Bringing national-security intelligence together

What role does Britain's national-security secretariat perform?

It brings intelligence from different sources together, updates the assessment of world events, and helps establish Britain's policy position.

The secretariat's intended role is to combine intelligence from multiple sources into an updated view of events. That assessment informs what Britain's position should be. Access across organisations should prevent information held by one part of government from remaining unknown to another. Its access to everything is theoretical, so the institutional design does not guarantee that every information barrier disappears. The formal office name is indistinct in the captions, although its coordinating function is clear.