Homeland Security Issues for Managers
By Francis A. McDonough,
Director
Office of Intergovernmental
Solutions
General Services
Administration
Homeland Security organizations in all governments face formidable challenges that may take years to resolve. Obtaining funds in this poor economy, getting the right people in the right jobs, integrating data across agencies and jurisdictions and organizing to respond to shifting terrorist threats are among the leading challenges. Solutions will not arrive overnight. Rather, they will occur step by step, piece-by-piece over what may be a period of many years.
Israel has perhaps the most experience in the world in modern day homeland security issues. Israel provides important wisdom and asks some fundamental questions which government managers need to address at this time when all ideas to protect the homeland seem appropriate.
Israel points out that a 100 percent foolproof solution for homeland security does not exist. Choices have to be made. Governments need to decide how much is enough and what is the correct level of protection.
Similarly, IBM points out that all solutions will have vulnerabilities. The best a government can do is to limit the vulnerabilities. IBM’s suggested approach is to discover known attack scenarios and to develop combinations of suspicious activities and patterns of behaviors in order to identify potentially malicious behavior.
Israel provides several criteria for investing in homeland security and it emphasizes that the key to correct utilization of funds is to make sure all investments bring an added value to the community beyond fighting terror and ensuring homeland security. For example, better communications equipment for first responders will have the added benefit of making fire, police, and public health personnel more effective in their daily routines in addition to making them more effective in fighting terror and protecting the homeland.
When two Department of Homeland Security officials and I met with New York City officials in October 2002, we learned that constant drills, practices and training are essential. Israel emphasizes the same thing. In addition, the Emergency Preparedness Incident Command Simulation (EPICS) system discussed in this report is an advanced training tool that uses computer simulation. It produces different scenarios to help firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and other first responders to further develop their skills.
Motorola points out that multi-jurisdiction collaboration requires planning and a lot of practice. The process involving local government resources that worked well at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, has been evolving for years.
In another example of practicing to prepare for terrorism, North Carolina conducts hot site drills several times a year. Its systems are recovered on a remote basis. The objective is to get up and running at the remote site in 24 hours. Aside from ensuring business continuity, speedy recovery is important to provide confidence for the citizens in a time of apprehension.
Application systems for homeland security differ from most of the technology initiatives implemented in all fields in the past 40 years. While they require good planning, project management, and other basic systems management skills, homeland security systems cross agency and government boundaries. Hence, new forms of collaboration and data sharing are required.
In the 16 articles in this report, important examples of the future can be seen. Almost every article discusses the need for collaboration and data sharing. And, examples of how these twin goals will be reached are provided.
Tom Ridge, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, for example, points out that homeland security is a shared responsibility that cannot be accomplished by the Federal government alone. It will require, he says, coordinated action by federal, state, and local governments, plus the private sector and concerned citizens across the county. In another example, Oregon officials advocate open source solutions while pointing out that intergovernmental homeland security systems are so complex that no single company or agency can manage all components successfully. Also, pilots are not enough. Real users must test proposed solutions.
Florida is at the center of a regional, multi-state solution to achieve needed collaboration. Networks are being built to link the first responders in public health, border control, information, intelligence, and technology to share information about individuals, organizations, critical infrastructure, and other resources and assets.
Canada is using its science and technology communities to build collaborative responses from the federal, provincial, industry and academic sectors. Singapore is building regional incident response teams and is organizing to achieve closer cooperation between its military and home front agencies. Pennsylvania built the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET) to allow collaboration between municipal and county governments within the state as well as with bordering states.
In the pure data-sharing category, Extended Markup Language (XML) plays a key role. In addition, authentication of the person initiating an electronic transaction is an important milestone as indicated in Mexico’s report. The University of Texas discusses an Information Security Risk Management Program to protect sensitive and critical healthcare information and services. Trusted Computer Solutions notes that intergovernmental homeland security initiatives will need to retrieve, process and distribute information across networks operating at different levels of security classifications.
OpenEMed is a distributed healthcare information system developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It provides an example of the fusion technology that will be required in intergovernmental programs. OpenEMed enables multiple databases to be integrated, creating a virtual patient record, in which individual healthcare facilities manage their own data, while making it accessible to others treating the same patient. The pilot, demonstrated the capacity for rapid, real time, data aggregation to present the whole picture of an unfolding event. These capabilities can be used in other homeland security functions such as first responders and law enforcement.
Government officials responsible for making homeland security investment decisions need to recognize that there is no foolproof protection. One hundred percent solutions against terrorists are not possible. The question, then, is to identify the critical needs while deciding how much is enough.
After the investments are made, traditional project management skills are needed. But these are not the Project Management 101 skills that many in the field already possess. Homeland Security initiatives require ‘Project Management 501’ skills, which few have.
Managing across government jurisdictions and accomplishing
multi-jurisdictional data sharing without direct control over the resources
requires new skills in collaborative management and in the use of emerging technology
standards. Few have these skills
today. The question may then become how
senior officials can develop the necessary skills to enable them to become
successful in homeland security systems as project managers at the 501 level.
For more information, contact Frank McDonough at Frank.McDonough@gsa.gov or at 202-501-0291.