Agencies upgrading technology after terrorist attacks
Many government agencies are modernizing the way they utilize information and communication technologies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said Wednesday.
"After Sept. 11, I think it was very clear [that] citizens looked more to government," Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said during a Council For Excellence in Government luncheon. Forman said the crisis is forcing the government to get its computer systems up to date to better detect, react to and prevent similar acts.
"It is so much easier now to get agencies focused on security," Forman said, adding that his agency is encouraging department heads to make computer and network security a priority.
The public health system also has become dependent on fast, real-time information to train public health officials remotely and provide updates on potential threats, said George Hardy, executive director for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Before Sept. 11, the main challenge for the public health system was making the varying state and federal health systems more interoperable, Hardy said. The challenge now is ensuring patient privacy of information while still disseminating enough information to educate health officials, he said.
"I think we learned a lot about our shortcomings on Sept. 11," Hardy said. "We're using the technology as a learning tool."
Technology also is proving vital in disseminating the U.S. message on terrorism to other countries and in coordinating data on other countries' anti-terrorism activities. Anthony Wayne, assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, said State Department officials are trying to learn more creative ways to utilize software that tracks such activity, and they also are trying to update the agency Web site.
"There's no question we have been learning the importance of public diplomacy in this interconnected world," Wayne said.
Law enforcement and the role technology plays in that process has undergone a "fundamental change," said Steve Pomerantz, executive director of the Center for Criminal Justice Technology at Mitretek Systems and a former FBI counterterrorism chief.
Pomerantz said the United States generally has a "fear of centralized law." And with 18,000 police agencies, most of which have fewer than 25 officers, law enforcement increasingly is relying on technology to share information about potential terrorist threats and for intelligence gathering.
"I cannot overemphasize the issue of technology as applied to this problem," he said.
A recent report released by the Progressive Policy Institute shows that policymakers have been slow to recognize that e-government should do more than replicate government structures online. That is particularly true of the Bush administration, "which seems to view e-government as simply another way to improve management and cut waste, fraud and abuse, rather than a way to fundamentally reengineer government for the new economy," the report says.