I read a chilling article last year about the different pieces of the 9-11 puzzle that different agencies had prior to the attacks. I wish I'd saved it. In a nutshell, many different agencies like the CIA, FBI, NSA, and INS had significant pieces of the puzzle but failed to put them together in time.

A similar situation exists across many areas besides intelligence and law enforcement. In my job, I'm trying to get different government agencies and organizations with space missions to work together efficiently. Part of the problem is technical, much of it is cultural, and a lot of it is due to compartmented information.

The technical aspects of the problem is the existence of many "stove-piped" (vertically integrated) systems that simply aren't able to communicate with one another.

The cultural part of the problem deals with agencies unwilling to work together. We're trying to link together USSTRATCOM (there is no more USSPACECOM), AFSPACECOM, Army Space Command, Navy Space Command, NASA, NOAA, CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, NIMA, and several other agencies. Each has their "rice bowl" (turf) and they often aren't willing to share.

The compartmented aspects of the problem deals with highly classified information and the need to protect sources. The compartments often exist for legitimate reasons but they make sharing information very difficult, if not impossible. That's already proving to be a major impediment to my job.

I'd love to eventually see several of the different government agencies involved with security rolled into a single organization. If for no other reason, that may never happen due to political "rice bowls" being upset in the process. Until we can do something better, establishing the Department of Homeland Security to put most of them under the same umbrella is probably the best we can do anytime soon.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good." We may never get to a "perfect" solution due to conflicting definitions of what that means. We shouldn't let the absense of perfection prevent us from working for the greater good.