Agencies are overcoming data-sharing barriers, officials say
Federal agencies are making progress in overcoming "cultural" barriers and turf wars that once prevented them from sharing key information or data related to homeland security, a panel of officials said on Tuesday.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Federal agencies are making progress in overcoming "cultural" barriers and turf wars that once prevented them from sharing key information or data related to homeland security, a panel of officials said on Tuesday.
After recognizing that a lack of integration may have hampered the United States from preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, federal employees are showing more zeal and willingness to collaborate and share information, Coast Guard Chief Information Officer (CIO) Nathaniel Heiner said at the 2003 Information Processing Interagency Conference here.
"Those aircraft on [Sept. 11] basically destroyed the kinds of cultural impediments that used to be there," he said. "Everyone has their hands on the oars and are trying to pull in the same direction."
Heiner said a keen awareness among agency officials of the security roles they have to play has made agencies understand that they need communication. "The underlying assumption now is that whatever distrust [agencies] have had for organizations ... [is] not going to be allowed to stop us," he said.
Mark Holman, former deputy assistant to President Bush for homeland security, also emphasized that agencies, notably the CIA and FBI, are now "talking to each other." Information is being shared vertically within departments as well as horizontally across agencies, he said. "It's got to happen because the American people understand it."
One of the most "dramatic" changes in the way the executive branch addresses potential threats will be the addition of the information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate at Homeland Security, Holman said.
But Holman acknowledged that one of the major challenges the department will face in coordinating security information is not disseminating information but trying to pull information back up the bureaucratic chain from various sources.
Separately, Heiner noted one area of security transformation that is not moving as quickly as officials would like: the issuance of security clearances. "It's a critical national issue," he said. "I expect because our internal system, which is already outsourced to a significant extent, is ... overloaded, it will be an area of intense government contracting."