The REASON Program aims to develop technology that will enable intelligence analysts to substantially increase the quality of argumentation in their analytic reports through more effective use of evidence and reasoning. The technology developed by the REASON Program will automatically produce comments (feedback and recommendations) on a draft report, highlighting additional relevant evidence, and identify strengths and weaknesses in the draft’s reasoning. Analysts can use the comments to improve their reports.
Proposals are sought which address all three Task Areas to meet REASON’s goal of developing automated methods to produce comments on draft analytic reports that enable analysts to substantially increase the report’s quality of argumentation:
• Task Area 1 – Identify Additional Evidence: Automatically find relevant supporting and contrary evidence in addition to the evidence used in a draft report.
• Task Area 2 – Identify Reasoning Strengths and Weaknesses: Automatically find strengths and weaknesses in the reasoning of a draft report.
• Task Area 3 – Produce Comments to Increase Quality of Argumentation: Based in part on the output of TA1 and TA2, automatically produce comments that enable analysts to substantially improve the argumentation in their reports.
Recommended Team Expertise
Collaborative efforts and teaming among Offerors are highly encouraged. It is anticipated that teams will be multidisciplinary and may include expertise in one or more of the disciplines listed below.
• Applied epistemology
• Argumentation
• Cognitive psychology
• Experimental design
• Informal logic
• Judgment and decision making
• Linguistics
• Natural language processing
• Philosophy of language
• Psychometrics
• Rationality
• Software engineering
• Systems engineering
• Systems integration
This is expected to be a two-phase program, with phases of 24 and 18 months each.
Proposals due 8 May 2023.
Supporting document for download: REASON+BAA+-+Amendment+1+-+5+April
