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.