Figure 1 shows DHS’s homeland security and information-sharing visions, missions, and goal. I&A is the lead DHS component with responsibilities for sharing terrorism- related information with all levels of government and the private sector. I&A performs a variety of functions related to information sharing, including gathering customer information needs, developing and distributing intelligence reports, and gathering customer feedback on the information I&A provides. I&A, along with the Office of the CIO, also has a key role in the overall governance structure DHS has created to manage information sharing throughout the department, which is discussed more fully later in this report. I&A is headed by the Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis who has responsibilities for, among other things, providing homeland security intelligence and information to the Secretary of Homeland Security; other federal officials and agencies, such as members of the intelligence community; Members of Congress; departmental component agencies; and the department’s state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners, such as fusion centers. In addition to I&A, multiple other DHS components—such as ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—share information within and outside DHS on threats more specific to their mission areas, such as travel information. Among other things, these agencies develop and distribute intelligence reports about these areas to customers, such as the intelligence community. DHS is one of five key agencies responsible for establishing the ISE. Section 1016 of the Intelligence Reform Act, as amended by the 9/11 Commission Act, requires the President to take action to facilitate the sharing of terrorism-related information through the creation of the ISE.In April 2005, the President designated a Program Manager—within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—to, among other things, plan for, oversee implementation of, and manage the ISE. In July 2011, we recommended that in defining a road map for the ISE, the Program Manager ensure that relevant initiatives individual agencies were implementing are leveraged across the government, among other things.recommendations and has actions under way to address them. DHS noted that the department remained committed to continuing its work with the Program Manager and relevant stakeholders to further define and implement a fully functioning ISE. The Program Manager generally agreed with our DHS’s Office of the CIO is responsible for the department’s information technology management and is developing the department’s enterprise architecture (EA), which is designed to establish an agencywide road map to achieve its mission. An EA can be viewed as a reference or “blueprint” for guiding an organization’s transition to its future environment that includes maximizing information sharing within and across organizational boundaries. Along with I&A, the Office of the CIO is responsible for overseeing this transition. integrate the information and standardize the format of the terrorism- related products of the department’s intelligence components. In October 2007, the President issued the National Strategy for Information Sharing, which identifies the federal government’s information-sharing responsibilities. The strategy calls for authorities at all levels of government to work together to obtain a common understanding of the information needed to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorist attacks. On the basis of the National Strategy, DHS developed a strategy in 2008 to direct the department’s information-sharing efforts and is drafting a Fiscal Year 2012-2017 DHS Information Sharing and Safeguarding Strategy. DHS plans to finalize and release this new strategy after the Executive Office of the President issues a new National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding, and DHS then plans to release an implementation plan that is to describe in more detail how the department will implement its strategy along with related milestones. DHS’s new strategy is intended to update the 2008 strategy to reflect the department’s growing and increasingly complex mission and include information safeguarding—in response to the release of classified and diplomatic documents by the website Wikileaks in 2010—as well as information sharing. DHS has established a decision-making body—the Information Sharing and Safeguarding Governance Board (the board)—that demonstrates senior executive-level commitment to improving information sharing. The board has identified information-sharing gaps and developed a list of key initiatives to help address those gaps, but additional steps could help DHS sustain these efforts. Board and department attention has helped achieve progress on many of the key initiatives, but funding challenges have slowed some efforts. DHS has also made progress in developing and implementing DHS’s Information Sharing Segment Architecture, but has not yet fully developed this architecture. The board plans to update the DHS Information Sharing Strategy and develop a related implementation plan, which will be important in managing information- sharing efforts. As of early September 2012, the new National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding had not been released. The Information Sharing and Safeguarding Governance Board serves as DHS’s senior executive-level decision-making body for information- sharing issues. According to the board’s charter, DHS established the board in 2007 to serve as the “arbiter of data access denials or delays that cannot be resolved at the component level” and to work with DHS operational components to monitor their information management processes and ensure respect for legal protections. In the aftermath of the release of classified and diplomatic documents by the website Wikileaks, in 2011 DHS revised the board’s charter to reflect its responsibility to govern both information sharing and safeguarding and expanded the board’s membership to incorporate components with information-safeguarding responsibilities. The board includes senior executive-level representation from almost every DHS component, as shown in figure 2. The Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis serves as the board’s chair. According to DHS officials, as the DHS representative to the interagency policy committee for information sharing, the Under Secretary brings knowledge of governmentwide information-sharing efforts. The DHS Chief Information Officer serves as the board’s vice chair, also bringing knowledge as the authority over DHS’s technology-related information-sharing projects. Board minutes show that senior-level officials attend the board’s quarterly meetings, demonstrating DHS leadership commitment to the board’s work. The board is responsible for approving the department’s information-sharing and -safeguarding vision and strategy, establishing information-sharing goals and priorities, and overseeing implementation across DHS components. According to DHS officials, the board periodically reports its results to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Information Sharing Coordinating Council serves as an advisory body to the board and supports it by recommending policies and procedures for information sharing, preparing for board meetings, and helping to track information-sharing initiatives. The board has advanced DHS information sharing in several ways. First, the board has raised visibility—that is, has increased awareness of— information-sharing initiatives. Both the Office of the CIO and ICE officials noted that visibility improves stakeholder coordination across initiatives and facilitates access to high-level officials who can help initiatives overcome roadblocks. For example, ICE officials said that the board has increased the visibility of LEISI—DHS’s main initiative for sharing law enforcement information with state and local partners—and that other DHS components are now more likely to coordinate with LEISI in their law enforcement information-sharing activities. An official from the Office of the CIO also noted that the board provides information-sharing initiatives with organizational support at higher levels across DHS, which can remove roadblocks within or across components. For example, the official noted that one information-sharing initiative—the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), which DHS uses to share information with federal, state, and local partners—cannot succeed without this visibility and now has better stakeholder coordination than ever before. Second, according to DHS officials, the board has helped to reduce redundancies across DHS components. For example, through board activities, members recognized that DHS components were independently developing over 20 systems to collect, share, and display the information that components and other stakeholders need to plan for and respond to threats and hazards, known as Common Operating Picture systems. The board worked with the components involved to examine each component’s Common Operating Picture systems and identify opportunities for cooperation, thereby reducing redundancies and saving funds. In February 2012, the board also established an Information Sharing Environment Coordination Activity—with staff from I&A and the Office of the CIO—to facilitate decision making related to DHS’s Information Sharing Segment Architecture transition plans. The group’s responsibilities include developing recommendations and advising on policy development, resource allocation, acquisition management, and program management processes. In addition, the group is responsible for assessing whether departmental investments in new and existing technology programs include critical information-sharing capabilities, and whether investments present opportunities to deploy capabilities as enterprise services, such as computer-to-computer mechanisms to deliver information between systems. We discuss this group’s role in several information-sharing efforts later in this report. Because the group is relatively new, it was too early for us to determine its impact. DHS’s actions to establish an information-sharing governance structure and related activities demonstrate DHS leadership’s commitment to improving information sharing. DHS has identified a list of initiatives that it determined are key to advancing information sharing within the department and with its customers, which DHS refers to as its Information Sharing Roadmap. According to DHS officials, to develop this list, the board hosted a series of meetings from April 2010 through December 2011 with relevant components in each of its five mission areas. According to I&A officials, these meetings included in-depth conversations with DHS and component executives about their information-sharing activities and gaps, and presentations from subject matter experts on these issues. The board selected a list of 22 initiatives that it determined represented DHS’s greatest opportunities to improve information sharing. Some of these initiatives were information-sharing programs that components were already implementing as part of their mission activities, while others were new projects designed to address specific information-sharing gaps.