Managing the White Space in Homeland Security and Incident Management

I decided to take a break for a few weeks to reflect on the breathtaking activities that have transpired over the past 4-6 weeks.

I had been focused on the QHSR Strengthening the Enterprise strategy, Bottoms up review and the coordination of the Public Safety and Engineering communities in Resilience. Suddenly the Gulf Oil spill and the departure of DNI Dennis Blair caused me to step back and pause so I could try to grasp what was happening.

I shared with someone recently why I believe there has been a significant shift in Homeland Security over the past 2 years. The shift actually has nothing to do with the change in Administrations, but with a natural cycle of events. It revolves around three critical issues that stem from the fact that the novelty of Homeland Security has worn off:

1. Homeland Security is a horizontal process not a vertical function. The very hard work ahead is developing concepts like resilience into real actions.

2. There really isn't significant money to be made in managing the horizontal especially in the security domain. Americans want and value security, but will not pay excessive amounts for it.

3. You can't keep throwing money unconstrained at an issue that is competing with other priorities.

So that leads to the issue of Managing the White Space in Homeland Security.

I believe that Homeland Security at its core is about managing the white space.

For example, in my opinion to be effective as DNI you have to strip out the overhead and focus on managing the network. That is a difficult task for senior officials who are accustomed to being in charge with line responsibility. The role as senior intelligence advisor is to provide the President with the recommendations and staff work that he or she needs to provide direction. That is easier said than done. It requires a different style of leadership that is in short supply.

The Gulf Oil Spill is another example of a system that is still under development. I believe that the spill and subsequent response is a case study for the review of Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-5, the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and the National Response Framework (NRF). It may well be that the law establishes the Coast Guard and EPA as the lead agencies, but what happened to the Joint Field Office (JFO) concept defined in the NRF. This was declared a spill of national significance weeks ago. 40 CFR provides the authority for who is in charge, but shouldn't that be in the context of NIMS and the NRF?

The Emergency Management community and the House's T and I Committee have been saying for 5 years since Katrina that there was no need for a Principal Federal Official (PFO) during an incident. They also have said that all incidents are emergencies. Unfortunately this isn't a Stafford Act incident, but isn't this an incident that is an emergency?? Why haven't we organized around the NRF.

After this incident is under control, we should do of a sober review of NIMS, HSPD-5, and the NRF. When that happens, it should be done with a recognition that there will always be white space in these situations and hopefully we will move past the parochial interests and recognize that we need to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

More to come in the weeks ahead.

Thanks for checking in,

Dennis

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

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/

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/

Functional Exercises - Lower Cost Options

I've been reflecting on a recent Washington Post article about the National Exercise Program. I'm not sure what the article was trying to communicate, but one thing is clear.

In my time as a state Homeland Security Director in Maryland, there was a lot of concern about "exercise fatigue" and the ability to get actual cabinet leaders to engage in exercises.

With Governor Ehrlich's support and his Chief of Staff's participation, we developed a process that focused less on the full scale "field show" and more on executive decision making.

We established mini-drills that were made part of the daily work schedule and embedded table top and functional exercises as part of the routine cabinet retreats and meetings.

One morning, we had every cabinet secretary go to the nearest state police barracks on their way to the office to do an emergency radio check to the Governor's mansion to simulate a state wide emergency where all normal communications had been disrupted. The whole thing was done in 60 minutes and we learned a lot from it.

We held a statewide local elected officials seminar to reach out to those officials. That was very well attended. We did small functional exercises with key decision officials to game our operational plans.

On another occasion we did a 2 hour table top on Avian flu as an agenda item at a cabinet retreat.

So, when we received then Governor Napolitano's letter when I was at FEMA, I was sympathetic to the substance of the letter.

We went about trying to redirect the approach to designing future national level exercises. I was very satisfied with the outcome of the Phoenix based functional exercise and went to each venue to observe the activity during NLE-08. The play was very serious and the players were definitely being pressed.

NLE-09 was designed as the first prevention exercise without the type of field play previously done. We also asked FEMA Region 6 to lead the engagement with the states involved. The Intelligence Community was very well represented and from my vantage point and made a terrific impact in the early planning. We also pressed to have real private sector play in the planning process.

These changes caused some consternation, but were the first small steps in addressing the problems addressed by the Governor's letter.

We also developed the National Exercise Simulation Center (NESC) to support federal play anywhere in the country and to allow for a federal simcell co-located with the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC).

I've been away from it for 15 months so I'm not sure how things have unfolded since then. By all accounts it appears as if NLE-09 went off well.

It will be interesting to see where the road ahead leads.

Thanks for checking,

Dennis

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

Maturing the Homeland Security Enterprise-Federally Funded Research and Development Centers(FFRDC)

The QHSR lays out an ambitious agenda to mature and strengthen the homeland security enterprise. In order to accomplish this agenda, DHS will will need to employ a comprehensive systems engineering capability both inside DHS and in support of the federal inter-agency and state and local jurisdictions nationally.

Dr. Michael French (Mitre) and I presented our groundbreaking paper at the American Society of Public Administration conference last week in San Jose, CA. that discusses the use of FFRDCs and UARCs to support state and local governments. The link to the paper-
http://drs-international.com/uploads/ASPA_Paper_FFRDCs_and_UARCs_final_submitted.pdf


DHS S&T has access to significant resources and capability to facilitate the use of FFRDCs and UARCs to do systems engineering work in the enterprise.

The program managers in DHS Headquarters activities and the operational components will have to become more familiar with S&T resources and processes in order to create the collaboration necessary to deploy systems engineering to improve the enterprise.

DOD and DOE and other federal agencies have effectively used systems engineering to develop their programs over the past 65 years through FFRDCs and UARCs. This proven methodology bears careful consideration.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis

http://drs-international.com/

Maturing the Homeland Security Enterprise through Regional Preparedness

The QHSR has identified Fostering Unity of Effort as one of the 4 strategic aims to mature the enterprise. The seven objectives to support this aim are highly inter-related and definitely on target. The objective to promote regional response capacity ties very nicely to the objectives for professional development, institutionalized planning, and the military-homeland security relationship.


One current initiative, the Regional Catastrophic Grant Program (RCGP) is being piloted in the Tier I Urban Areas and four of the Tier II Urban Areas. The results of this effort will be coming to light in the next several months.


One way to build on this effort would be to link the RCGP to the development of the FEMA regional preparedness organizations. FEMA developed a Concept of Operations for this effort in February 2008. This was in direct compliance with the Post Katrina Act requirements. I've included a link to the document.


http://drs-international.com/uploads/Reg-Natl%20Prep%20CONOPS%20_final_.pdf


I would urge state and local public safety officials to become familiar with this document and engage the FEMA regional preparedness organization. This will enhance the RCGP efforts over time and mature the enterprise.


This is also consistent with the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) recommendations.


Thanks for checking in.


Dennis


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

TISP Sends Resilience Recommendation to White House

The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) developed seven resilience recommendations for a white paper it submitted to the White House last month.

TISP White House resilience letter

The engineering community can make an important impact as resilience policy is developed in the next 2 years.

Bill Anderson from TISP and Ernie Edgar from PBSJ deserve a lot of credit for driving this product.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis

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