Turning to Digital Government in a Crisis

Available evidence about the government responses to World Trade Center attack indicates that information technology played a critically important role. Effective use of a variety of information technologies helped government agencies to better cope with and respond to the multiple crises, and ongoing recovery demands, resulting from the attack. At the same time, the severity of the crisis was exacerbated by damage to critical communications and computing infrastructure as well as the absence, loss, or inaccessibility of needed information resources. Research into what government agencies did in the midst of these crises, and the role of IT in the events, can provide valuable lessons for improving crisis response and emergency management and planning. While the data collected in this exploratory study is necessarily limited, and our analysis is incomplete, we have identified a number of preliminary lessons and areas for further study in a larger future investigation. These preliminary lessons cover technology, data, preparedness, interorganizational relations, social capital considerations, and policy issues.