Can We Talk?

  Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned  

Does this sound like anyone that you know: "...rich in information, but impoverished when it comes to the basic tools for sharing that information."

Most organizations suffer from this exact malady. Yours, mine, everyone's. This was also the conclusion of a congressional panel investigating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The panel found that a number of federal agencies--intelligence, immigration, transportation, law enforcement and others--missed clues that might have helped the government ward off the attacks largely because they just couldn't share the information that they had at the time.

The many databases scattered across the federal bureaucracy contain a wealth of information that could be useful in pursuing terrorists, expect for one thing: For the most part "they can't talk to each other."

Even when they can talk to each other, at least to some degree, that doesn't mean that the information they exchange is sufficient. Example: Two of the hijackers were placed on a federal intelligence watch list when they entered the country, and that information was available to the immigration service, but it was not acted on because it was not labeled "urgent." According to Eleanor Hill, who headed up the congressional panel looking into the intelligence failures, "The information was not accompanied by …

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