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Government urged to improve information sharing before crises

By Katherine McIntire Peters kpeters@govexec.com October 20, 2008

Federal decision-makers must improve the way they collect and share information among themselves and with state, local and private organizations, if they are to respond to future security threats effectively, according to a new study from a nonprofit research organization.

Timely and accurate information always has been vital to security, but increasingly U.S. and European officials will need to rely on information not part of traditional intelligence-gathering mechanisms, the report from the Henry L. Stimson Center stated. Information about things like pandemic disease, extreme weather and environmental factors can be critical in regional or global disasters, yet the methods for sharing such vital information remain at a nascent stage, as was seen in the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the global responses to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the spread of the acute respiratory disease SARS in 2003.

A dramatic increase in the amount of information publicly available, coupled with a rise in the number of stakeholders, many of whom are not public officials, complicates information sharing, said Julie Fischer, a senior associate at Stimson and a primary author of the report, "New Information and Intelligence Needs in the 21st Century Threat Environment."

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The center studied information sharing across three sectors: terrorism, infectious disease and natural hazards. Each has its own culture that affects how information is used and shared.

For example, private and government officials report and act on information about infectious diseases. This information is generated at the local level and generally is shared openly, although it is secured to protect personal privacy. Terrorism information is largely classified and is limited to national officials, although it is increasingly generated and consumed at the state and local levels.

"The ability to generate, use and collect [information] is uneven at the state and local levels," Fischer said.

Chet Lunner, the assistant deputy undersecretary of the Homeland Security Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said the state and municipal fusion centers created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were designed to take an all-hazard approach to collecting and sharing information.

"The biggest problem is cultural," Lunner said. "We know what we need to do, but we don't seem to understand how to incentivize sharing."

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  • As with typical Think Tank reports and documents they only identify the issues and problems, they usually do not provide any type of recommendation or suggestion as to addressing the issues and problems.The report states that it examines “conceptual issues” not actual issues that affect the U.S. and EU. The report goes on to confuse Europe with the European Union (EU). Where the EU consists of 27 Countries and Europe consists of 47 countries. If the authors of the report cannot identify who is a member of the EU and who is not how are they to provide a comparison that is accurate between the United States and the EU if the authors keep changing the matrix. The Authors failed to see that a comparison between the EU and the U.S. is far from possible as the EU is not a single voice where the U.S. does have that single voice. The report also missed the critical interdependence of the Private Sector and (Federal) Government. In this 21st Century there is very little that is not intertwined between the Government and Private sectors when it comes to responding to threats from a terrorist, public health or natural hazard. This interdependence is hard to miss if one would just look they would quickly realize that 99% of the First Responders are in the Private Sector. When the report talks about information sharing it again misses the interdependence of the private and government sectors, as the private sectors control the telecommunication channels that are used to move this threat data. Overall this report is about as good as a first term college paper. It does not address the topic within the stated title, and when the authors attempt to provide a background of the information to be provided they fail to understand the vast difference between the EU, Europe and the U.S. and that it is not “international” but “transnational”, and how doing a comparison between a single country and an Organization of Countries is almost impossible to find common areas to compare against. Marty Laksbergs Posted October 30, 2008 2:47 PM
  • Agree with the stove piped lines of information. And heavens forbid we would share with Allies or coalition partners. Carol Posted October 23, 2008 9:11 AM
  • I have finally figured out what a study is, especially a study involving more or less abstract ideas. That's when a group of people who all have the same idea or beliefs about how something should work, or should be done, or whatever, get together and look for any kind of justification for the way they think things should be so they can justify forcing their own ideas or ideology on other people who DON'T think or believe the same way they do. Sounds kind of like the US Congress, or the Christian and Moslem religious conservatives, doesn't it? Not to mention the studies paid for by various economic groups to prove that their particular agenda (such as proving that chicken is better than beef, paid for by the poultry producers, etc.) is the right way to go. Actually, what bothers me most is that our news systems usually broadcast the findings of these groups as if they are scientifically accurate, instead of just a group of people with their own agenda trying to find some justification to force the rest of us to believe the same way they do - with no real evidence that their way is any better than any other way. From what I've seen over the years, they are usually proved wrong eventually. Larry R. Doane Posted October 21, 2008 8:41 AM
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