National Preparedness: Technology and Information Sharing Challenges

This report responds to specific questions related to GAO's testimony. Specifically, this report discusses(1) what incentives could be used by agency managers to encourage more effective cooperation and coordination of information pertaining to homeland security; (2) what legal or regulatory barriers exist that hinder effective electronic communication among federal agencies, with state and local government organization and the private sector; (3) what steps could be taken to protect information in shared databases while allowing full use in homeland security context; (4) how challenges to leveraging the United States' strengths can be met and if there are models in the military or elsewhere that may be of assistance; (5) GAO's opinion of the progress being made by government on the challenges to developing and implementing a national preparedness strategy for homeland security; (6) why Extensible Markup Language is useful for better information sharing; and (7) if agencies are currently implementing any customer relationship management technologies.