Creating and analysing intelligence is crucial to the process of the Intelligence Cycle, and the third stage of the process; the evaluation phase is a highly important part of the cycle.
Having completed the collection plan from phase 2, the evaluation phase consists of you then obtaining a measure of confidence in the data that you have collected. You need to analyse how reliable, truthful and valid you consider the source (person or system providing the information) to be, and how the reliable the information being provided by that source is.
There are three significant stages to go through during the evaluation phase:
1. Source Evaluation – you need to evaluate the source to see whether they are reliable
2. Information Evaluation – you need to then evaluate the information provided by the source, using a grading matrix
3. Data Dissemination – you need to consider the handling and sharing of the data once the previous two steps have been taken
The infographic below provides detail on each important step that must be taken within the evaluation stage of the intelligence cycle, and the following infographic of the series will focus on the analysis stage of the cycle.