Recently, my netfriend Jeffrey Carr wrote an O'Reilly Radar piece about BRIDGE, the Intelligence Comunity's testbed for new community and analysis tools. He focused mainly on the user angle: anyone can sign up for BRIDGE and use the tools (if your request is approved by an existing user). It's unclassified, so you don't get to see any secrets, but you do get to use information management apps that were created to help intelligence analysts do their jobs better.

This is important: these evaluations will form the basis for purchase decisions, which is a much wiser use of your tax dollars than the old way, when they bought software before the intended users ever laid eyes on it.

Disclaimer: I, along with Josh Knowles, developed one of the five pilot apps on BRIDGE.

On top of open usage, there's another angle that I think is even more important: open provision. In addition to asking you to review these tools, they're asking you to build them as well. (If this sounds familiar, I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but there's new information in this post.)

This has huge implications for the government technology. In a way, the Intelligence Community is already implementing the procurement reforms that Vivek Kundra spoke about last week.

If you want to start coding, here's what you need to know:

1. All tools must be Web-based and URL-friendly: no Java applets or SWF-based ActiveX-based apps. Also, you can't provide anything that requires client-side add-ons like Greasemonkey.
2. You have to host the tool yourself on an SSL-enabled server. You will have a subdomain on bridge-ic.net that will map to your app's DNS entry.
3. You have to use their authentication service. Users are authenticated with a user certificate provided by BRIDGE, which you must validate upon each request.

That's it. There are no more requirements for letting intelligence analysts use your tool for unclassified work. (There are other requirements if your tool makes it big, however.)

Ready to get started? You probably need documentation, don't you? It's early, so documentation is lacking, especially when it comes to scripting languages like PHP, Python and Ruby. There are two options:

Option 1: The BRIDGE wiki has a downloadable integration guide as well as a code exchange.

Note that you can only reach these pages if you've registered for BRIDGE and have installed your user certificate. I think that's a significant barrier. Would-be developers can't learn about BRIDGE unless they already know it exists. As Jeff wrote in his O'Reilly post, the intent of BRIDGE is to create a massive influx of tool providers and give analysts more software options. That's not going to happen if BRIDGE isn't discoverable. (UPDATE: David Schroh, the BRIDGE technical lead, has pointed to a non-https page in the comments below.) Hence,

Option 2: I'm trying to build a more open alternative to information about BRIDGE. Having completed the basic requirements above for my own tool, I've documented it on my own site. In lieu of a truly public official presence, perhaps this wiki can serve as an easily accessible knowledge and outreach base for BRIDGE development. Just like BRIDGE, this is an early effort, so it's not at all complete. If you have questions or suggestions, use the wiki's discussion pages or just email me.