1. What is the value of information?

This is an essential question, to say the least, when it comes to assessing the return on investment of a monitoring service. After all, the raw material of intelligence is information.

The value of information is complex to define because :

• the same information does not have the same value for everyone;

• for the same person, in two different situations, the same information will not have the same value;

• information is a non-rival good, i.e. when someone reads or learns about a piece of information, this does not diminish its value for another person.

There is therefore no single, intrinsic value to any one piece of information. The time of day and the recipient of the information (the person who receives it) are...