Thursday, May 20, 2010

Light Weight Sustainable Networks - Key to Regional Collaboration

As you may know, when I was the Maryland Homeland Security Director, I became convinced that the key to Regional collaboration was lightweight sustainable networks. The Mid-Atlantic All hazards Consortium (AHC) was an outgrowth of that thinking. http://www.ahcusa.org/

The AHC convened an outstanding UASI conference on May 10th and 11th to explore the future of UASI and regional collaboration. Tom Moran and Evalyn Fisher deserve credit for a terrific workshop. I also want to recognize the great work of outgoing President, Bob Crouch former Homeland Security Advisor for Virginia for his efforts in maturing the AHC concept.

Why is this important?

The QHSR advocates for "promoting regional response capacity" in order to "Foster Unity of Effort" and encourage mutual aid that builds "resilience in time of disaster". This is an excellent objective.

In August of 2008, FEMA Preparedness sponsored a workshop hosted by the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) and facilitated and documented by the Naval Postgraduate School. A paper was developed to better understand how and why multi-jurisdictional, networked alliances formed and were sustained. http://drs-international.com/uploads/Bach%20OKC%20Report%20FINAL%20formatted.pdf


There are not enough resources to build stand alone security focused organizations that are very costly. They will not be sustainable. The fact is that our culture values security, but will not invest excessive resources for it over the long run.

Lightweight networks are a technique for achieving sustainable regional collaboration.

Thanks for checking in,


Dennis

http://drs-international.com/

Monday, May 10, 2010

Maturing the Enterprise-|Acquisition Career Development

You may want to keep your eye out for the BUR. For those of you who are not Washington insiders, it is not associated with a saddle, but is the Bottoms Up Review that implements the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR).

One area that should be addressed in the BUR as part of maturing the enterprise is the Acquisition workforce.

Every program manager at DHS and its components has an acquisition responsibility.

In the early 90's Congress passed the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA). It required that there be certifications for the acquisition workforce within specific training requirements.

The Acquisition life cycle is a critical element of developing capabilities from early stage Science and Technology (S&T) to training and staffing the capability to life cycle replacement of assets.

The Homeland Security enterprise probably needs this kind of thinking.

It will be interesting to see what the BUR produces.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis

http://www.drs-international.com/