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is sometimes limited because these organizations are assigned to different roles,
including intelligence gathering overseas, terrorism investigation in the U.S. home-
land, and public control and assistance, in which they compete with each other for
political power, budget, or pride [14].
A national e-government may implement the means of sharing information
between counterterrorism organizations but the competition between agencies will
still exist, depending on how the system is implemented and utilized [14]. his study
defines information sharing systems acceptance as “the level of provision of proprie-
tary information to relevant external parties through information systems [14].” Other
researchers have proposed the idea of implementing a system for information sharing
based on the social exchange theory. he social exchange theory argues that when
exchange partners conform and adhere to reciprocal rules of exchange a quality rela-
tionship will develop. In the context of sharing information between counterterrorism
organizations, the social exchange theory would suggest that when one counter-terror-
ism organization discloses its information to other counterterrorism organizations, the
behavior should be compensated by other counterterrorism organizations with infor-
mation or actions of equal value. However, due to the classified nature of information
within a given counterorganization, the act of making such private information avail-
able is associated with the inherent risk that the ability to maintain national security
in compromised. he risk understandably increases as the sensitivity of information
increases. Likewise, as the sensitivity of the information disclosed to other counter-
terrorism organizations increases, the supplemental information exchanged in return
must be of equal sensitivity. his exchange system emphasizes the ability of counterter-
rorism organizations to provide adequate proof of a high level of information assurance
to other organizations before providing sensitive information.
In addition to the risk of sharing sensitive information, the IT infrastructure
and system utilization can also influence the acceptance and use of information
sharing systems. Integrating an information sharing system into an already widely
used internal-information sharing system could result in the system's being more
readily accepted and utilized.
Another factor that contributes to the degree of acceptance of information
sharing systems is how a given counterterrorism organization utilizes the system.
Typically, in the domain of counterterrorism, information sharing is controlled by,
or at least influenced, by a supervisory authority or regulations for many organiza-
tions [14]. his control implies the expectation of information-sharing systems to
experience authoritative pressures through defined standards put in place by these
authoritative bodies. he model of counterterrorism information-sharing systems
acceptance is displayed in Figure 9.5.
An online survey questionnaire was administered to emergency responders to
empirically test the suggested model of counterterrorism information-sharing sys-
tems acceptance. he presented results are that of a pilot study conducted using the
irst wave of survey results. he survey results uncovered an inconsistency between
the use of information-sharing systems and organizational needs [14]. Results gave
