On 8 November 2005, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Porter J. Goss announced the creation of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC), effective 1 November 2005. The OSC will be based at CIA and will be built around what was formerly the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).
One of the problems this new organization will face is that open source is hot right now and everyone believes that they can do it. However, whether a proliferation of small units performing overlapping open-source functions is the best use of limited resources is open to debate. As one example, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes is quoted in a recent interview as saying, "if we walked down [to the State Department's new media-monitoring unit], you's see live what's happening on Arab TV. We have a young man who's watching the blogs, the Web chats.... That unit publishes a daily rapid-response report. It goes to all the Cabinet secretaries and all our ambassadors." Elaine Shannon and Jay Carney, "10 Questions for Karen Hughes," Time, 20 Feb. 2006, 8.
