Intelligence Community Directive 501

Citation
Director of National Intelligence, 'Intelligence Community Directive 501: Discovery and Dissemination or Retrieval of Information Within the Intelligence Community (ICD 501) (eff. Jan. 21, 2009).

Overview
This directive charges each agency in the Intelligence Community (IC) with a "responsibility to provide" information, thereby ensuring agencies can "discover" and "request" intelligence from each other in order to fulfill their respective missions. ICD 501 does not apply to purely law enforcement information. If, however, it contains intelligence-related information, that information is subject to ICD 501. In order to facilitate the efficient sharing of this information, members of the IC must make all intelligence and analysis available to each other by automated means.

Although there remain ways to withhold information in limited circumstances, authorized IC members who request intelligence will be presumed to have a "need to know." To withhold information, an IC element must show that sharing will jeopardize the protection of sources, methods or activities, compromise a criminal or national security investigation, or be inconsistent with the law.

The ODNI has defined standards and information technology architecture requirements that all IC elements must follow to perform this process. The IC Information Sharing Executive will develop, in consultation with IC elements integrated implementation plans that set forth the required benchmarks each IC element must meet in order to achieve ICD 501 policy objectives.

Source
Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Information Sharing Report 2010 (full-text).