. You adapt your written assessment to the customer requirements. You write succinctly, conveying key messages at an appropriate length.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you write simultaneous drafts to meet a range of customer requirements.

Advanced

At Advanced, you manage different drafts of an assessment for different customers and develop new methods for presenting visual assessments.

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Communicating the Message	You draft assessments following the principles of plain English with good spelling and grammar, in line with relevant workplace writing guides.	You draft assessments accurately, clearly and concisely, including at short notice when required.	You appropriately vary the tone and nature of the language you use depending on the customer need.	You understand the requirements of different customers and can write multiple, simultaneous drafts for different audiences.
Communicating the Message	You draft clear, relevant, accurate, informative and concise assessment.	You distil and interpret large amounts of intelligence and information with clarity.	You ensure all information and intelligence presented in an assessment is relevant to the requirement and releasable to the customer.
Using the Right Format	You seek guidance on the most appropriate template to communicate your assessments, adhering to workplace guidance.	You refine the structure of templates in your workplace so that they meet the needs of the customer.	You design and implement templates in your workplace which meet the needs of the customer.
Visualisation	Where appropriate, you incorporate visualisations when information or concepts (for example spatial or chronological relationships) are best conveyed in graphic form.	You understand the differences between infographics and data visualisation and apply best practice when creating visual communications in your assessments.	You consider new ways to present findings visually, drawing on expertise to make use of cutting-edge tools.	You develop new ways of presenting findings visually, sharing your innovation across the community.

Verbal Communication of Intelligence Assessment

You establish the customer needs and engagement requirements, planning your delivery of the message whilst pre-empting and preparing for challenging questions.

You plan how best to deliver the message (e.g. with the use of visual aids).

You respond and adapt to challenges from customers during the meeting, whilst maintaining independence and credibility.

You confidently check with the customer that your core messages have been understood and that the customer understands how the assessment will support their decision-making.

Foundation

At Foundation, you communicate your assessment to a limited audience in a clear and concise manner. You seek guidance on the most appropriate format for delivery of assessment.

Proficient

At Proficient, you are competent at communicating assessment in a verbal manner with both large audiences and in a one-to-one setting with senior customers. You convey core messages in the time available, aware that senior customers frequently have very limited time. You anticipate questions and can provide additional information where required.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you adapt your verbal delivery style to different customer requirements. You proactively engage in a one-to-one setting with customers, encouraging a two-way discussion of the assessment. You are constructively assertive with customers where necessary, and can competently chair discussions with customers and partners. You read verbal and non-verbal cues and interact with the customer or audience confidently.

Advanced

At Advanced, you are competent at chairing meetings with senior customers and manage conflict and disagreements between parties.

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Prepare and Plan	You apply workplace guidance on how best to present information verbally.	You convey core messages in the time available. You adapt your verbal delivery style for different audiences and customers.	You adapt your verbal delivery style at short notice, communicating your assessments to appropriate customers where little or no preparation time is available.	You clearly communicate at a national or international level, adapting your delivery to the audience.
Prepare and Plan	You are aware of the different briefing requirements of your customers.	When you are unable to answer questions from customers, you agree a timeframe to respond.	You actively seek feedback following presentations and briefings, reviewing and acting on this feedback to improve your communication style and content.	You read verbal and non-verbal cues to gauge engagement and seek audience feedback to check understanding.
Communicating the Message	You articulate your assessments using simple, clear and accurate probabilistic language.	You brief your assessments to both large audiences and in one-to-one settings with colleagues and customers.	You deliver one-to-one briefings with customers, encouraging a two-way discussion of the assessment and related decision.	You establish an ongoing dialogue with key customers, adapting your style to meet their needs.

Co-operation, Co-ordination and Challenge

You build a range of effective working relationships, applying your knowledge of the intelligence assessment community to ensure you develop relationships with the most relevant individuals and organisations. Using these networks, you draw on the right expertise at the right time, ensuring the delivery of the best intelligence assessment possible.

With open-mindedness and genuine interest in the views of others, you co-ordinate and co- operate with community colleagues to build consensus in your assessments. You enable and encourage effective challenge from the community by being an active listener and stimulating lively debate.

You are comfortable with being a dissenting voice, articulating your argument clearly with respect, robust analysis and logic. You escalate dissent through the management chain where necessary.

Foundation

At Foundation, you are aware of the requirement to develop a community network across your area of responsibility, but the network is still in development. You also understand the importance of drawing on partners to support analysis and assessment. You ensure that interaction with external experts is managed appropriately and according to security handling procedures.

Proficient

At Proficient, you develop and maintain a broad range of relationships with colleagues who have shared areas of responsibility, drawing on, and co-ordinating, their contributions when appropriate. You actively and constructively challenge the analysis of others when your own analysis leads to an alternative assessment, working with colleagues to understand the source of differing views.

Highly Proficient

At Highly Proficient, you seek new sources of expertise to bring further challenge to the conventional assessment. You identify the best way to bring challenge to your assessments. You specifically seek views from outside your area of the national security community, building relationships with non-traditional partners. You effectively chair external round table meetings or facilitated workshops. Your input and contribution is sought by partners and the community, and you influence and contribute effectively to the work of others.

Advanced

At Advanced, you are expected to be a community leader in challenge and the techniques appropriate to bring this into the analytical process. You identify novel partners, bringing in external views to challenge community perspectives. You effectively chair round table discussions involving international partners, effectively managing disagreements and conflict while effectively influencing discussions and preserving the relationship.

Category	Level 1: Foundation	Level 2: Proficient	Level 3: Highly Proficient	Level 4: Advanced
Cross Community Networking	You liaise regularly with existing peers in partner organisations, understanding their roles and how they fit into the wider community.	You develop new and maintain existing networks and relationships within the community.	You develop long term relationships amongst experts in the community and actively address relationship gaps.	You constantly broaden your network to bring fresh perspectives to cross-cutting issues.
Cross Community Working	You produce informed and relevant assessment, incorporating community information where relevant.	You support the co-ordination of projects, teams or tasks across the community, contributing to the work of others.	You lead on co-ordinating multiple complex collaborative activities, including projects, teams or tasks across the community, avoiding duplication.	You oversee the delivery of joint project teams or tasks for high level customers at pace.
Cross Community Working	You seek guidance from partner organisations on how best to handle the information they provide for your assessments.	You anticipate releasability requirements and engage with partner organisations early to ensure approval processes do not delay timely production.	You share information and assessments regularly with partner organisations.	You use extensive knowledge of the community to facilitate cross-workplace or community stakeholder meetings and discussions.
Cross Community Consensus	You identify where consensus exists and where assessments diverge across your community.	You offer dissent while also seeking to identify areas of analytical agreement to build consensus, clearly communicating in your assessments important analytical differences that cannot be resolved.	You intervene early to try to understand and overcome significant analytical disagreements across the community.	You robustly defend your organisation’s position where needed, managing analytical disagreements with partners to ensure relationships are preserved beyond the immediate issue.
Managing Challenge	You seek out and respond positively to constructive challenge from peers and partners during discussions.	You offer constructive challenge in the community.	You create a diverse network of peers and stakeholders beyond your immediate area of responsibility, challenging conventional wisdom.	You embed open mindedness and challenge as part of your organisation’s culture.

Appendices

The PHIA Common Analytical Standards

Common Analytic Standards ensure a consistent standard of rigour, integrity, language and best practice across the UK intelligence assessment community. The high-level standards set out below can be developed, and expanded upon, by individual assessment organisations to reflect their requirements and best procedures.

Independent: Ensuring assessments are free from external and/or political influence

Clear: Demonstrating clarity of thought, supported by coherent reasoning and relevant information

Comprehensive: Assessments should be based on all sources of availabile and relevant information

Auditable: Fully-referencing products to ensure judgements are supported by a solid evidence base

Relevant: Ensuring assessments address the original questions posed, whilst also being relevant to UK or allied customers

Rigorous: Using tools and techniques to make judgements that are based on logic and coherent reasoning

Objective: Assessments should be made taking account of analyst assumption, bias and reasoning

Timely: Product should be provided within timescales that provided utility to customers

Independent: Assessments should be free from external and/or political influence; they should not be distorted by, nor shaped for, a particular agenda or policy/operational viewpoint or preference. Analysts should avoid being influenced by policy or operational objectives and must resist any pressure, or perceived pressure, deliberate or not, to mould information and analysis to a desired assessment.

Clear: It is best practice to include a set of “Key Judgements” or an “Executive Summary” that ensures that a consumer can extract the most pertinent judgements quickly from an assessment product. Analytical products should demonstrate clarity of thought by presenting clear and consistent assessments supported by coherent reasoning and relevant information. This should include contradictory information where it significantly affects judgements.

1. Information and assumptions. Analytical products should clearly distinguish judgements that rely on available information from judgements that rely exclusively on assumptions to frame or support a hypothesis, or fill a key information gap. Analysts may state explicitly where an assumption serves as the lynchpin for a judgement or when they are used to fill a key information gap. Analysts should understand the implications for an assessment if assumptions are proven incorrect.
2. Uncertainty. Analysts should express and explain probabilistic language associated with judgements using the Probability Yardstick. The meaning of any alternative probabilistic language should be stated and explained. A robust Analytical Confidence Method should be employed to make explicit the quality of the information and the analytical process employed in generating judgements. Where appropriate, analysts should identify indicators and collection opportunities that would alter their levels of uncertainty, especially in relation to key judgements.
3. Explain change. Analysts should state how their key judgements are consistent with, or represent a change from, those in previously published assessments. Significant differences in analytical judgement, such as between two government departments or intelligence organisations, should be considered and communicated to customers where concurrence cannot be achieved.

Comprehensive: Assessments should be based on all sources of available and relevant information. Analysts should consider the impact that coverage, completeness, quality, credibility, reliability, age/currency, and possible denial and deception have on their analysis. Analysts should communicate within the assessment which sources are most important to their key analytical judgements and identify critical information gaps.

Where appropriate, analysts must include a description of the strengths and weaknesses of the overall intelligence base in confidence statements or an “assessment base”.

Auditable: Analysts should produce and retain a fully referenced version of their products for audit purposes. The main evidence underpinning each judgement, as well as contradictory information that affects a judgement, should be footnoted and/or endnoted. Analysts should record the use of any methods or techniques and may make reference to them in the product.

Relevant: Analytical products should provide information and insights that are relevant to UK or allied customers. Customarily, a product should explicitly reference a customer requirement to which the assessment responds.

Assessments should address the questions posed. Occasionally, assessment bodies may anticipate a customer requirement and produce an assessment without an explicit tasking, especially in the realm of early warning.

Rigorous: Analysts should use processes, methods, tools and techniques appropriate to the intelligence requirement in order to be able to show logical and coherent reasoning upon which the resulting judgements are based.

Analysts should identify and systematically evaluate differing hypotheses, especially when judgements contain significant levels of uncertainty or complexity (such as forecasting future trends), or when low probability outcomes would have high impact results. This activity should be recorded in a discoverable format for the audit trail.

Objective: Analysts should demonstrate awareness of their own assumptions, biases and reasoning. Analysts should be able to conceive of information or events that, in principle, would contradict their hypothesis and should reconsider their judgements in light of new developments or information. Analytical judgements should be falsifiable (empirically testable as opposed to tautological or truistic), containing a hypothesis, verbal probability, and timeframe. Analysts should consider the use of structured techniques that promote objectivity and de-biasing. They should present the outcomes of their analysis honestly, even if the assessments are contentious.

Timely: Analytical product should be provided in time for it to be of utility to customers. Analysts should be aware of events and changing intelligence requirements and priorities, and monitor customer activities and plans to remain as agile as possible.

The PHIA Probability Yardstick

Most intelligence judgements have some degree of uncertainty associated with them. The intelligence assessment community use terms such as ‘unlikely’ or ‘probable’ to convey this. These terms are used instead of numerical probabilities (e.g. 55%) to avoid interpretation of judgements as being overly precise, as most intelligence judgements are not based on quantitative data.

A Yardstick establishes what these terms approximately correspond to in numerical probability. This ensures that readers understand a judgement as the analyst intends. The rigourous use of a Yardstick also ensures that analysts themselves make clear judgements and avoid the inappropriate use of terms that imply a judgement without being clear what it is (e.g. ‘if x were to occur, then y might happen’).

The Professional Head of Intelligence Assessment Probability Yardstick splits the probability scale into seven ranges. Terms are assigned to each probability range. The choice of terms and ranges was informed by academic research and they align with an average reader’s understanding of terms in the context of what they are reading.

• ≈: Approximately
• ≥: is more than of equal to
• ≤: is less than or equal to
• ’>’: is more than
• <: is less than

Probability Range	Judgement terms	Fraction range
> 0 - ≤ ≈5%	Remote chance	> 0 - ≤ ≈1/20
≈10% - ≈20%	Highly unlikely	≈1/10 - ≈1/5
≈25% - ≈35%	Unlikely	≈1/4 - ≈1/3
≈40% - < 50%	Realistic possibility	≈2/5 - < 1/2
≈55% - ≈75%	Likely or Probably	≈5/9 - ≈3/4
≈80% - ≈90%	Highly likely	≈4/5 - ≈9/10
≈95% - < 100%	Almost certain	≥ ≈19/20 - < 1

Framework Self-Evaluation

Name:

Line Manager:

Date:

Reporting Year:

Training Requirements:

Category	Foundation (self)	Foundation (manager)	Proficient (self)	Proficient (manager)	Highly Proficient (self)	Highly Proficient (manager)	Advanced (self)	Advanced (manager)
Informing decision making
Gathering, Organising and Evaluating Intelligence & Information
Analysis, Tradecraft and Assessment
Written and Visual Communication of Intelligence Assessment
Verbal Communication of Intelligence Assessment
Co-operation, Co-ordination and Challenge

These pages are for your records.

They should be completed to support your departmental annual appraisal process, including the setting of objectives and profession aspirations. They should also inform the identification of training, learning and development requirements.

Notes: