- OSINT Foundation’s Eliot Jardines has called for elevating open-source intelligence tradecraft
- The foundation is developing a new certification for OSINT practitioners
- Jardines is pushing for increased government funding for OSINT programs
Eliot Jardines, executive director of the OSINT Foundation, said elevating open-source intelligence tradecraft among intelligence community practitioners could strengthen the government’s use of OSINT as a key data source in support of national security.
In an article published on Carahsoft.com, Jardines wrote that OSINT has long served as a starting point for other intelligence disciplines, given its standing as one of the lowest-risk methods for gathering information. He noted that publicly available information and commercially available data have grown substantially alongside new technologies and social media platforms.
How Is AI Reshaping OSINT Practices?
Jardines wrote that artificial intelligence is now supporting the collection and analysis of large volumes of open-source data, a shift he said has increased the value of OSINT to the broader intelligence community.
“AI relieves OSINT practitioners of their data-sifting function and lets them quickly add significant value in terms of timely intelligence to policymakers and warfighters,” he noted.
How Does the OSINT Foundation Help Industry & Agencies Advance OSINT?
Jardines co-founded the OSINT Foundation with Barbara Alexander in 2022 to promote tradecraft standards and grow the practitioner community. The organization offers professional development programming, including webinars, an OSINT Tech Expo and an annual training summit with academia, industry and government. It also develops and publishes its own tradecraft standards and hosts an annual awards program recognizing top practitioners, trainers and innovators in the field.
What Certification & Funding Efforts Is the OSINT Foundation Pursuing?
The foundation is developing a professional certification based on intelligence community standards, which Jardines said would be more transparent and less costly than commercial alternatives.
He described the organization as a continued advocate for greater OSINT funding, citing figures from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence showing that OSINT informs at least 20 percent of the President’s Daily Brief citations, despite receiving about 0.5 percent of the overall intelligence budget.
“We at the OSINT Foundation believe government funding must match the growing demand for OSINT in the intelligence community, and we will continue to advocate for the discipline and its practitioners, who provide vital contributions to national security,” Jardines added.
