The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is in the business of the cutting edge – seeking solutions for problems that don't even necessarily yet exist. That's the goal of programs like IARPA's Office of Anticipating Surprise, where the agency looks to develop anticipatory intelligence that can predict things like disease outbreaks, political unrest and elections results.
Now IARPA looking to go beyond its current projects, asking industry and the public for ideas that even IARPA officials may not have considered. A broad agency announcement (BAA) issued Jan. 15 requests "research ideas for topics that are not addressed by emerging or ongoing IARPA programs or other published IARPA solicitations. It is primarily, but not solely, intended for early stage research that may lead to larger, focused programs through a separate BAA in the future."
This is, of course, not a solicitation for the average Joe – and it has to be brand new, not an upgrade of current efforts. Those pitching ideas "should demonstrate that their proposed effort has the potential to make revolutionary, rather than incremental, improvements to intelligence capabilities. Research that primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice is specifically excluded."
The BAA fits in with existing IARPA efforts, like one project that collected some 2 million forecasts from more than 15,000 people over a four-year period. The forecasts looked at elections, treaties, weapons tests, interstate conflict – hundreds of world events. Judgments later were scored for accuracy.
"It's the idea of crowd wisdom, that you could do better by combining multiple independent judgments from people with different sources of information and different beliefs about the world," Dr. Jason Matheny, IARPA director said in a C4ISR & Networks interview.
IARPA also recently named Dr. Stacey Dixon as deputy director.
