Exploring the causes and effects of inter-agency information sharing systems adoption in the anti/counter-terrorism and disaster management domains

The present paper presents a study that seeks the antecedents of inter-agency information sharing systems adoption and the effects of using such systems on the information sharing practice among anti/counter-terrorism and disaster management agencies. Based on traditional IT acceptance theory, social exchange theory, and distributional justice perspective, the study presents a set of potential determinants of inter-agency information sharing systems adoption and propositions about post-adoption behaviors of user agencies. Also presented in this paper are the results from a preliminary study that administered a survey questionnaire to emergency responders such as law enforcement personnel, intelligence agents, firefighters, emergency medical staffs, and other government employees in the emergency management area. In the preliminary study, the relationships between inter-agency information sharing and hypothesized antecedents including perceived benefits, information assurance, organizational norm, and IT infrastructure are examined. The results from the preliminary study revealed that the current inter-agency information sharing systems use does not reflect social and operational environments of emergency management organizations. While technical environments such as other agencies’ information assurance level and technical standards seem to encourage information sharing systems use, other factors such as perceived task support benefits, organizational norms, and institutional pressure to share information have no or negligible association with the systems use. The paper discusses about the findings and proposes a refined framework and model to understand inter-agency information sharing systems adoption and use.