One of the big problems in Australia is competitive attitudes between agencies - they don't respect/trust each other's abilities, and are reluctant to share information. This probably happens between countries as well, I imagine.

as well, government departments, which turn up a lot of information, are themselves factionalised, which leads to cover ups, and political judgements made about information based on people's personal career motives.

We also had a situation recently where important information about a terrorist was faxed to ASIO on the weekend - no-one was there to respond.