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The recent GovCon5 show sparked several interesting discussions

We recently attended Palantir’s GovCon5 in Tyson’s Corner, VA. What a great conference! With over 1000 attendees there were tons of conversations about the issues that we’re all working on. Attendees included Michael Chertoff and 9/11 Commission members.

One thing that makes GovCon a bit different than most conferences is that it’s run by engineers, which is the culture of Palantir. It was really interesting to get a more technical perspective on all the issues, rather than the business-oriented approach you often see.

Conferences like this are always a good chance to catch up with others and exchange ideas. Here are some of my observations:

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity was all the rage, with quite a bit of messaging, demonstrations, and partners around talking about the problem and how they address it. This wasn’t particularly surprising given the emphasis within the current administration.

What is interesting is the way data correlation and threat detection technologies are brought to the problem. For example, when you think about it, try substituting persons for IP addresses and domain names. Then look for relationships between IP addresses and servers and servers with domain name registrants, and servers with cybersecurity attacks and you have a very interesting environment for data correlation and threat detection. More on this in future blog posts.

Many Types of Entities

Attendees and presenters talked frequently about people, places and things. Demonstrations reflected this. Especially in the past few years, it has become imperative to look beyond just people and link people to each other, vehicles, incidents, weapons, etc. Groups and hierarchies are especially important, as are non-obvious relationships.

Data Quality and Entity Resolution

Surprisingly, there was barely any discussion of data quality and entity resolution. During one demonstration, the user was allowed to decide whether two people might be the same. This is fine, assuming you have good data quality, but what if you don’t? Or what if you’re not sure of your data quality?

If you don’t have full confidence about your data quality and the relationships between your entities, you need a true entity resolution solution that can overcome disparate and dirty data.

My colleague Scott Schumacher wrote a great Entity Resolution 101 post to bring you up to speed.

Privacy & Civil Liberties

I attended an intriguing presentation by Brian Cunningham, Markle Foundation task force member and Senior Counsel for Palantir, about privacy and civil liberties. Mostly, this focused on the law and policy around intelligence information dissemination and use.

Markle Foundation produced a report with technology recommendations and the Intelligence Community Directive 501 (ICD 501) signed January 2009 were references. ICD 501, as we know, outlines roles, rights and responsibilities of IC with respect to "Discovery, Dissemination or Retrieval of Information with the Intelligence Community."

Overall, this was a terrific conference. Now we’re gearing up for DoDIIS in a few weeks – we hope to see you there!