Understanding socio-technical environments for acceptance of inter-agency anti/counter-terrorism information sharing systems

The present research proposes to investigate the factors that influence acceptance of inter-organizational information sharing systems among Anti/Counter-Terrorism agencies. Based on social exchange theory, transaction cost economics, and traditional IT acceptance theory, the study examines the impacts of perceived information assurance of information sharing partners, organizational norm of inter-agency information sharing, existing IT infrastructure and utilization, legal/authoritative pressure for ACT information sharing, and availability of technical standards for information sharing systems on inter-organizational anti/counter terrorism information sharing systems acceptance. The study administers a survey questionnaire to emergency responders such as law enforcement personnel, intelligence agents, firefighters, emergency medical staffs, and other government employees in the anti/counter-terrorism area. Survey participants are recruited through a non-governmental terrorism research institute and information security workshops. This paper reports an exploratory study that analyzed the first batch of survey responses from various emergency management organizations at the station level (e.g., headquarter, local offices, base, hospital, etc.). In the paper, a revised model with preliminary test results is presented, and findings are discusses for follow-up studies.