I should have asked if my understanding of the question was correct, or correct enough.
To use, ironically, the Need To Know construct in an actually useful and positive way. Given all of the data, knowledge, and information out there, what is the actual Intelligence that needs to be passed along.
I say that Ironically, since all too often the Need to know phrase is associated with the cult of denying access to information. When what we need to be working on is correctly assertaining how much a person really want to know, and what do they need to know. If they are not really asking, but merely making a speach utterance behavior - then clearly the need to know approximates ZERO.
While on the other hand, what they may have asked about may require that they understand some set P, pre-requisite information, before we can actually work with the requested information.
I am afraid that this may well argue in favor of s9's The Intelligence Revolution... That the problem is not merely access to the raw data, or any gaggle of information, but the problem of how to not only DO the analysis, but know which 'executive summaries' are all that folks need - and, well, to be rude, anything more and their head explodes....