There are many success stories and ongoing projects in information sharing, not only at the Federal level, but also between State, Local, and Tribal governments. In addition, we are actively developing information sharing agreements and policies with our foreign partners and private enterprise. This page provides links to representative articles about existing and emerging efforts in information sharing. Archive: 2007, 2008

• NYPD officer is first non-federal agent to take place at National Counterterrorism Center. Article
• The San Diego County Board of Supervisors votes to accept a $250,000 Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program grant. The funding will be used for the maintenance and support of the San Diego Regional Terrorism Threat Assessment Center. Article
• Second National Fusion Center Conference Held to Foster Greater Collaboration. More than 900 federal, state, and local law enforcement and homeland security officials attended this week the National Fusion Center Conference in San Francisco to further the U.S. government's plans to create a seamless network of these centers. More ...
• Remarks by Homeland Security Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Robert Jamison and Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications Greg Garcia at a briefing on Cyber Storm II. Article
• Government officials say that state and local law enforcement agencies are moving to strengthen their links with the National Counter Terrorism Center's classified online information repository. Article
• Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Julie L. Myers announces a law enforcement information sharing service that provides the country's largest border community access to federal database information. Article
• If federal employees do not personally adopt a policy of sharing intelligence information, they may soon face a poor performance review, the government's top information-sharing czar warned at an intelligence conference. Article
• Ambassador Thomas McNamara, Program Manager Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), testified on March 13, 2008 before the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment. Hearing Agenda   Video
• Ambassador Thomas McNamara, the country's information sharing chief and program manager for the Director of National Intelligence's Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), has said the government is at the "end of the beginning" of its efforts to successfully share homeland security and intelligence information, with significant cultural and administrative challenges still ahead. Article
• The United States and Germany are working to speed the exchange of information in anti-terror efforts. Washington said it hopes the ground-breaking deal will serve as a model for co-operation with other countries. Article
• Local and state police are joining forces in a new way to enhance their lines of communication. On [March 10, 2008], law enforcement leaders announced plans for the recently developed Western Maryland Information Center. The center ... is a combined unit of state, county, municipal and federal law enforcement personnel who will focus on gathering information on crime, criminals and crime trends throughout the region. Article
• Colorado law enforcement officials are in the process of implementing COPLINK, a "quantum leap" for police efforts across the state, according to Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates. COPLINK is commercially developed software that accepts data from multiple police and sheriff's departments and links it seamlessly to give law enforcement a huge boost in getting criminals off the street. Article
• Information sharing is the "top imperative" of federal chief information officers ... but progress will be stifled as long as agencies regard information sharing and security as mutually exclusive, said the Pentagon's deputy chief information officer. Article

• A Connecticut $1.2 million grant connects police agencies in 31 towns. The new system enables law enforcement officers to have immediate access to arrests and incidents in each municipality. Article
• Chicago Fusion Center Gives Police New Criminal Investigation Tools and saves lives. Article
• Wedged between New York City and Philadelphia, New Jersey is easy to overlook geographically, but law enforcement and intelligence officials can't afford to ignore the densely populated state with its oil refineries, pipelines, power plants and ports that help fuel an entire region. Protecting the Garden State from terrorist and criminal activities is a major challenge. Article
• Statement of Charles E. Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (Department of Homeland Security). Discusses Intelligence, Information Sharing, and the Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination Group (ITACG). Article

• A top Homeland Security Department official told the U.S. Conference of Mayors Friday that DHS agents are critical to the success of the "fusion centers" the department is setting up nationwide to coordinate with local law enforcement and public health workers and plan to boost staffing. Article
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released for the first time a set of standards for how state, local and federal law enforcement officials should share information on suspicious activity with potential links to terrorism. Article
• The White House soon is expected to issue new rules for how managers should categorize information that is sensitive but unclassified. The new policy will put an end to the 100-plus categories that agencies now use to label unclassified information ... In their place will be one broad category called controlled unclassified information, or CUI. Article
• The first Counter Terrorism Fusion Center is officially open in Las Vegas. The information collected is shared between federal, state, and local authorities to prevent terrorism or other crimes. It has already proved successful in identifying men with ties to al Qaida. Article
• The Homeland Security Department is consolidating more than 100 aging Web portals, including the network that state and local authorities use to share information related to terrorism. Officials said they hope to merge the portals into one enterprise collaboration and SBU portal environment, which will improve the department's ability to share. Article
• The Homeland Security Department announced Wednesday that it had appointed a new assistant secretary to serve as a liaison between state and local law enforcement and DHS policy makers - a new position in the policy directorate. Article
• BRITISH security agencies have been in talks with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation over plans for a global database of major criminals and suspected terrorists. Article
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued three new metadata standards to improve and simplify the marking and handling of information. These standards are a part of a broader attempt by ODNI and the Department of Defense (DoD) to make information more usable across the intelligence community. All three data standards will use the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and the implementation profiles are specific to file formats such as Extensible Markup Language or HTML. Article
• The National Information Exchange Model has gotten its first upgrade. Version 2 should be released by the end of January 2008. "There are literally thousands of changes. It's a major extension," said Paul Wormeli, executive director of the Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute, a Justice Department-funded nonprofit that supports the NIEM program management office. The large Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema provides a common language for federal, state and local agencies to share information on natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other crises. Article
• The NIEM initiative is a partnership between the Justice and Homeland Security departments to develop information exchange standards for law enforcement agencies across state and federal agencies. Systems that deploy the National Information Exchange Model will now be able to use a classification schema heretofore unavailable for public use, according to NIEM administrators. Article

• DOD relying on data standards to help transform the Defense Department's business processes. Article
• Many state and local officials who work at fusion centers report problems logging onto federal networks and have difficulty handling the high volume of information they receive from federal authorities, according to a recent survey by government auditors. Article
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security'ss (DHS) National Applications Office (NAO) is the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes within the United States. The office will begin initial operation by fall 2007 and will build on the long-standing work of the Civil Applications Committee, which was created in 1974 to facilitate the use of the capabilities of the intelligence community for civil, non-defense uses in the United States. Fact Sheet
• Police chiefs and sheriffs from across Maryland, Virginia and Washington gathered late last month for the official launch of a new Web-based service that gives them access to each others' crime reports. Officials hailed the Law Enforcement Information Exchange dubbed LInX as an important tool for crime fighting. Article
• GAO releases new report on Homeland Security: "Federal Efforts are Helping to Alleviate Some Challenges Encountered by State and Local Fusion Centers". Report
• In what they called a breakthrough, law enforcement officials yesterday unveiled a computer system that will allow more than 60 state and local police agencies in the D.C. area to share mug shots and crime reports. Article
• Local intelligence-sharing centers set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have had their anti-terrorism mission diluted by a focus on run-of-the-mill street crime and hazards such as hurricanes, a government report concludes. Article