In its examination of the December 25, 2009, attempted terrorist attack on a commercial jetliner, the preliminary White House report issued early this year identified a number of “human errors and a series of systematic breakdowns” that prevented the counter-terrorism community from forestalling the plot, which was foiled by the quick action of other passengers aboard the aircraft.

Although the government had enough information to uncover the conspiracy in advance, the report said, analysts “failed to connect the dots that could have identified and warned of the specific threat.”

Amid the sobering conclusions of the report, however, there was one statement that caught my eye and gave me a little hope that things may slowly be getting better: “’Information sharing’ does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-source analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not prevented from accessing it.”

“Information sharing” in this context is a reference to the widely acknowledged failure of various government agencies to communicate among themselves the various bits of knowledge that, taken together, possibly could have provided timely warning of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Improvements in this area, at least, are due to a number of factors, including the intelligence reform law of 2004 and efforts by intelligence officials to move beyond the restrictions of the traditional “need to know” approach. But credit should also be due to IT experts, who are creating interoperable systems that bring “stovepipes” of information together for actionable intelligence.

One of the key players in this vital campaign is the Unified Cross Domain Management Office (UCDMO), a unique undertaking sponsored by the Department of Defense and intelligence community. As Cheryl Gerber explains in this issue, the UCDMO is developing and managing the technology needed to share information across different levels of security classification. Such efforts deserve our support.