The Road Ahead for Resilience - Personal and Private Initiative

I attended The Infrastructure Security Partnership's (TISP) workshop last Friday at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, DC. It featured short briefings by many of the Federal agencies on their Resilience initiatives.

It was a very encouraging session, in particular because of the language from several officials.

The most important message I heard was that practitioners should use the definition of Resilience in the National Security Strategy (NSS) and Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) and move past the definition to action.

I find that very liberating.

For what it is worth; the Resilience definition in the NSS - the ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruption. The QHSR definition is very similar.

This should be music to the ears of everyone who has been wanting to see Resilience move ahead. It suggests that the Federal government will be supportive, but is looking to private and personal initiative to lead the Resilience effort.

Rather than spending wasted time and effort parsing a definition organizations and business should be laying out action plans that create resilience.

There were many interesting initiatives previewed by the federal agencies including health and Science and Technology (S&T) perspectives.

I was particularly impressed by the FEMA concepts of Maximum of Maximums and Whole of Community. These concepts have the potential to involve the private sector in a very productive way.

Rather than waiting for bureaucratic guidance we are challenged to move ahead.

The ball is in our court!

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader
http://www.drs-international.com/

Putting the Horse before the Cart; Building on Private Sector Resilience

Last week, I started discussing the notion of practical approaches to building on private sector capabilities.

An appropriate analogy for the culture change the government must embrace is to imagine the government as a cart and the private sector as a horse. The private sector is the power behind resilience and the government has to learn how to hook the cart to the horse.

One private sector element of Resilience is Supply Chain Operation Reference (SCOR). SCOR is a tool for measuring and improving supply chains.

I will be exploring and discussing this technique over the next few weeks.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader

www.drs-international.com

Private Sector Language - Owner/Operators

There is a growing recognition that government needs the active involvement of private sector owner/operators to create a resilient national infrastructure and disaster resilient communities.


Unfortunately, government struggles to effectively make these relationships happen in a way that brings the private sector to bear in a response and recovery framework.



The private sector is however, more capable and prepared than the public sector realizes. The key is to try to understand the private sector from their perspective and language.


The private sector manages its business everyday using Risk management, Continuity, and Supply Chain as the language of preparedness.


Rather than trying to pull the private sector into the public sector in a haphazard manner, maybe the public sector should be engaging the private sector in its environment and by adopting its language.

There are some emerging initiatives that are attempting to bridge this gap:

The mid-Atlantic All Hazards Consortium led by Tom Moran and Joe Picciano is a state-centric group that has private sector sponsorship. The Consortium will begin focusing its efforts on bringing in owner-operators to develop projects that build regional resilience through Intergrated Regional Planning.

The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) is collaborating with Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) to explore the progress on the federal government's PS-Prep program. DRII is a natural partner since they have 8000 continuity professionals worldwide that have been certified by their continuity training and exams.

The TISP team is also developing an owner/operator resilience handbook.

These efforts are the beginning a renewed focus on creating a Homeland Security enterprise that builds on private sector capability that already exists.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis
www.drs-international.com

Convergence of Private Sector-Public Sector Preparedness

I must apologize for not posting for 4 months without checking in.

I was distracted with a local community project that is now completed.

I have continued working with my clients of course and some limited pro bono work with ASCE, DomPrep Journal, TISP, and MIPT.

As a new blogger for 7 months, I learned a valuable lesson and I want to become more efficient in my blogging.

I've observed the emerging professional blogger community in my local area including a gentleman named Tom Coale. I hope to get better at this.

Now, on to business.

I'm working on a project for Dom Prep 40 that explores the relevance and knowledge of the public sector regarding PS-Prep and private sector preparedness.

The national strategy and policy that embraces resilience suggests that there should be a convergence of public and private sector efforts in preparedness.

Since the Y2K episode a decade ago, the private sector has been focused on continuity and supply chain resilience as key business strategies to protect their revenue streams. The NFPA 1600 standard and the Disaster Recovery Institute certifications have been evolving for two decades.

In my next few posts, I want to examine this convergence and some of the issues I am observing. I'll be on a panel for DomPrep on Nov. 15th at the National Press Club on this topic. More to come.

On another note, The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) in Oklahoma City has been successfully pursuing its retooled mission to train police officers across the nation in intelligence collection. There was an excellent article in Homeland Security Today that describes the initiative. http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/15309/149/

As I've mentioned before, I am on the MIPT board and am proud of the work David Cid and the Board have done in the past 3 years. They have also recently established an advisory board that includes notable figures like Josh Filler, Nancy Dragani, Dr. Van Romero, Chris Geldart, and David Carey.

That's it for now.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis

www.drs-international.com

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/