It's hurricane season once again. The specter of terrorism remains. According to a study ordered by the White House after Hurricane Katrina and released quietly earlier this month by the Department of Homeland Security, the country remains ill-prepared to deal with catastrophic events.

Disaster response is complex. It involves a dizzying array of players, from federal to state and local governments, to the private sector, to citizens and nonprofit organizations. According to the homeland security report, the "Achilles' heel" of our national preparedness is the ability, among all those players, to identify critical supplies and resources before a disaster strikes and finding and delivering them quickly afterward.

Everyday technology, properly harnessed, can help address some of the most glaring deficiencies identified by the study. EBay became a huge success by matching specialized wants and needs: Bottle-cap collector in Iowa, meet bottle-cap seller in Texas. Craigslist succeeded by matching buyers and sellers in the same city. Sites such as couple the tastes and desires of singles, and matches private giving with the specific needs of classrooms.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the limits on the government's ability to address disasters on its own. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent ice trucks intended to help victims to Maine, private companies were successfully organizing distribution points for water, clothing, electric generators and other supplies.

During Hurricane Katrina, the federal government launched the National Emergency Resource Registry, an online resource to allow companies to offer or contribute goods and services for relief efforts. Many thousands of pledges and donations came in, but the vast majority was never used. Due to poor communication between the government and the private sector, goodwill either choked the system with unnecessary items or failed to provide what was needed. Why? The Web site did not specify what items were needed for collection. No one foresaw the immense need for diapers and baby formula.

Future disasters envisioned by the Department of Homeland Security -- attacks with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents, natural disasters, bombings -- will all require specialized-response resources, and the government will need all the help it can get from the private sector. Federal, state and local governments should identify critical supplies and capabilities -- vaccines, ventilators, generators, electric transformers, laboratory capacity, decontamination equipment, logistics, transport, warehousing -- that they will need ahead of time.

Building an eBay-like system to match regional disaster-response needs with companies that can pledge assistance ahead of time or help out in real time would save dollars and lives. Properly built and maintained, it would ensure that the vast majority of private pledges and donations are put to good use, instead of going unused. It would allow state, local and federal governments to inventory available critical assets rapidly and would be much faster than relying on government bureaucrats to create a resource database on their own. Such a system would effectively harness the enormous, but untapped, goodwill of the private sector to play a leading role in homeland security.

Better yet, this idea has already been proved. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Craigslist proved extremely effective at helping people find missing loved ones and housing matches -- in many ways, it was easier to use and more effective than similar efforts by the Red Cross and homeland security.

Washington will need to show innovation and leadership to launch an online marketplace to match government response and recovery needs with the vast skills, resources and goodwill of America's private sector. If done right, such a system can be built quickly and cost-effectively with proved technologies. The Department of Homeland Security should avoid the business-as-usual approach that tends to plague federal technology projects, in which billions of dollars are routinely spent on multiyear contracts to build hard-to-use systems from scratch. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security should use available science and technology and emergency preparedness monies to support regional pilots to test and implement the system. Finally, and perhaps most important, Washington should provide federal liability protections for companies that register and donate critical disaster-response resources through the program.

America leads the world in creating technologies that are easy to use and improve our everyday lives. Using commonsense technologies to make the nation more secure makes sense. Companies, such as eBay and Craigslist, transformed how people buy and sell goods on the Internet. In an age of terrorism, they can help transform how America prepares for and responds to catastrophe. Instead of producing more paper, more bureaucracy and yet another complicated plan, Washington should use commonsense technologies and market based-solutions to make the nation more secure.