Guide to Achieving Interoperability in Information Management

Few things are more challenging for responder agencies than procuring and deploying the right resources during a large-scale emergency. Already difficult, emergency incident response taxes oft-scarce resources, be they personnel, skills, technologies, facilities, equipment, or funding. And those resources matter. They matter a lot. During an emergency, getting the right resources to the right place at the right time often proves the difference between life or death.

So what’s to be done? For one, interagency cooperation can effectively buoy the response effort. As a collective, cooperating partner agencies can achieve more than any one agency acting on its own. By pooling resources, agencies can amplify resource development and deployment.

Field research bears this out. Effective interagency cooperation creates a positive feedback loop. The right services and programs get recognition and visibility, which, in turn, provides more opportunity for vital, new projects to be undertaken.

But interagency cooperation doesn’t just happen automatically. It takes hard work and planning. The key elements are collaboration, coordination, and communication.