Public
Perspectives What
does the future
hold for government’s information sharing effort? Four senior
executives on information sharing’s front lines give their
vision.
Dale Meyerrose, the
Associate Director of National Intelligence, ODNI; Van Hitch, CIO,
Department of Justice; Mike
Krieger, Principal Director, DOD, Chief Information
Office; and Robert Riegle,
Director, State and Local Government Program Office, Office of Intelligence and
Analysis at DHS spoke about their visions for the future of information
sharing during the recent Federal Executive Forum.
Q.
What’s your vision for the future for information sharing? A. Rob
Riegle, DHS – On Fusion Center Progress and Inspiring The
Workforce We’ve made a lot of progress here at DHS, our partners in the
states and with the fusion center programs and with the national
network of fusion centers. Our vision is to continue the implementation
of that national network, working with those partners.
The strategy will connect more than 50 states and a lot of major
cities’ fusion centers, and what we want to do in the federal
government is to continue to partner with these people to understand
what their needs are, get a clearer understanding of what the risks are and really cast the net much, much
tighter over the next year and the years to come to make sure that we
are catching all of those relevant pieces of threat information and
really connecting the dots as envisioned by the 9/11 Commission and
then the 9/11 Commission recommendations act.
The federal government has a daunting job ahead of us but
it’s an
achievable job, that’s the important thing. I think the one
thing
is we look forward and try to inspire our workers and our people that
are out in the field doing this work, is that they have something that
they can actually take a look at and actually believe in being
achievable and I think that’s important.
Our vision has to match the vision of those out in the field, and we
have to work very hard to continue the momentum we’ve had.
Even
after the administration changes at the end of the year.
A. Mike
Krieger, DOD – On An Agile Collaborative Environment
I think the vision is pretty clear, that you want to create an agile
collaborative environment where everybody can participate and share
what they know to accomplish the objective.
But it becomes a workforce issue. We are all digital immigrants, we
came to this fight about information sharing late. But our sons and
daughters and the people entering our workforce are digital natives.
They don’t wear wrist watches because they’ve got
PDAs and
cell phones and other things. They share natively and they want to come
into the workforce and share the same way. So we’ve got to
change
in order to adjust to the people coming into the workforce because they
expect it.
A. Van
Hitch, DOJ – On Google for Cops
I’ll start with my law enforcement hat on. I guess from a DOJ
standpoint and law enforcement my vision would be Google for cops.
Providing information that will help everyday law enforcement officers
catch local criminals, drug cartels, prevent child exploitation, those
kinds of things. Anticipate and solve and prevent everyday crime.
But as we know, we got started in this information sharing through
trying to pursue counter terrorism and you only get to do that when you
begin to connect the dots. So you’ve got to have all this
great
rich information on the local level before you can do that. So
that’s where that plays in.
From our broader perspective as a participant in the information
sharing environment, I just want to make sure that we are good citizens
in that environment, we are a key part of the information sharing
environment, and from a fusion center perspective, we need to enable
local decision makers to quickly assess and determine whether an event
is local or national, regardless of what kind it is, because that can
prevent a lot of scare tactics and can prevent a lot of problems and
can make sure that we address them as quickly as possible.
A.
General Dale Meyerrose, ODNI – On Data and Invisible
Technology
We’ve talked about risk management, identity, data and
governance. And that I think they are the nexus of the elements that we
need to be working over in the next year or two. But I’d like
to
add some points to emphasize a couple of things. First of all I agree
with the comment that data is becoming the center of gravity of what we
are talking about; not so much the networks as we have previously done in the past. I think that’s an
important
element when you are looking at this information sharing environment.
Second point I’d like to make. While many of us deal with
technology, we’ve got to remember that technology is not what
we
are after. In fact we need to make the technology invisible. The more
invisible, the more intuitive technology becomes, the better we get at
information sharing.
And lastly as we look to the future, we’ve heard the terms
generation X and generation Y. One is late to being digital, the other
is growing up digital, I’d like to term generation Z: those
born
of those born digital. And I think that it’s important that we keep our eye on the art of the possible, doable and
probable and be able to differentiate between all those. Therein lies I
think the key to success of our strategies.
