Agencies fail to make information sharing a priority

The Obama administration needs to restructure how interagency information-sharing initiatives are funded and implemented to encourage compliance by agencies that currently place a higher priority on their own missions, government and industry experts told House lawmakers Thursday.

"Differing missions, overlapping turf conflicts, resource constraints, bureaucratic inertia and agency tunnel vision still exist and impede information sharing," said Ambassador Thomas McNamara, program manager of the Information Sharing Environment, a post within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ISE was created by Congress in 2004 to facilitate the sharing of terrorism information across all levels of government and the private sector.

McNamara, who will step down from the role on Friday, told the Homeland Security Committee's panel on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment that his replacement should be a presidentially appointed senior official with independent authority, though he stopped short of recommending that the role be moved to the White House.

"It's important that we look at this need to restructure how [the Obama administration] handles cross-cutting issues," which are becoming more and more numerous, McNamara said. "We are appealing to agencies to do what is in the common good, but [they] have their own missions and objectives. I deal with 17 agencies whose budgets are limited; and for them to move their budgets the way I want -- it's not usually done," he said.

"Look at all the so-called czars popping up," he added. "Believe me, I'm not a czar -- I'm almost a petitioner at times. The agencies are the czars."

In a July 2, memorandum, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism John Brennan identified effective information sharing and access as a top priority of the Obama administration and said senior-level attention to the issue is crucial, said Jeffrey Smith, a member of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Nextgov could not locate the memo. According to Smith, Brennan noted plans to integrate the Information Sharing Council, currently chaired by the ISE program manager, with the Information Sharing Interagency Policy Committee within the National Security Council so the "important work of the [Information Sharing Council] will move forward under the auspices of the Executive Office of the President."

Both Smith and McNamara recommended that the newly merged committee be chaired by the incoming ISE program manage, who has yet to be named.

"It is imperative that the [committee] and its chair have adequate horsepower to drive interagency coordination at a senior level," Smith said. "Senior leadership from within the [White House] will ensure governmentwide authority to coordinate the policies and procedures necessary for effective information sharing and provide the policy clout.". Smith emphasized that to be effective, whoever is responsible for coordinating information-sharing policy should be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and have authority over related budgets.

The 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act, being debated in the House, includes a section that would move the ISE program manager position from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to the Executive Office of the President, though President Obama stated that "such legislation is premature and could create undue administrative and managerial burdens by creating a completely new category of information for agencies to manage."

"The link between the White House and the functions of the program manager are critical; it's a necessary link," McNamara said, calling the existing system for implementing cross-government initiatives, including information sharing, broken.