information sharing

Information Sharing: A Persistent Challenge

Publication date: 
2010-06-01
Author(s): 
Mark Baur
Summary: 

Crises like the recent earthquake in Haiti focus public and official attention toward the mechanisms of response efforts—and toward information management in particular. A major challenge in understanding the efficacy of crisis communications remains to ask the right questions about the nature of decentralized organizations, and even of information itself. Assumptions about how to communicate most effectively must be measured against the real constraints and possibilities of institutions responding to a crisis.

Crises like the recent earthquake in Haiti focus public and official attention toward the mechanisms of response efforts -- and toward information management in particular.  A major challenge in understanding the efficacy of crisis communications remains to ask the right questions about the nature of decentralized organizations, and even of information itself.  Assumptions about how to communicate most effectively must be measured against the real constraints and possibilities of institutions responding to a crisis.

The language of better communication has come to take on an almost dogmatic character.  Particularly within official circles the terms: coordinate, cooperate, collaborate, partnership, interagency, need to share, etc. are regularly invoked.  Where the limitations of rigid hierarchies have been exposed, the calls to engage horizontally across lines of authority have been raised.  Resources and expertise need not be consolidated in one place (a single agency or funding stream) if they can at least be made accessible to the range of participants in a common endeavor, yet this does not take into account a variety of sources of institutional inertia that make information sharing a much more challenging exercise in practice than theory.  Why is it that, despite considerable attention and effort, effective information management and information sharing remains elusive?

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Power to the Edge: Command and Control in the Information Age

Publication date: 
2003-06-01
Author(s): 
David S. Alberts, Richard E. Hayes

We've moved from an industrial to an information age where context rich information can be shared and communicated "to the edge" of an organization, thereby shaking up traditional hierarchies -- for both good and bad.

  • Decentralization  is important when designing systems that allow people at every level of an organization to create and share knowledge. It's either very costly and perhaps impossible to predict who may be able to help organize and contribute to knowledge.
  • "...allowing information to be recombined in untold ways and by allowing individuals to interact in unplanned ways creates understandings and options not previously possible."
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U.S. European Command Intelligence Summit & Technology Expo

Author(s): 
Brian Maslowsky

The inaugural U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) Intelligence Summit and Technology Expo, from 15 to 17 February, gathered over 430 attendees and 82 vendors for two days of discussions.  While the stated focus of the summit was to bring together both U.S. and European government, law enforcement, academic, and industry representatives; the majority of attendees represented U.S. agencies and companies.  Despite this majority, several interesting presentations from NATO and Interpol punctuated the program.

Much of the language of the Web has found its way into the intelligence community.  Were I to pick a few key terms that defined the talks given; metadata, collaboration, and cross-domain would be my first choices.  These terms, along with others, were used in almost every presentation and panel given.  That frequency, however, did not seem to correlate to a nuanced understanding - suggesting that while the language of the Web has become ingrained, the underlying concepts require considerably more attention.

Information Sharing Models and Interoperability

Publication date: 
2008-06-01
Author(s): 
Willem Muhren, Meeri-Maria Jaarva, Kristiina Rintakoski, Jari Sundqvist

Be wary of solutions looking for problems, and focus on organizational readiness to engage.

  • "Political, organisational and other substance related factors should determine the development of systems, not the availability and push of technology solutions."
  • "Organizations continue to plan and procure their information and communications technology for their own organizational mission partly 
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