Panel seeks broad terrorism information-sharing changes

A week after Congress approved a bill to implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a federal advisory panel is set to issue a report calling for sweeping changes in information-sharing among levels of government that could flesh out the Sept. 11 bill's limited provisions on the subject.

Washington should restructure its domestic intelligence efforts to better coordinate information flowing to and from state and local officials and businesses, according to the report, which was obtained by Global Security Newswire.

The document - an unusually comprehensive attempt at addressing deficiencies in the handling and distribution of terrorist information collected at various levels of government - is slated to be released tomorrow by experts with the Homeland Security Advisory Council, a panel of mostly state and local officials that advises the federal homeland security secretary.

The council working group that prepared the report stresses the dual role of state and local governments as both collectors of crucial antiterrorism information and consumers in need of existing federal information.

"As both collectors and consumers of intelligence/information, it is critical that state, tribal, local and private-sector efforts be coordinated with those of the federal government - specifically, the intelligence community," the report reads. "The manner in which our modern-day intelligence community operates was established during the Cold War and designed to confront foreign-based, state-sponsored adversaries, but the world has changed since the end of the Cold War."

Officials "must focus on defining the appropriate roles for state, local, tribal and private-sector entities in the collection, analysis, dissemination and use of this intelligence/information - and how those efforts should be coordinated with those of the federal intelligence community," the authors continue. "This debate represents an historic opportunity to enhance existing intelligence/information-sharing between all levels of government, and the threat to the nation demands that we proceed expeditiously."

The group recommends more federal resources for state and local intelligence programs, a deeper role for the private sector, smarter prioritization of homeland-security efforts and a general campaign of integration, to make information collected at all levels of government readily available to any officials who might need it to protect the populace.

The Sept. 11 bill contains only skeletal language on improving information-sharing among the levels of government and the private sector. A six-page section of the 600-page bill would establish a national "information-sharing environment" (ISE) with an appointed program manager at its helm, setting aside $40 million over the next two years for the program.

Massachusetts homeland security adviser John Cohen told Global Security Newswire that the information-sharing structure set up in the bill should become the forum for enacting the types of change envisioned in tomorrow's report but that it remains to be seen what form the bill's provisions will take.

Establishing an "information-sharing environment," said Cohen, "sort of sets the scene potentially for taking some steps to put in place the architecture and the processes" for better information sharing.

"A big part of the issue should be the roles and responsibilities of state and local government," said the adviser to Governor Mitt Romney, chairman of the report working group. "We've taken that on already through this working group."

The bill would require the president to "ensure that the ISE provides and facilitates the means for sharing terrorism information among all appropriate federal, state, local and tribal entities and the private sector through the use of policy guidelines and technologies," but the specific measures that would advance that end are largely left to be determined by the program manager over the coming year.

"The program manager can make or break it," said Cohen, who recommended that the manager be a person who has operations, policy and technological knowledge and, above all, state or local experience.

"There really hasn't been a clear understanding at the federal level of the full role of states and locals is in this area," Cohen said. "There is a real lack of understanding on the amount of information that may exist at the local level."

The panel's report says the country's 800,000 law-enforcement officers alone constitute "95 percent of counterterrorism capability" in the United States and that "there is tremendous capacity outside of the law-enforcement community that supports our efforts to prevent attacks." It adds that businesses own "85 percent of our nation's critical infrastructure" and must be key players in information sharing.

Since resources are limited, the working group says, "a system of prioritization" must be created whereby Washington collects state and local terrorist information and consolidates it in a nationwide threat assessment. Such an effort was envisioned in the law that created the Homeland Security Department but so far has not taken flight.

The report group criticizes the current state of the information flow both from and to the federal government. It describes state and local terrorism-intelligence efforts as an often ad-hoc collection of measures that vary widely around the country in quality and approach, owing in part to the lack of any national coordination.

"Each day, state, tribal and local authorities collect, analyze, disseminate and take action on a great deal of information from various sources within their communities (law enforcement, fire services, EMS [emergency management services], public works, health care, private companies etc.). Currently, there is difficulty in identifying linkages between that which is 'routine' and that which is terrorism-related," the group writes.

"This information could be vital to federal efforts to update the national threat picture," it says, but "today, the federal government receives limited intelligence/information from state, tribal and local authorities. … There is no multidisciplinary national plan that defines how state, tribal, local and private-sector entities should be working with the intelligence community to better collect, analyze and disseminate 'all-source' intelligence/information."

"Capabilities and activities vary from state to state," the group goes on. "Intelligence/information-sharing is often based on 'personal relationships.' "

At the same time, the group says, states and cities are not receiving information they need from the federal government.

"A majority of state, tribal, local and private-sector officials are only 'somewhat satisfied' with the timeliness and detail of intelligence/information received from federal sources," it says. "There is no formal process in place to define the intelligence/information requirements of state, tribal, local and private-sector entities. … There is no single system that provides access to all of the federal repositories of terrorism-related intelligence/information."

"There should be a single pipeline that integrates intelligence/information provided by multiple federal sources … based on the needs of the user (state, tribal and local governments) - not those of the provider," the report reads.

The group recommends a focus on rapidly providing unclassified information to state and local officials, rather than seeking clearances for the officials to receive classified material.

"It is very difficult to manage the receipt, storage and dissemination of classified information," Cohen said.

International Association of Fire Chiefs Government Relations Director Alan Caldwell indicated last week in an interview that firefighters largely agree with the working group's conclusions about the flow of information.

"The feds have an enormous wealth of information, because they're the ones that have the intelligence-gathering organizations," said Caldwell, whose association advised the report group. "If there's an imminent threat or there's information that would involve a community - either a threat or some type of risk - the fire chief needs to know."

In the other direction, Caldwell said, Washington has "no organized means of collecting" valuable information obtained initially by local agencies.

"These guys are in and out of buildings all day long," he said of firefighters. "Well, you see things, and you see what you see."

An official close to the council said the "information-sharing environment" program manager will have the "direct and very visible backing of the White House" over the next year. Although the focus of President Bush's domestic agenda will shift away from homeland security during the president's second term, the official said, the information-sharing initiative will be one of a handful of high-priority homeland-security topics.