Development of Automation To Assist Declassification

Specifically
Background
Benefits
Who Are the Key Stakeholders?
Contact
Questions and Answers

The Department of Energy, in response to the Secretary's Openness Initiative, is seeking ways to reduce the volume of classified information, while at the same time, protecting that information which would be of advantage to would-be proliferants, terrorists, and potential adversaries. An essential element of this process is to use technology to speed up the document review process without degrading the quality of the review. The Department is seeking possible Cooperative Research and Development Agreement partners to develop and commercialize this technology.

Specifically

The Department of Energy has initiated a program to develop an intelligent computer system capable of indicating, with a high level of confidence, that a particular portion of text may contain classified information and the remainder may be declassified. To that end, several areas are currently under study:
- A system that can accurately scan paper documents, even those of poor quality, and store them as visual images and convert the text portion of those images to computer-readable text files.
- Representation of declassification knowledge in computers so that the computer can use that knowledge to review documents.
- Computer systems that can automatically "learn" and update their declassification knowledge.
- Computer software that can "understand" natural language text to the degree necessary to apply declassification knowledge and recognize classified documents.
- A system that can recognize nontext portions of document and compare them to identify identical patterns.

Background

Today, there is a very large volume of documents already identified for declassification review.
The current document review process is very labor-intensive and requires the efforts of two very highly qualified individuals to review each document.
Except for computerized keyword searches of classification guidance texts, the current review process is completely manual.

Benefits

If a successful system can be developed, it has significance to the Department of Energy and to American competiveness.
An intelligent computer declassification system has the potential to help reduce the requirement for two classification experts to review each document when conducting large systematic reviews. In the long term, a computerized tool may be developed to perform some types of declassification review.
This development is intended to speed up the process by which information that is no longer classified can be readily made available to the public.
In addition, the technology from this development would have applications at other agencies, as well as commercial applications. For this reason, the Department of Energy is seeking cost sharing Cooperative Research and Development Agreement partners.

Who Are the Key Stakeholders?

Environmental, Safety and Health Organizations. These stakeholders will benefit from the greater volume and faster availability of requested research information.
The Public. Concerned citizens will have quicker access to desired information.
Department of Energy and the U.S. Government. The Department of Energy will improve its current image of secrecy and poor responsiveness. Response time for information requests will be reduced. Both the Department of Energy and the Government, in general, will benefit from the example of openness in Government.

Contact

U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Public Affairs
Contact: Sam Grizzle
(202) 586-5806

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC 20585

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q. When will this system be operational?

A. At the present we are evaluating expertise and existing work in our national laboratories, and the state of the art in corporate and academic circles, and plans to issue a Critical Program Review report in December 1994. This report will indicate if the program's objectives are feasible, and how we should proceed. As work on the program goes forward, critical reviews will be held about every year to assess program progress and direction.

Q. What is the project's schedule for development?

A. A critical design review is targeted for completion in December 1994 to assess progress. A research and development schedule will be part of that document.

Q. What is meant by, "understand natural language text?"

A. The ability of the system to understand text in the Department of Energy documents to the degree necessary to identify when they convey classified information.

Q. How will this system work?

A. We are only at the beginning of this project and cannot say whether it will actually work or not. Our vision is that the hard copy files containing classified information would be converted to computer readable files. Those files would processed by the system, with appropriate software (not yet developed) separating files which are most likely to contain unclassified information. If a human reviewer concurs, those unclassified documents could then be approved for release. Our vision continues in that the system would then identify the classified information in the documents with a high degree of accuracy and in conjunction with a human classification expert, permit the rapid declassification of the content of the document itself, or accurate and fast delineation of the classified portions. Again, this is not a description of what exists today. It is hoped for benefits of a program based in part upon a Cooperative Research Development Agreement that hopes to push the state of the art to ultimately benefit the stakeholders in terms of more rapid, more accurate and less costly reviews of documents prior to their release.

Q. This seems like a very difficult system to build. Do you really think this is possible?

A. It is a very difficult objective. However, the manual way we are declassifying documents is time consuming and expensive. The Department wants to do everything possible to speed up this process. This program is high risk, but its potential benefits are tremendous. In addition, it is anticipated that a series of spinoffs from this effort will significantly increase the speed with which documents are reviewed prior to development of the full system.

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