Thus, the government may reinvent a technology multiple times in different application contexts. Although this practice may have benefits in allowing an organization to select the technological best of breed, the resulting multiplicity of systems may not effectively interoperate or support upgrades. In addition, when underlying infra- structure such as the operating system changes, many parts of the whole system may have to be replaced or upgraded. This issue is a common one in many areas of systems integration and may be addressed through active reconsideration of architectural and design approaches. Coping with multiple standards.
Information systems depend on standards.
Thomas O'Keefe pointed out, for example, that there are mul- tiple standards for damage assessment after an incident such as a fire. To integrate and compare this information across different organizations, standards or ways of reconciling multiple standards must be estab- lished for every aspect of the information life cycle. In addition, identify- ing which standards to adopt poses a very real challenge for emergency managers purchasing hardware and software.