The Obama administration has concluded that a lack of “information sharing” was not a factor that allowed the Detroit bomber to get on a commercial airliner, but the administration only recently began establishing a searchable, Internet-like network for intelligence analysts and policy makers.

In late 2008, intelligence officials were frustrated that the network was not in place and they prepared a proposal for the incoming Obama administration describing the hardware, software, services and cost ranges for the Intelligence Community Integrated Information Program, known as I2P.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Jan. 8 that some I2P services are now in place, with others to come.

“We have some funds now, so things are rolling,” said Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She said no one was immediately available to provide details on the program’s status.

Pres Winter, the National Security Agency’s chief technology and information officer in 2008, oversaw the drafting of the proposal to the Obama team. In an interview at the time, he did not disguise his frustration about the lack of an integrated network.

“Here we are seven years after 9/11, and there are shocking gaps in terms of what the intelligence community can do with information,” he told the C4ISR Journal in November 2008, days after Obama’s election.

Winter made clear that establishing the network would not be simple: “There’s a lot of heavy-duty design work to be done,” he said. “As soon as you say network, it conjures up 50 things in the minds of five people.”

In a prepared statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said some new I2P capabilities are in place. Intelligence community personnel “are now able to conduct a single search to get access to intelligence products from multiple agencies, including information which they, or their home departments or agencies, may not have had access to in the past.”

The agency said the I2P will always be a work in progress. “Given the size of the IC and the scope of the job, it’s a Herculean task,” it said.