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This article argues that there are five major challenges currently facing Western intelligence communities. First - ensuring skills retention for intelligence officers and analysts, while developing knowledgeable managers and customers, all in an increasingly-complex security environment. Second - instituting and inculcating knowledge and expertise in these staff - while addressing an opponent in al-Qaeda which demonstrates increasingly sophisticated use of IT, new media, etc. Third - drawing-in outside expertise from the research and business communities, as is done currently in the US and Canada but in only a very limited manner in the UK. Fourth - overcoming institutional rigidity in dividing the foreign and domestic - alongside rigid sharing and co-operation relationships. Fifth - creating truly collaborative environments that offer genuine socio-cultural incentives to collaboration rather than mere 'IT solutions'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]