The computer systems of government agencies are notoriously complex. New
technologies are piled on older technologies, creating layers that call to mind
an archaeological dig. Obsolete programming languages and closed mainframe
designs offer barriers to integration with other agency systems. Worldwide,
these unwieldy systems waste billions of dollars, keep citizens from receiving
services, and even -- as seen in interoperability failures on 9/11 and during
Hurricane Katrina -- cost lives. In this book, Alon Peled offers a
groundbreaking approach for enabling information sharing among public sector
agencies: using selective incentives to "nudge" agencies to exchange information
assets. Peled proposes the establishment of a Public Sector Information Exchange
(PSIE), through