When terrorists crashed an airplane into the Pentagon in 2001, they exposed a fundamental flaw in the District of Columbia’s capacity for dealing with disaster: Police officers and firefighters were unable to talk to one another via radio or mount a coordinated response to the panic that beset Washington, D.C., when thousands thought more hijacked planes were heading for targets in the city. Put to the test, the emergency response system failed.

Five years later, emergency preparedness at the federal, state and local levels continues to lurch toward seamless information exchange — the backbone of coordinated emergency response.

“It’s hard,” said Robert LeGrande, the District of Columbia’s deputy chief technology officer. “Very difficult and very costly.”

Achieving interoperable communications — a Holy Grail of sorts for first responders — is easier said than done.

That was the consensus of information technology experts who met earlier this month in Washington, D.C., for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ midyear conference. Participants in a panel discussion said progress has been slow and erratic.

The discussion was titled “Our Next Emergency Is Here — Any Progress on Communications Interoperability?”

The uncoordinated deployment of emergency communications systems undermines the goal of interoperability, IT experts say.

Money pouring into local jurisdictions from the Homeland Security Department is fueling the problem, they say, by allowing localities to purchase communications systems without regard for common technical standards.

About 80 percent of those federal funds go directly to local governments, subverting states’ authority to impose technical standards.

“There is great technology out there, but the absence of a national, voluntarily chosen standard of interoperability is a major roadblock,” said a senior DHS staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity. “What good is a system unless you have buy-in from key jurisdictions?”

Localities often must choose between function and cost. If a municipal government can buy radios adequate for local use for $800 each or radios compatible with a statewide system for double the cost, the cheaper option often gets the nod, said Phil Bates, IT director of Utah’s Department of Public Safety.