The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is planning to overhaul how the U.S. intelligence community (IC) procures open-source intelligence (OSINT), with a goal of delivering unclassified intelligence more quickly and efficiently to decision-makers.
“We’re looking at how we streamline contracts for multi-use cases across the intelligence community so that we can save a lot of money and make sure that our IC elements are getting the most bang for the buck,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on May 19 during the GEOINT 2025 conference in St. Louis.
Gabbard acknowledged the importance of OSINT to the IC but explained that bureaucratic obstacles are limiting its integration with other intelligence disciplines.
“The challenge oftentimes is within our archaic procurement laws that don’t really help us meet our objective,” she said. “These are the kinds of things that we’re running into that are not only a waste of money … but actually create a more constrained environment for a startup or a small business who’s got a unique solution to a problem that we need solved at a much cheaper price.”
To address those challenges, ODNI is reevaluating its contracting practices. A key goal is to expand their access to small businesses and startups that offer innovative, cost-effective solutions.
“How do we open it up so that we don’t always just go back to the same prime that’s been used over and over and over again?” Gabbard asked. “How do we make sure, when we’re bringing in a startup, for example, who may just have a simple solution to provide a single-source HR contract that can be used across all the IC elements [that] there’s not another second or third layer of contractors built on top of that to supervise, and then have another layer of supervisors to supervise the supervisors?”
An ODNI spokesperson confirmed that in addition to streamlining OSINT acquisition, the office is also targeting acquisition inefficiencies across the board, including redundant contracts for already-available data. Efforts are also underway to enhance the timeliness and objectivity of intelligence products.
“I won’t go into the detail, but I’ll tell you, a lot of folks in Congress have the same frustrations today,” Gabbard said. “Intelligence, in order for it to be useful, has to be timely, has to be relevant, and it has to be objective and unbiased.”
She pledged to work personally to ensure intelligence meets those criteria and is delivered at “operational speed.”
“Intelligence that comes too late, or it’s not providing that complete picture that [the president] needs to be able to make important call, is useless,” she said.