The Collection step acquires and provisions information to be handed over to the processing and production steps. Collection management manages the information given by the various intelligence sources or agencies. Allowing various teams to collect their portion of the IR contributes to redundancy of information. This raw information can be used to confirm or disprove potential assessments, as well as provide opportunities for cross, communication between each of the teams. Once information is collected, it is reconciled and forwarded to the processing and production steps.