Strengthening federal interagency collaboration in the ocean policy arena: learning from experience

An ongoing need exists for the United States of America to move toward a comprehensive and coordinated approach to a national ocean policy. In order to achieve this, the nation must coordinate its efforts across agencies and sectors and work with state, local, tribal and territorial authorities, as well as non-governmental groups and the public. Policymakers generally emphasize structural solutions, such as the creation of new interagency groups, when addressing the challenges presented by the federal government structure. This approach, while an important step in strengthening collaboration, often gives little consideration to other non-structural factors that impact collaboration, such as human factors. The public administration literature, complemented by lessons from existing federal interagency groups, can provide important insights into what factors - structural and nonstructural - affect interagency collaboration, and how existing and new groups might be strengthened as part of the nation´s new ocean governance system. This paper provides a brief background of U.S. ocean policy and discusses the context for interagency cocollaboration in the ocean policy arena. The paper addresses the new ocean governance structure established by President Bush´s Executive Order 13366 and the U.S. Ocean Action Plan released on December 17, 2004, and discusses progress and next steps for the groups within the governance structure. Finally, the paper provides some insights from the public administration literature and existing interagency groups into what factors promote and hinder collaboration. The insights from existing interagency groups, which stem from the author´s doctoral research in marine policy at the University of Delaware, are a preliminary look at the research results that will be presented in the dissertation and published in the Fall of 2005. The preliminary insights from this paper and the research results presented in the dissertation should provide decisio- - n makers with a guide to factors that promote and hinder collaboration - a guide that should be considered in strengthening the groups in the ocean governance system as the groups develop further their work plans and collaboration activities