Interagency collaboration challenges in emergency response

摘要: It is widely agreed that interagency collaboration is an important avenue for improving public services through shared information. However, many challenges impede the attainment of hoped-for benefits. When interagency collaboration involves emergency response, challenges multiply, because the stakes are higher and the environment is more complex. Also, because emergencies occur episodically and are difficult to predict, collaborators face additional difficulties. This paper examines three cases of interagency collaborations for emergency response: The Capital-Area Wireless Integration Project (CapWIN), the BioSense bio-terror/rapid syndromic surveillance initiative, and the Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium (WLIC). We look specifically at how the emergency response context affected the challenges these interagency initiatives faced with respect to participants’ varied objectives, funding, implementation, and ongoing operations. A comparison of the cases yields insights about the interplay of political, administrative, and technical challenges for interagency collaboration in the emergency-response context.