Intelligence.gov is part of a broader effort to earn and retain public trust through transparency of Intelligence Community activities while protecting the sources and methods necessary to perform its national security mission.
This effort is grounded in the Principles of Intelligence Transparency for the IC issued in 2015. These principles call on the IC to be proactive in enhancing public understanding of the IC’s mission, how the IC accomplishes that mission, and the IC’s framework of rules, compliance, and oversight. The overall goal is to make appropriate and responsible transparency more coordinated, credible, understandable, and sustainable.
The new Intelligence.gov was launched in 2017 as a reflection of this goal, to provide a platform for supporting and sharing transparency activities from across the IC as well as to serve as a new digital front door for the entire Intelligence Community.
Our efforts to be more open and accountable to the public take many forms and are supported by a diverse array of intelligence officers throughout our community. These activities are coordinated by Rebecca Richards, Chief Transparency Officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Richards, who leads ODNI’s the Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency Office oversees the IC's responsibility to provide and balance transparency. She also serves as the IC’s Civil Liberties Protection Officer, a position established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
ODNI’s CLPT office leads the integration of civil liberties and privacy protections into the policies, procedures, programs, and activities of the IC, while also ensuring that the IC provides appropriate transparency into it’s authorities and activities. This work is supported by the Intelligence Transparency Council.
The council, made up of senior officers from across the IC, advocates for, and oversees, the institutionalization of the Principles of Intelligence Transparency throughout their offices and agencies, ensuring that transparency becomes a comprehensive and sustainable practice within the Intelligence Community. The group holds regular meetings as part of the on-going, IC-wide transparency effort.
Intelligence.gov is one small part of the overall transparency focus. Specifically, the goal of this website is to improve the general public's understanding of the IC's mission, how it operates, and the people who work in the IC. To do that, the site includes information about how the IC operates and is regulated, its history, and featured stories and videos highlighting the people of the IC and their work for our nation.
The IC’s Transparency Initiative began formally in 2015 with the establishment of the Principles of Intelligence Transparency and the release of our initial Transparency Implementation Plan. Hear then Chief for Civil Liberties, Privacy & Transparency at ODNI, Alex Joel discuss why it's important for the IC to be more transparent.