S. 4453 — LINK Act

This section directs the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to coordinate to ensure interoperability of their information technology and cybersecurity and information security systems for sharing information on covered activities, excluding Tribal proprietary data, sensitive cave location data, and other sensitive or proprietary information. Covered activities include Federal land management (with emphasis on wildfire operations), disaster and emergency preparedness and response, and related procurement, aviation, and workforce management activities. The Secretaries must comply with applicable Federal information technology laws, consult with Indian Tribes, and provide protections for Tribal data sovereignty. As soon as practicable after enactment and in consultation with firefighters, the Secretaries must jointly develop an interoperability implementation plan that includes phased retirement of siloed legacy systems without degrading operational capacity or mission safety; the plan must be implemented not later than one year after enactment. The Secretary of Agriculture must also update Department of Agriculture systems as necessary to enable the required information sharing.