Project Genoa II

Project Genoa II was a software project that originated with DARPA's Information Awareness Office and the successor to the Genoa program. Originally part of DARPA's Total Information Awareness, it was later renamed "Topsail" and handed over to ARDA for further development.

Genoa II was scheduled to be a five-year-long program. It followed up on the research initiated by the first Genoa project. While Genoa primarily focused on intelligence analyses, Genoa II was aimed towards providing means with which computers, software agents, policy makers, and field operatives could collaborate. Eleven different contractors were involved in its development.

The official goals of Genoa II were to develop and deploy the following:

1. Cognitive aids that allow humans and machines to “think together” in real-time about complicated problems;

2. Means to overcome the biases and limitations of the human cognitive system;

3. “Cognitive amplifiers” that help teams of people rapidly and fully comprehend complicated and uncertain situations; and,

4. The means to rapidly and seamlessly cut across – and complement – existing stove-piped hierarchical organizational structures by creating dynamic, adaptable, peer-to-peer collaborative networks.

In 2002, Tom Armour, a veteran of the Genoa project, was selected by John Poindexter to be the director of the new Genoa II program, a component of Total Information Awareness (TIA) effort. It was commissioned under the cost of $54 million.

In late 2003 TIA was officially shutdown by Congress due to unfavorable views from the public. Most of its research was salvaged and it components were transferred to other government agencies for development. Genoa II was renamed Topsail and handed over to the National Security Agency's Advanced Research and Development Activity division for further work. In October 2005, the Science Applications International Corporation signed a $3.7 million contract for work on Topsail.

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