7/17/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week banded together with partners EMC Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to promote a proposed information-sharing architecture for federal and public sector organizations.

The proposed architecture, dubbed the Secure Information Sharing Architecture (SISA), defines a standard for both securing and sharing information across traditional organizational and jurisdictional infrastructure boundaries.

Why SISA? Cisco and its partners used the example of a pandemic or other health crisis. In the absence of a framework like SISA, public health officials would have no means to quickly monitor pandemic information across various federal, public sector and even private sector databases, let alone coordinate information sharing with these organizations.

Thanks to SISA, public health officials could securely tap into and monitor confidential data about pandemics stored in different government agencies and private sector databases.

SISA proponents Cisco, EMC and Microsoft each have a sizeable stake in the effort's success. Cisco, for example, will provide network protection, security-enhanced virtualized network links and data protection features. Meanwhile, EMC and Microsoft will provide network storage/information management and identity management/client and server operating systems, respectively.

Industry watchers say a framework like SISA has been a long time coming.

"Well before Sept. 11, 2001 the U.S. government pursued numerous unsuccessful efforts to aggregate and share data more effectively within and between agencies. Since then, the issue has taken on considerably more urgency but generated little in the way of success," said Pund-IT principal analyst Charles King, citing several high-profile cases involving the theft, loss or disclosure of sensitive information. "In addition, some efforts to institute systematic solutions aggregating and sharing information, such as the FBI's Virtual Case File program -- junked in 2005 after wasting four years and $170 million in taxpayer funds -- qualify as classic government boondoggles."

King isn't convinced that SISA will succeed where so many other efforts have failed, however.

"On the down side, the SISA effort faces the daunting prospect of deeply ingrained government agency cultures suspicious of any sort of change. Yes, some previous data-sharing efforts stumbled due to technical error, but we expect that others suffered from the benign neglect or active resistance of those they were meant to help," he said. "More optimistically, however, history and current events may be helping to spark a sea change that could erode or even wash away such obstructions. As pressure for effective information sharing increases from overarching agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the results of inadequate solutions like those employed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and potential impact of disasters such as an avian flu pandemic have focused intense light on the subject." --Stephen Swoyer