The exact reasons for the decision are still unclear, but it seems that they primarily involve concerns over network security: Something might leak out or be compromised by hackers. The problem with this logic is that, for better or worse, when computer security barriers go up, users typically react by going around them. When that happens, of course, information security goes almost completely out the window. Given the choice between the two, the need to share almost always trumps security, especially when the job simply has to get done.

The decision to scrap uGov stands in contrast to the IC's recent tendency to share intelligence information beyond the agency of origin, and even beyond the limits of the Federal government. While we'll probably never know the extent to which collaboration -- both among IC agencies and between the IC and non-IC agencies -- has helped foil recent terror plots, the 9/11 Commission report gave us a good idea of how siloing information allowed al-Qaida's operatives to elude detection before launching their attacks within the United States. Although the investigation leading to the arrest last month of Jordanian national Maher Hussein Smadi in Dallas appears to have been handled largely by the FBI, counterterrorism is by no means a mission undertaken by Federal officials alone.

Among the new tools crafted to meet the terror threat are fusion centers, the all-source intelligence analysis hubs where national, state and local representatives of law enforcement and intelligence work together. Still a somewhat unknown commodity, fusion centers are part of a significant effort toward developing information-sharing tools and schema to facilitate the two-way traffic of information in the domestic security space. Another example is the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), essentially an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for the counterterrorism mission. In theory, NIEM permits data to be broken into a homogenous format, in order to move it from system to system more easily and efficiently. Just beginning to mature, NIEM provides information in a form readable by humans, but also understandable by machines.

Building a NIEM Web service, though, is a far more complex task than rolling out an e-mail system. E-mail is just easier to do, for now. Also, in the cross-agency playing field that is homeland security and counterterrorism information sharing, the uGov e-mail accounts function as a leveling feature. Urban police, intelligence officials, military personnel, private sector consultants and even academics -- all vetted by the IC -- are able share ideas and information on subjects of concern and interest at the unclassified level. It permits expertise to be applied more efficiently, and lays the foundation for deeper collaboration involving not just analysts and experts that the U.S. government can clear and keep on the payroll, but a larger group of actors with complimentary interests, responsibilities and skill sets.

Unfortunately, it appears the Office of the Director of National Intelligence does not feel that uGov warrants the security risk. Worse, the ODNI has likely pulled the plug on another of its analytic transformation tools which embraces inter-organizational linkages, the IT program known as BRIDGE. The decisions, taken together, led the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Armbinder to speculate that ODNI "may have soured on these initial, inexpensive collaborative, open-source, efforts and instead deferred to long-time -- and discredited -- intelligence community practice of trying to speak with one voice . . . "

But there is already a backlash within the IC against ending the technological drive to overturn the culture of originator consent, which often keeps useful intelligence bunkered, viewed only by isolated corners of the community. This has a real impact for those who most often act on intelligence: police, diplomats, bureaucrats and policymakers. In order to clear intelligence for an outside audience, the contents below the classified "tear line" can become so nebulous and vague as to be almost meaningless. Worse, by the time the IC bureaucracy decides to release threat information, there may be little time to react. As former D.C. Acting Police Chief Cathy Lanier said, "If we learn about a threat only when it becomes imminent, then it is too late."

It could be that the IC has shut down uGov because it is not far from moving beyond e-mail in a meaningful way, making a generational leap forward to a technology along the lines of Google Wave. We'll just have to wait and see. But if not, abandoning uGov, BRIDGE and other transformative analytical and communication tools risks returning the IC to its old "need to know" habits, when it should be reinforcing its new "need to share" approach.

**Chris Bronk is a research fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and an adjunct instructor of computer science at Rice. He previously served as a Foreign Service officer and was assigned to the State Department's Office of eDiplomacy.