Common Standards for Terrorism Information Sharing
Government agencies are still laboring to devise “common standards for preparing terrorism information for maximum distribution,” in response to a December 2005 directive from the President.
Recently the Program Manager for the ODNI Information Sharing Environment issued a memorandum (pdf) describing the implementation of such common standards. See “Common Terrorism Information Sharing Standards (CTISS) Program,” Information Sharing Environment Administrative Memorandum, October 31, 2007.
“Maximum distribution” of information here means sharing with federal agencies, state and local governments, law enforcement agencies, and the private sector. It does not imply that terrorism-related information will be shared with the general public.
The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.