The 9/11 Commission released its final report today. While I haven’t read it from cover to cover, most articles, like this one from CBS News suggests that rather than blaming one personal or a group of people in particular, it describes a combination of factors that left the U.S. unprepared for what happened on September 11, 2001.

As a liberal, I would have liked the report to bash “W” more and criticize his administration’s lack of close attention to al Qaeda and its preoccupation with Iraq, but all in all, the findings seem fair to me. Especially true it seems is the finding that intelligence agencies such as the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department failed to properly share information on suspected terrorists, and that these failures were a significant part of what went wrong.

When I worked as a Research Associate for the Center for Technology in Government, the main project I worked on was a study of how government agencies use information technology to share information and data and to help them work more effectively across agency boundaries.

These are exactly the kinds of issues that we studied, but now these issues are not just about working more efficiently -- it’s about saving lives. I’m at least glad to see that these issues are now at the forefront of discussions on national policy.