GAO reiterates key aspects for interagency collaboration
Federal agencies must improve their ability to form collaborative relationships and to share national security information in order to combat terrorism, a top congressional investigator testified Wednesday.
Recent terrorist attacks on a US-bound airliner heading for Detroit, Mich., on Christmas Day and on New York City's Times Square in late April demonstrate the need to improve interagency collaboration to pool the specific expertise within federal agencies to fight an unconventional threat, John Pendleton, director of Defense Capabilities and Management at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told Congress.
"Progress has been made in enhancing interagency collaboration, but success will require leadership commitment, sound plans that set clear priorities, and measurable goals. The agencies involved in national security will need to make concerted efforts to forge strong and collaborative partnerships, and seek coordinated solutions that leverage expertise and capabilities across communities," Pendleton said in written testimony, National Security: Key Challenges and Solutions to Strengthen Interagency Collaboration, delivered to a panel of the House Committee on Armed Services.
Pendleton identifies specific challenges to interagency collaboration as the development and implementation of overarching strategies, creating collaborative organizations as coordination mechanisms, developing a well-trained workforce, and sharing and integrating national security information across agencies.
Agencies would improve their collaboration if they had more clearly defined roles and responsibilities for their participation in national security matters, GAO concluded. Stronger mechanisms for bringing agencies together to work on shared plans also would improve collaboration.
They also could use better guidelines for sharing information, GAO emphasized. Putting together information from multiple sources creates difficulties with integrating that information and making use of it.
Information sharing across federal, state and local agencies poses some of the most significant challenges to collaboration, the testimony revealed.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has made efforts to participate in state and local fusion centers, for example, to share information on criminal and terrorist activities. However, many personnel outside of DOD could not access Defense documents or attend planning sessions because they lacked appropriate security clearances to do so.
In addition, concerns about the ability of state and local agencies to protect sensitive information they receive have created reluctance among federal agencies and private sector companies to share information, the testimony said.
"For example, we have reported that Department of Homeland Security officials expressed concerns about sharing terrorism-related information with state and local partners because such information had occasionally been posted on public Internet sites or otherwise compromised," Pendleton wrote.
Producing strong guidelines, setting up mutual agreements, and developing clear procedures on all aspects of information sharing, such as how to transmit and store information, would facilitate more information sharing within interagency collaboration, GAO noted.
Even then, personnel must take care to pull that information together properly and make knowledgeable determinations to read it appropriately.
"When agencies do share information, managing and integrating information from multiple sources presents challenges regarding redundancies in information sharing, unclear roles and responsibilities, and data comparability," Pendleton wrote.
Pendleton reiterated that GAO has made recommendations since 2005 to the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and State to develop comprehensive information-sharing guidelines for national security information.
Such guidelines should define how to protect shared information; specify how to include nonfederal partners in planning processes; identify ways to fully involve agencies in information-sharing efforts; include practices to facilitate communication among federal, state and local agencies; spell out information-sharing roles and responsibilities; and set up standards for data collection to ensure reliable comparisons across agencies.
Federal agencies generally have agreed with these recommendations, the testimony added.
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