Transforming Interagency Information Sharing

An Online Workshop for Members of the U.S. Government Maritime Community of Interest

Most of the maritime data compiled by the U.S. Government could be at your findertips, but policy barriers keep it out of reach.

Become part of the solution by helping craft effective interagency information sharing best practices and policies.

This wiki, along with a series of interagecy information sharing improvement workships, helps members of the maritime community of interest identify information sharing challenges, provide personal examples, and collaborate toward identifying methods and incentives to improve information sharing.

Some policies keep information in silos for good reason. And then there are the rest of the policies.

Help move U.S. Government policy into the modern age.

Join us.

Visit the Transforming Interagency Information Sharing Workshop website at www.gmsa.gov/transform.

Media Release

Read the media release.

Participate Online

The Three-Step Process

We are approaching this challenge using a three-step process.

First, we must identify if there is indeed a mandate to share information within each agency. If, not, do we proceed? If so, how?

Second, we identify the individual barriers to information sharing.

Third, we identify specific solutions, and when possible find common solutions that can be applied across the board.

We invite you to use this wiki to walk through these steps for your section of your agency. Keep in mind, this is an unclassified site. Do not include any classified, sensitive, or for-official-use-only material on this site.

Is there a Mandate for Information Sharing?

National Security Policy Directive 41 / Homeland Security Policy Directive 13, signed out during the Bush Administration, calls for developing effective maritime domain awareness as a necessary condition of providing Maritime Security. Subsequent documents highlighted effective interagency information sharing as a key to achieving effective MDA. Do these documents provide a mandate for each agency in the federal government to share maritime information? Statements by the Obama Administration seem to indicate the administration's intent to make greater headway on information sharing. Do documents exist that specifically grant the authority to share? The responsibility to share? Is there a mandate in your agency to share maritime information?

Join this discussion online. (Keyword: WorkshopMandate)

What are the Barriers to Effective Information Sharing?

By identifying specific barriers to information sharing, we can develop specific solutions. The technology is the easy part. A lot of very smart people are working technology issues right now. Policy is the hard part. (When was the last time policy caught up with techonolgy?) What are the policy issues that prevent you from providing or receiving the information need to make government effective and efficient? To what degree are these issues common to several agencies?

Join this discussion online. (Keyword: WorkshopBarriers)

What are the Specific Solutions to Specific Barriers?

How can we best collaborate to find solutions to your specific barriers? Who needs to be part of the conversation? Are there common solutions we can implement across the government to break down barriers more quickly?

Join this discussion online. (Keyword: WorkshopSolutions)

The Workshops

If you want to augment this work by joining an interagency cohort working these issues in a series of wokshops, please contact CAPT Dave Sanders, JAGC, USN at the Office of Global Maritime Situational Awareness. Call 202-372-3063, or email him at David.F.Sanders@uscg.mil.

Return to main workshop Web site.

-- ChadHolmes - 27 Apr 2009