Introduction

The same data acquisition and management issues as in the commercial sector present themselves across federal, state, and local government agencies: data growth rates of 50 percent per year and greater, the requirement to network this data in real or near-real time, and the need to distill data from multiple sources into meaningful information. Fortunately, many of the same tools and technologies used in the private ssector are being used in the public sector as well. However, we found some interesting variations on these themes when we examined the rapid changes occurring in computing as applied to warfare and the battlefield, homeland security measures that are now focused on surveillance, and challenges faced by state and local governments. Throughout, we found some common threads, including the following:

• The need for more real-time intelligence

• The need for better internetworking between agencies at all levelsfrom military intelligence sources at the federal level down to state and local government and government agencies alike

• The distribution of command and control functions to gain reactive immediacy and battlefield advantage