Information Literacy

Case Study

When a massive explosion ripped through a federal building in Oklahoma City, the United States jumped to a conclusion we would all eventually learn to regret. The initial response to the devastation was all focused on terrorists of Middle Eastern decent. "America is under attack," reported major newspapers. Every news and television station had the latest expert on the Middle East telling the nation that we were victims of holy war or Jihad is it is known in Islam. It took just a few quick days to come to a realization that were wrong and the problem, the terrorist, was bred from within. But it was too late and the damage had been done. Because America jumped to conclusions then, America was later blind to see the impending attack of 9/11.

The result saw negative factors in the FBI, CIA and other agencies’ counter terrorism efforts; underfunding, undermanaging, poor cooperation, and mainly, lack of communication between agencies. The route of the problem actually goes much deeper. Most of the sensitive data that could prevent future terrorist attacks, as well as fight domestic crime, is stored in databases of practically thousands of federal, state and local organizations. To make matters worse, much of these databases are incompatible in nature and run on different computer platforms. Vast number of these computer systems is very much outdated. For example, FBI still uses old antiquated IBM 3270 terminals that are limited in their search capabilities. Looking up a phrase such as flight school is not possible, but system will easily give you results to meaningless flight or school separately. When identical data in different systems, even within the same agency, have different names, codes and formats, it makes sharing vital terrorism related information with state and local agencies extremely difficult.

Today, measures are being taken between competing law enforcement agencies such as the CIA and the FBI, but progress is slow. In order to find a solution to this problem and prevent future attacks of this nature, one must first understand and recognize the problem itself.

The fundamental principle of data administration is that all data are property of the organization as a whole. Information should be available to all agencies and organizations on all 3 level (federal, state and local) uniformly. Although the FBI and other criminal justice agencies are stepping up their sharing of criminal data, the government could automate other sources