ANN SALISBURY emails a link to this disturbing article. Excerpt:

After Richard Colvin Reid was arrested for allegedly trying to detonate explosives in his shoes on a U.S.-bound airliner in December, federal officials never searched electronic transportation incident reports to determine if this was a new pattern of terrorist activity.

The reason is simple and distressing: The Department of Transportation’s computer system doesn’t allow those reports to be searched by key words like “shoe” and “bomb,” a function most computer users take for granted.

And this is far from the worst case of information-technology impotence in the war on terrorism. The Department of Transportation’s Web-based “Activation Information Management” system is actually state-of-the-art for the federal government — it uses the Internet, not glacial mainframe computers, and is accessible to employees in all the department’s 12 agencies, a rarity among the fiefdoms of Washington. . . .

“Virtually every corner you turn, you see problems,” said Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government in the White House Office of Management and Budget and the top IT official in the Bush administration.

Jeez. Can’t they hire Dave Winer, or Nick Denton, or somebody? Apparently not:

Complicated government contracting requirements have left many small high-tech firms with cutting-edge technologies unable to sell their products to the federal government. A long-held culture of protecting agency turf and funding, combined with the lack of a coordinated governmentwide IT strategy, has created a sea of unconnected islands of information technology throughout Washington that threaten the nation’s ability to fight terrorism.

If this weren’t so pathetic, it would be almost funny. As I’ve said before, the terrorists have had a better learning curve. That needs to change.