Terrorism Information Sharing Initiative Faces Several Hurdles

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) submitted the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) Implementation Plan to Congress in November. Through changes in policy and technology, the plan articulates a multi-year vision for improving terrorism information sharing across the federal government and between foreign, federal, state and local governments, as well as key members of the private sector.

The ISE plan has a number of shortcomings, however. Most notably, it fails to include an explicit role for the public or any opportunity for the accountability and oversight that public involvement can provide. Additionally, the plan must overcome the problems posed by information being housed at different agencies, often within incompatible technologies, and controlled by cultures which are often reluctant to share information. One of the recent and significant information problems that agencies have created is the proliferation of sensitive but unclassified information categories, which severely restrict information flow.

Where's the Accountability?
Essential to the ISE implementation plan are oversight and accountability across the federal government and at key state and local nodes in the information nexus. The vastness of the plan necessitates diligent oversight to ensure that technologies, policies and information sharing practices are being appropriately implemented.

Ambassador Thomas McNamara, program manager of the ISE, has stated that the DNI lacks the capacity to conduct centralized oversight at the numerous federal and state agencies that will be a part of the ISE. Instead, the plan will count on Inspectors General (IG) at the various agencies to conduct oversight. The specifics of oversight, such as frequency of reporting and primary areas to review, should be formalized as the ISE plan moves forward, ensuring compatibility of the IGs’ oversight on agencies' progress.

An important source of oversight that is missing from the plan is the public. The media, public interest groups and the general public have long played a powerful role in overseeing government activities and practices. Public accountability has led to, among other things, the exposure of the government's failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the shortcomings of the government's pre-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. The ISE plan, though, fails to recognize the role that the public needs to play in overseeing the implementation of a robust terrorism information sharing network.

More thought should be given to what level of access the public should have to terrorist threat information and how the public can regularly access information regarding the government's homeland security efforts. Available information should not be so detailed as to provide a roadmap for terrorists, but it should allow interested citizens to be assured that the government is taking steps to protect them, their families and their communities. If weaknesses exist in the government's homeland security preparations, little motivates the government faster than public outrage.

Sensitive But Unclassified Quagmire
A major problem facing any effort to link different agencies together are the new pseudo-classification categories of information that have proliferated since 9/11, unnecessarily restricting information flow. Agencies have created over 100 sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information categories, which are often poorly defined and lack explicit instructions on how to correctly categorize information.

There are many problems with the current SBU policies that make it increasingly difficult for the government to properly manage and utilize all of the information it possesses. For instance, the authority to mark documents as an SBU category is decentralized, and at some agencies, even government contractors can mark documents as SBU. This often leads to excessive use of the SBU category and the restriction of information that need not be controlled. Moreover, there are no time limits on how long information is to remain as SBU, and no review procedures have been formalized to oversee the process. These and other SBU shortcomings have led an informational standstill in which homeland security analysts often cannot access essential information at other agencies.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported on the problems relating to SBU, having released reports on problems at the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Tranportation Security Administration, and across the federal government. In its most recent analysis, GAO investigated problems at the Department of Justice (DOJ), where it found that the department has failed to specify its policy, implement a training program, or offer any kind of review procedure. DOJ replied that it is waiting for DNI's ISE to issue its agency-wide SBU policy. It is unclear why DOJ cannot begin to make basic changes in its approach to training and in clarifying its application to the thousands of employees at DOJ.

ISE is charged with reviewing agencies' SBU policies and issuing a centralized policy that all federal agencies are to follow, thereby helping to disentangle the policy quagmire. The ISE plan states that, "the growing and non-standardized inventory of SBU designations and markings is a serious impediment to information sharing among agencies, between levels of government, and, as appropriate, with the private sector." During the first quarter of 2007, ISE, in consultation with federal, state and local officials, will issue recommendations for SBU standardization.

Open government advocates hope these recommendations will help to create a robust policy that limits the amount of information withheld from the public to a minimum. Advocates say the policy should specify review procedures, require training programs, mandate regular reports, and, most importantly, enable information sharing of vital homeland security information across federal, state and local governments.

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