Examining Information-Sharing Across Federal Agency Boundaries

Our research focuses on understanding the organizational facilitators and inhibitors of information-sharing across federal agency boundaries. We are working with the NSF – funded team that is architecting a forest information portal for use within the Adaptive Management Areas of the national forests (a collaboration between the USDA Forest Service, the USDI Bureau of Land Management, and the USDI Fish and Wildlife Service). Our research objective is to identify which elements of each agency’s policies and practices facilitate and inhibit the successful implementation of new informationsharing technology. Specifically, we are examining the organizational, political, and individual factors influencing each agency’s policies and each individual’s decisions about whether or not to make certain documents available via the portal. We are using an action-research methodology that involves government participants in order to make organizational recommendations that will maximize the likely success of the portal. This research builds on prior work in management and organizational theory, together with developments in the public administration field concerning information-sharing among government agencies. What we learn will benefit other inter-agency information-sharing efforts as well as future government technology transfer ventures.