In the wake of 9/11, the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age was first convened to determine how best to make information discoverable and accessible to the right officials at the right time to enable improved decision making with regard to major security threats against our nation.
The guiding principles of the Markle Task Force have included the following:
Enhancing and augmenting our nation’s security while protecting the established civil liberties of all citizens.
Creating a trusted information sharing environment that fosters sharing and collaboration among those with information pertaining to potential national security threats, where policies and technologies are developed in tandem, and where security is enhanced and civil liberties are preserved.
Transforming the government’s business processes by applying the strengths of networked technologies while mitigating its potentially harmful effects.
From 2002 to 2012, the Markle Task Force has offered a broad vision and detailed recommendations on the key policy and technology issues affecting the creation of a trusted information environment. Many of these recommendations have been adopted by executive order and incorporated in two pieces of federal legislation.
Standards for accessing information must be in place as it pertains to clearly-defined purposes that the government—with public scrutiny—has determined beforehand are appropriate and lawfully permissible.
Creating an information sharing network requires changing how people think and make decisions.
An effective information sharing system is one in which authorized users are able to locate data based on key values (who, what, when, where) without accessing a person’s private information.
An information sharing framework succeeds only if Americans trust that it respects their privacy and protects civil liberties
