The Obama Administration's 2012 National Data Strategy

Hat tip to Text Radar's Alice Wilson for calling attention to the National Strategy For Information Sharing and Safeguarding (Dec. 2012). From the Executive Summary:

Our national security depends on our ability to share the right information, with the right people, at the right time. This information sharing mandate requires sustained and responsible collaboration between Federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and foreign partners. Over the last few years, we have successfully streamlined policies and processes, overcome cultural barriers, and better integrated information systems to enable information sharing. Today’s dynamic operating environment, however, challenges us to continue improving information sharing and safeguarding processes and capabilities. While innovation has enhanced our ability to share, increased sharing has created the potential for vulnerabilities requiring strengthened safeguarding practices. The 2012 National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding provides guidance for effective development, integration, and implementation of policies, processes, standards, and technologies to promote secure and responsible information sharing.

The Strategy focuses on achieving five goals:

1. Drive Collective Action through Collaboration and Accountability.
2. Improve Information Discovery and Access through Common Standards.
3. Optimize Mission Effectiveness through Shared Services and Interoperability.
4. Strengthen Information Safeguarding through Structural Reform, Policy, and Technical Solutions.
5. Protect Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties through Consistency and Compliance.

For an overview, see David Perera's White House data strategy calls for standardized metadata and identity authentication on FierceGovernmentIT.

On a related note, CRS issued The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework on Dec. 17, 2012. From the Summary:

The publication of secret information by WikiLeaks and multiple media outlets, followed by news coverage of leaks involving high-profile national security operations, has heightened interest in the legal framework that governs security classification and declassification, access to classified
information, agency procedures for preventing and responding to unauthorized disclosures, and penalties for improper disclosure. Classification authority generally rests with the executive branch, although Congress has enacted legislation regarding the protection of certain sensitive information. While the Supreme Court has stated that the President has inherent constitutional authority to control access to sensitive information relating to the national defense or to foreign affairs, no court has found that Congress is without authority to legislate in this area.

This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and legislation currently before Congress (S. 3454).

[JH]