Federal Executive Forum

Emergency Preparedness 

October 25, 2007 • www.federalnewsradio.com

Moderator

Jim Flyzik, The Flyzik Group

Panelists

• Tony Cira, CIO, FEMA

• Wanda Gibson, CIO/CTO, Fairfax County

• Tim Peterson, Chief of Staff, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, FCC

• Robert Dix, Vice President, Government Affairs, Juniper Networks

• Dr. Doug Himberger, Partner, Booz Allen Hamilton

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Let’s get right into the issues and first start off by letting the audience know about your involvement in emergency preparedness at your respective agencies. Tony, at FEMA obviously this is a big issue. When we think of emergency preparedness, we think FEMA but perhaps you can give us some ideas of the things you are working, some of the big issues you are involved with right now.

TONY CIRA, FEMA

Well, this week we just finished TopOff 4, which was a major learning for the whole federal government. I think it went very well, a lot of lessons learned. I think the big issue for everybody now within the states is enactment of the legislation for the regional emergency com working groups. That’s probably one of the most important initiatives to actually get the preparedness for the states going.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Tony. Dr. Himberger from Booz Allen, I know that you play a lot of roles in working for the government in this space. Can you give us an idea of what you do in your office?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

 Sure. I think a lot of you know Booz Allen’s roles in DHS and FEMA notably. Certainly we do a great many things in the National Preparedness Directorate in policy, planning, exercises, training, and things like that. But I wrote some notes here on some things that we do that give you a sense of the breadth of the community activities that the preparedness, all hazards of preparedness, that the community is spanning right now.

For the Department of Transportation for instance we are looking at some integrated emergency preparedness programs for the Office of Emergency Transportation. We are looking at the next generation 911 system, it’s an IP based emergency communications network. For CDC, for instance, we are looking at their laboratory response network, in their Division of Bioterrorism.

For their Division of Global Migration and Quarantine we are looking at their quarantine response process, which is an interesting effort. In their center for infectious diseases we are looking at influenza pandemic response, as you might expect them to be interested in. Something in fact they are looking at in particular they are looking at increasing their capacity to dramatically increase their pandemic response for all of their laboratory and component responses for pandemics.

For HHS we are looking at developing a medical response playbook. For the VA we are developing some training and design of an entire medical VA medical center training for all of their participants across the nation. We are looking at a COOP plan for all of the VA centers across the country, and on a more local level, the Boston mayor’s Office of Homeland Security is looking at some emergency preparedness plans, evacuation plans, and preparedness of first responders across the city. And other things.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 I guess some people are saying there’s not a lot going on in emergency preparedness but from your perspective, in your company, there are obviously some things going on.

Wanda Gibson, I had the pleasure to meet Wanda at and IT meeting just recently and before I ask you to tell us, I just want to make mention that I’m real happy and proud to have read that you’ve been named one of the top 5 influential IT women in the country.

That’s a very nice honor and we are proud to have you on the show and very proud of you. When we did meet, Wanda is the CTO at Fairfax County, and when we did meet she talked about her role in coordination of a lot of the communications issues in the DC metro area. Wanda, can you give us some insights into the things that you are doing?

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

First of all let me talk a little bit about Fairfax County. In Fairfax County we have a strategic and tactical plan to create an interoperability strategy for the systems to support our first responders in law enforcement including our police, our fire, our EMS, our sheriff, emergency management 911 center and it’s a very complex and ambitious undertaking which includes both the systems side as well as the communications side, for which we have also prepared a public safety architecture supporting an infrastructure environment that secure and robust and reliable in order to be used under these different circumstances.

We also have tied our GIS, our geographical information systems as part of that overall strategy and then our wireless broadband of course is part of it. And so that’s something we’ve been working on and also some of the neighboring local jurisdictions are partnering with us on developing requirements for that. So we are very excited about that.

In the region, obviously we are a player in the region. I was the just past chair of the metro/COG CIOs committee by where we were very concerned to tie together the 21 jurisdictions that make up the National Capital Region, which actually crosses three states, and we know we have to work together because in different levels of emergency circumstances, we are always working together. We are crossing jurisdictional boundaries continually responding to things on the beltway, you get the Springfield interchange, you have crossing over Wilson Bridge, and the bridge on the other side in Montgomery County.

So it’s very critical for us on a regular basis and in addition to a big major scenario. So we’ve created a strategy in the NCR, we call it the NCR Interoperable Program by which we would actually build up and create a reliable, robust and secure infrastructure for our first responders to be able to use, so they have dedicated paths and they can actually get their work done more quickly and as they cross jurisdictional boundaries they can have the continuity of the communications that they need.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Fantastic. Thanks so much Wanda, that’s important work being done here for all of us that live in this area. We want to support you any way we can. Bob Dix. It wasn’t too long ago that Bob was up on the hill with the government reform committee giving the members questions to pepper me about when I’m up there testifying. Now Bob is with Juniper Networks and is still involved a lot with government related work. Can you give us some of your involvement in emergency preparedness kinds of issues Bob?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

 It’s good to be with you again today, Jim. I’m actively involved with Juniper Networks’ emergency preparedness efforts  to help make this nation and our government more secure and safer in the event of an incident of national significance in areas like COOP, telework, and things of that nature. Juniper is also a leader in helping this nation through its exercise program. I just left this afternoon I have the privilege of leading the private sector effort on the TopOff 4 exercise and we’ve been actively involved in the national cyber storm two planning that’s going on as well. So we are very pleased to be involved in those efforts working between industry and government.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 Yes, it’s good to hear about all that. I think the public doesn’t realize all the work in preparedness and exercises that are going on in the background in preparation. We’ll get into it a bit more and get an idea of how you all feel in terms of how prepared we all are today as the show moves on a little bit.

Tim Peterson over at the FCC, we know the FCC has a major role in managing the finite frequencies and the spectrum that’s out there and plays major roles. One would think that in interoperability the FCC is a major player, but Tim, can you give us some idea of the kinds of things that you do in public security and homeland security at FCC?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

Sure. I work for a bureau that was formed about a year ago. They brought together a lot of the units within the Federal Communications Commission that dealt with public security and homeland security issues. We do ruling makings in our bureau and those include rule makings on public safety communications, E91, 911 emergency alert systems. We also license public safety spectra. In addition to that we have a unit that looks at network reliability issues. We also have an operations unit which works hand in hand with our federal partners on communications emergency response efforts.      

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 We’ll get into some of those issues in a bit more detail. I’d like to shift now to talk a little bit about, and this is kind of been my pet peeve. I was at Secret Service for 18 years and I ran communications there. Every time we needed to interoperate, I used to put four or six radios in the back seat and say if you want to talk to the FBI use that radio, if you want to talk to the local police, use this radio. That’s the way we did it. Even today I see police cars going around with half dozen or more antennas on the roof.

And every time we have some type of emergency and we go back after the fact, we realize that communications, interoperability and the ability to communicate is a major issue and I’d like to ask the panelists, are we making some progress in that area? Wanda, can I start with you this time, because I know that you are involved with this issue in the county.

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

Yes, sure. I think we have made tremendous progress in the area first of all prior to technical solutions per se, our radios are all interoperable. We’ve actually integrated two systems; we have one dedicated to public safety and one dedicated to public service. Well, why is that important? And what is public service? Well in a major emergency event you have other kinds of agencies that provide support with trucks and plows and buses for evacuation and all these kinds of things.

In addition to that we have mutual agreements where we have provided interoperability between our different local jurisdictions in terms of channels and also based on some of these opportunities provided by these UASI grants we have radio caches now that actually support if there are any other responding NFTs that come into play so that everybody actually is on the same communications. That is basically well underway and actually had actually been started in prior years.

Where we are going with this in trying to create even better interoperable communications, because everybody’s using data now, we are all digital, everybody is relying on information and data to do their jobs, so that is an area which we are driving toward enhancing and creating that same sort of interoperability without bearing undue cost burdens of doing upgrades of back end systems and making everybody have to have the same technology.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific, great. And we will revisit that because the technology interoperability, I want to come back and talk about governance and who is in charge a little bit later on in the show because I think some of those issues are critical too.

Tony, I would think over at FEMA when you are talking interoperability, you have got to think about all the players that FEMA may have to interoperate with between  federal, state, local, people that are responding. Are you making some progress in terms of looking at that question from the FEMA perspective?

TONY CIRA, FEMA

Yes, I think that the nation has done a lot in the last seven, eight months and I’m familiar with what Wanda and her organization has done especially in the National Capital Region where there are 142 federal agencies in the confine of the 10 mile square area. But the one thing I would tell you all is that the issue is planning. We are working with Booz this year and sent out teams to nine southeast states. And the level of planning that was in one state versus another varied tremendously. So it comes down to the planning of do you have an evacuation plan? And the communications requirements that go with that plan. Which ambulances are going to go to that location, where are the ambulances coming from? And it’s that planning that one that has to do at the local level that will make this. Then when the feds come in and then if there’s a plan, everybody will know who is on what channels. Without that it will be another disaster.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Planning, planning, it’s all about planning. Tim how about FCC, when it comes to interoperability and I have heard we are auctioning the spectrum and we are going to reband the spectrum, we’ve got digital banding, we’ve got 700 MHz programs, 800 MHz programs, where’s the FCC and where are you guys thinking about this interoperability issue and ways to improve interoperability for the country?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

Well, we’ve been thinking about interoperability for years and if you go and look at our strategic plan, you’ll note that the core of our public safety and homeland security goal is interoperable communications. Some of the things that we have done to promote that have been the creation of interoperable or mutual aid channels within the 700 and 800 MHz bands. We’ve also had in our rules common technical standards for interoperability. We’ve also done things over the years that would promote networks designed to connect radio systems with gateways and such.

Finally this year we had a very large rulemaking setting the stage for a national broadband public safety communication network. We think it will be designed from the ground floor up, designed with public safety in mind and at the end of the day we think that that will go a long way towards providing the tools for first responders.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That would be a nationwide broadband wireless just for public safety officials? Is that the idea for this?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

Part of it would be just for public safety broadband use. However, it would be paired with a commercial spectrum, with priority rights on that as well. So that the commercial part of the network will negotiate a network sharing agreement with the public safety broadband licensee and again all of the concerns and needs, specifications of the public safety community should be built in as that network is designed.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Very interesting. Let’s see if it can get some momentum to actually happen. But it seems like we’ve had so many plans over the years and there are just so many issues that it’s kind of like building the Interconnector here, the roadway. Tim?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

Well let me say it is a tough job to achieve interoperability, but I do want to give a tip of the hat to our friends in Fairfax County and the National Capital Region. They’ve put a whole lot of time and effort and expense into bringing interoperability into the National Capital Region and I think that they deserve a lot of credit for that.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, and we appreciate the leadership of Fairfax County. Yes Wanda.

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

I just wanted to say that we appreciate the opportunity also to be advancing the technology because obviously there are devices at the end of this thing and then working together on this we will be able to put some stuff a little bit faster in the hands of our first responders, is our challenge. We need it, soon.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Right. Doug, what is your take on interoperability? Is this an issue that you get involved with at Booz Allen?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

Yes, actually I think we are making terrific progress. When I heard Wanda talk about the National Capital Region, the multijurisdictional challenges that she’s facing. You know these are not primarily technical issues, they really aren’t and it strikes me that interoperability issues that we face technically are maybe our smallest challenges. Frankly, I think the things we are talking about are cultural issues.

When we talk about first responders having to deal with law enforcement folks and other folks that might be in the same scenario of a crisis, those are cultural differences that are probably interoperable issues far greater than technical ones. And we have things that are governance and policy and economic issues that  probably all exceed our technical interoperability.

And I think our National Capital Region has done some amazing things with all of those areas, so I think we’ve made some amazing progress. And I think that we’ve seen some concrete things that show that progress. We’ve seen some simple things, sharing equipment is one thing, that’s easy, I don’t want to trivialize it, but certainly there’s been some progress there.   

We’ve seen some people do things with great, great effectiveness in grants areas. We’ve had some grants that have been applied in fabulous ways, and in fact we’ve seen some new grants come about that are probably going to push that bar even further up. There’s a lot of money that’s going to be applied in some powerful ways towards some of the things, not just technical things, but some of these cultural, economic, governance and policy things as well.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Right, thanks. Bob, actually I recently wrote an article on interoperability and my view of it is in the long run the problem will ultimately be fixed in the network and with IPv6 and things like that that people like Juniper are involved in. I’m not trying to give you my version of your answer but can we get. But how about your involvement on this interoperability, your take on this whole issue?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

Thank you Jim. The convergence between voice, data, video, all of the means that we want to transmit information, receive communications is going to cause a new thinking process around this. I want to agree with the notion though that it is about people, process, and technology, but I also would add the word accountability to that. There’s a growing recognition in jurisdictions and municipalities around the country that the world has changed forever and we have to break down some of the barriers of the past in order to collaborate better and share information better. So I think we are making progress, there’s a ways to go but I think that the whole concept of convergence is going to be critical in how we move that path forward.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, I agree, I think you are right. Wanda you had another comment?

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

Yes, by way of progress by the way, there is something amazing that has happened. Try to imagine that 21 separate sovereign governments have agreed on a strategy to make something happen. That by itself is tremendous progress…

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I think you should get an award for that alone.

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

And I’d forgotten and I was remiss not to mention that the National Capital Region attained an A in terms of the Department of Homeland Security tactical interoperable communications exercises recently held and only two of those I believe were awarded across the nation, so…

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

All of a sudden I’m feeling a lot better living in Washington DC in the National Capital area. Certainly some former supervisors and elected officials have to get some credit for the vision. Is that right Wanda?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

Absolutely.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I’m sure we have to get back and retrace that history. Someone has to take the credit for inventing it. We are going to get into talking a little bit about COOP planning and whether or not our companies and organizations are taking that serious.

Break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

We are talking emergency preparedness and planning. When we left we were talking interoperability. Now I’d like to shift the discussion a little bit over to the issue of contingency planning and continuity of operations planning. In reviewing surveys and major corporation results, most of the CEOs and boards of directors agree that COOP planning is a priority.

It’s a major risk item. But yet, when you look at some of the facts, less than 50% of some of these companies actually have a plan in place that’s been tested. How do we get boards of directors and agency heads to put the resources and the money and the time and the efforts. Is there a way to do that?

 Or we just simply can’t cost justify it? What are your thoughts about that? Am I wrong in my assumption here that everyone nods their head that it’s important but yet we are not getting the resources put to it. Let’s start with Bob Dix this time. Bob what would your response be on that question?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

I think part of the issue is that until very recently a lot of corporate boards haven’t viewed continuity of operations planning in the context of risk management and I think when you look at insurance and when you look other issues today and integrating that kind of planning into your business process, that’s where you get the benefit. The one challenge I would say is that a lot of people like to put a COOP plan down on paper and put it in a notebook and put it on a shelf and never test it.

And frankly under crisis and under stress is not the time to test how you are going to respond in a crisis situation. Integrating the elements of COOP if we have a pandemic flu situation and people have to work from home, are we really prepared to do that?

We talk about telework and people talk about it being a great thing, but do we know what it means from the standpoint of what equipment, what kind of access do you need, what kind of security controls do you have and I think that we need to move this into a discussion of business process and risk management and that will justify the investment many times over.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I think you are on to something there with that term risk.  It seems like CEOs relate to the word risk a lot differently than they do to COOP plans. Doug, let’s stay with the private sector view point first. Doug, what do you see out there in terms of are companies stepping up and putting into place what’s necessary?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

Well your question was are you wrong? Actually, you are right, unfortunately you are right. The surveys are pretty much spot on. I think it’s a conundrum that people will nod their heads and say this is important and yet they do not have the plans. I think we are making some progress but we are not there yet.

The question is why? I agree absolutely with Robert, I think that it is all about risk. I would push that back to these corporations and say if it’s a matter of risk management, it’s not just the internal risk assessment, but it’s also the assessment of risk to the community or the economic sector in which they exist.

So for instance if they look at their supply chain, it’s a long thin set of webs of supply chain. If they are part of someone’s supply chain, they are not only putting themselves their continuity of their own operations at risk, but probably the supply chain or the supply web of an entire sector at risk.

I think more and more companies are thinking of themselves as part of a sector and they consider that to be an important aspect as well. So thinking of risk in a more holistic fashion, thinking of themselves as part of the sector, part of the economy, could be part of what might be the tipping point, pushing the company into a more responsible position and thinking of themselves in this continuity of a sector.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s a good point, that idea of a secure supply chain and trusted partners and trusted enterprises you are working with, if any link along the way falls out of that chain there are often times third party obligations and things like that in place that fall. Tim, what do you think to that question of are we stepping up and getting these continuity of operations plans in place? Is there a way to get the kinds of resources we need onto these subjects?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what we do at the FCC. I guess we could regulate or issue some rules, but we don’t see the need to do that. We think that there are a lot of market realities out there that are causing some of the carriers that we deal with, and communications service providers, to step to the table and get pretty good COOP plans.

What we have done though is act from a leadership role and through a cooperative role. For example, my boss is an ex chief of police and when he came into the bureau, he met with most of the service providers, they wanted to come in for meet and greets. And the first thing he asked them was how are you doing on pandemic planning? And he made them set up meetings with us to come back in and just tell us what they were doing about pandemic planning and what they were doing so that he could get a sense of what are they doing, how are they operating, are they ready, and he could then convey that to our chairman and commissioners. I think that’s a type of leadership role that can be made. But again, we will also be happy to work with them in a cooperative manner. We can share ideas that we’ve learned from our own COOP processes, work with them on that and maybe take some concepts from them too and maybe incorporate them in what we do. So I’d say leadership and cooperation.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Very interesting comment. Tony? COOP planning. How do we get…let me just start off, from my days in government, I think if I talked to all the individuals in government that are either chief information security officers or COOP planners, they all want to do the right thing, but I think they all struggle because they can’t get the dollars, the resources, and the top level attention on the issue. Am I wrong? Is that the experience? Is there anything that we or we in the industry can do to help try to elevate this issue?

TONY CIRA, FEMA

I think, I’ll be the naysayer here. I think we are in bad shape on COOP planning across the board because it does if you are a CIO whether it’s state or a local jurisdiction it comes down to dollars. Whether it’s a data center, your network, your radio network, it’s all about the dollars to actually put that in place and then the training. So the worst thing I hate to see is a COOP plan that hasn’t been exercised and I think it’s just going to be an incrementally have you had the experience of a major failure? Once you’ve had a major failure then you get a bit more attentive to the problem. But most of the states I’ve seen we are not in as good a shape as you’d like to believe.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well, we are still reactive. It’s unfortunate but it usually takes something bad to happen before something good happens. I’d like to get Wanda’s comments on this. Wanda, what’s your sense of where we are with COOP and contingency planning and getting the resources we need on this issue?

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

The bad thing about it is that it’s got an acronym. That’s the first problem. I found that we were actually doing this except all of a sudden, go and develop a COOP plan everybody was like oh please, I’ve got other things to do. But actually as a result of the way the entire business thinks, the entire government thinks we are on line 24/7 and people are relying on us to have services in the event something happens. So we have to have something in place that allows us to continue to operate.

So what we did is we linked up our telework strategy with our COOP so we found we weren’t quite as far behind in terms of being able to function because quite honestly we have a very vigorous telework, so all other kinds of societal issues have morphed together to help us have a COOP and we are now just polishing it off and making sure that all the details are worked out.

But because of transportation issues, because of pandemic flu issues, people can be out because of some other kind of disaster, people are already online and they can function and do a lot of government services remotely, we actually are in pretty good shape. What we are doing though is laying that human personal element to COOP planning but absent a label there’s sort of like all kinds of progress towards it and it gets a label and now it becomes actually like a thing that could be viewed as a shelfware.

Stop, go exercising is definitely not the way, it’s got to be imbedded in the way you do business period and that way it doesn’t become as burdensome, high cost-looking activity.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Doug, you had a comment?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

Just a quick question to Tony. Do you think there’s a matter of sensitizing these CEOs as to giving them a full appreciation of the degree of their vulnerability? You said that they really didn’t appreciate it unless something had happened. They had this discontinuity and then they appreciated their COOP plan.

TONY CIRA, FEMA

 I just think the same recognition of the CIO reporting to the CEO and having a place at the table is the same iteration you are going to go through with COOP planning. It just hasn’t been in the forefront. And as the risk gets greater, if you just take the California fires, if that would have been a worse fire, how prepared do we think they would have been ready to assume operations. To Wanda’s point, it has to be a day to day type environment.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When you read CEOs and boards are concerned about three things: more revenue, reducing costs and stockholders’ equity, stock price. And when you look at investing in things like COOP, unless you can link it, now I think Bob’s on to something, if you can tie it into the issue of risk, I think it changes the equation, because risk can indeed affect the bottom line and can indeed affect the stock price if your organization is viewed as being high risk. A lot of people are going to want to stay away. Bob you had a comment?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

Yes, part of the elements of this can be integrated into the routine business process and as long as you do that, as Wanda was talking about before, then it doesn’t become an imposing burden financially or otherwise and as you implement, Homeland Security directive 20 now has set forth requirements for federal agencies in the COOP planning area, so that it’s given a higher priority there to react to that, but integrating into the business process and viewing it as a risk management element will help us move down the road on this.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I was reading in a local trade journal when data center managers were asked what is the most difficult job in their career, it is doing a disaster recovery plan. Because when you get into it, there is just so much to it when you think of what it is, to lift up and relocate.

Let’s shift gears again too. I want to get back to, it came up earlier in the discussion, this issue of governance and who is in charge. You know I did have the opportunity to sit in on a couple of the reviews of the Katrina, what went right, what went wrong and so forth. And in just about every review the conclusion was it wasn’t technology and technology matters, it wasn’t individuals not wanting to help, and we had just an enormous outpouring of people trying to help. But where things broke down was in governance and who’s in charge and who’s allowed to help and who’s not allowed to help, how do you work across levels of government?

And it seemed to me that now we have something out for review called the National Response Framework, which is up for 30 day review, which is supposed to be the game plan for the future of how we are going to, and it’s already been met with both positive and negative reviews. But I’m wondering from the panel if I ask the question do we have a better sense today of governance and who is in charge in the event of some of these issues?

Let me start with you this time Tony because I guess FEMA’s the first place people look when they think of this question.

TONY CIRA, FEMA

There’s no doubt in FEMA’s mind, and if you’ve heard director Paulson talking, FEMA’s now trying to be totally supportive of the state and the state jurisdictions, and so instead of the feds just rolling in to the environment, it’s more of OK, state do you have that and actually working with them on a daily basis, and that’s probably the biggest key.

 It is clearly a state issue to deal with the involvements of whatever the incident is. Because on an average they will handle probably 70 disasters a year where the feds are never involved. It’s only those jurisdictions when all of a sudden it goes beyond their means that you need to call the feds in for whatever issue it is, whether that’s more shelters or food or water. Or whatever.

So that the concept of unified command is now trying to be really embedded within the state EOCs and have what we call the federal coordinating officers. We are insisting that they be assigned by state now. So that it’s not if the disaster happens tomorrow it’s not the first time that they’ve ever met each other. And if we continue to do that it will go a long way.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I believe that too. I’ve believed that my whole career. Just getting to know, shaking hands with people and sitting across from people so that you know who they are, makes it a whole lot easier to pick that phone up. That’s one of the reasons I’m pleased we are here in front of a live audience and people are getting a chance to know each other in the event we have to respond to an emergency here in the area, people know who it is on the other side of that telephone.

Wanda, what do you think of that question on the governance structure? It sounds to me like this group you are chairing that you have a semblance of governance for dealing with the interoperability question.    

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

Obviously we  recognize that we can’t just start turning on technology and have a free for all. And so part of the process included establishing a framework in terms of who pulls the triggers and everybody’s under an agreement in terms of protocol and in terms of using the technology, who owns the data, who has secure rights to basically make a decision and that’s within the technology framework. But also, in terms of getting to know each other, we spend a tremendous amount of time down and the council of governments.

For example with our elected officials, our county executives and whatever and the entire different emergency support functions, our police, our fire, etc, wrestling with these issues. And a lot of this is actually pretty much answered in terms of we are in a virtual world. We are in a virtual state. So we had to do a lot of work towards that. A lot has to be done, but at least we do have some instruments right now by which we work through the council of governments which we’ve been able to take advantage of, so we weren’t starting from scratch.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I want to hear from our other three panelists on this issue here.

Break.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When we went to break we were talking about governance and the importance of concepts of operations and knowing who is in charge to react to any type of situation. We heard from a couple of our panelists but I’d like to pick up on that and hear from our others. Tim Peterson, that issue of governance, concepts of operation, who is in charge, what’s your take on all that?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

I think we are much better prepared on that issue. We’ve worked a lot on that in the past few years and it’s very clear from our standpoint that we are a support agency under the national response plan or framework and as a support agency we do things that are outlined in emergency support function number 2, tasks for the FCC, but we also things that we are asked to do by the lead agency, which is the national communications system of the Department of Homeland Security. Those roles have been finalized very well over the past few years. We have a whole lot of procedures that we’ve worked on together with our federal support agencies so I would say that we are doing much better on that score.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Bob and Doug, from the standpoint of the private sector, I guess the role of who is in charge is a little different. Because you need to figure out how can we assist, how do we help? How would you respond to that Doug, the issue of concepts of governance, government operations and so forth?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

The natural response framework as the successor to the national response plan is presumably the playbook that we implement during an incidence of national significance or an emergency situation. As was pointed out earlier, in most emergency situations, the men and women who make up the fire and EMS departments, police, sheriff’s departments at the local government level, are the ones that are critical in first response and they are working with the states and then ultimately with the federal government to respond and recover from any kind of an emergency.

I think the framework is evolving. I would not be quite as optimistic yet that all the roles are defined and that we all know where we fit in the playbook. In terms of the private sector, that is still evolving. That is immature at this point in time, it is not clearly understood, and that’s being demonstrated once again during the exercise this week.

But there is progress being made and there is an acknowledgement now that particularly in the critical infrastructure community that the government needs to rely on the private sector and the owners and operators of the critical infrastructure for both prevention, response and recovery during a time of an incident of national significance, whether it’s man made or a natural disaster.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Doug, what’s your take on that who’s in charge issue?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

Well, first of all, I think we would all recognize what a tough job this is, really. If we think of what FEMA has done by first going through the NRP and now the NRF, first of all the NRP, those of us who have gone through that, it’s a tough read. It certainly is. And the NRF, the framework is easier, it’s 62 pages long, although it has hundreds of pages of annexes, those are for focused topics, focused applications, it’s meant to be more readable and something that is really something that is more appropriate for people to read and apply to their needs. And I think they’ve done a good job in that respect. Still it’s a tough job, so I think we ought to tip our hat to them.

That said, I think that Wanda said you have instruments through which you work and even with those instruments you need guidance, true? So the national response framework is just one piece of that guidance.

We have the Homeland Security strategy, the target capabilities list, there’s a national emergency communications plan that’s coming, there’s a lot of other guidance that we need. The NRF is not it, that’s not all of the guidance that you and all of the instruments that you talked about will need. Not all of the first responders will find what they need in the NRF. So no matter what we hear in those comments, it won’t all be there, so the work is not yet done. And I would agree with Robert, it’s still evolving. There’s no question about that.

So I think that we need more detailed, situationally focused operational plans, things that can help the first responders and all the rest of those that are in these crises and all of us that are in the planning stages and the operational stages to help us with the guidance that we’ll need. So the NRF plays a very important part but it is only one piece of that guidance puzzle.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Bob Dix triggered a thought that I had here and I’d like to ask our government panelists here. Bob talked a little bit about the private sector involvement and my question to the government panelists, and we’ll start with Wanda, Wanda, the group you chair and work with is mostly the government folks. How do you reach out to work with the private sector to bring them into this equation?

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

Well obviously the private sector has resources, intelligence and the products that will come together to make our vision come to fruition. So basically we look at them as being partners in terms of designing how this is all going to work together and to basically make the business case for them that this stuff needs to be here sooner rather than later.

But we also have the private sector as party to responding. So that I can tell you that we’ve had events before, not quite the big national event, by where we have completely relied on both government as well as our private partners to help us respond to different types of issues just in normal regular everyday emergencies, so it’s a partnership and I think that that’s important going forward.

And hopefully the profit the private side that the private sector is looking for is mitigated against, well, it’s also protecting their interests to be able to function post emergency.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Tim, over at FCC, how do you get private sector engaged with the work that you are doing?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

A number of ways. One there is formal coordinating structures that are set forth in the communications sector, one called the national coordinating center at the national communications system, which is made up of members of government and industry. In the communications industry probably 90% of the infrastructure is owned by the private sector so it is very important that those people be at the table working hand in hand with the government to make sure that the response efforts are coordinated and done appropriately.

Those groups meet regularly. We are members, we are there all the time working with them and not only that, because we regulate a lot of the industry, they are all the time coming in to talk to us about issues and we are talking to them too. So it’s back to what I said before: some of the cooperation that we deal individually with carriers and communication service providers.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Tony, I would think at FEMA that issue of working with, not only with the private sector, you have all of the NGOs and the non profits, you’ve got the Red Cross, it seems like where do you even start with all these different entities FEMA needs to work with. But how do you go through the process of trying to get that engagement?

TONY CIRA, FEMA

Over the last year there’s been, it’s kind of been a pilot program to do a gap analysis by state. I think the first iteration through that was a good effort by the states that were involved. I want to go back to a comment that Bob said though about the critical infrastructure. If the pieces that are in your state, whether that be an oil refinery or a major manufacturing facility, or a major semiconductor facility, like in California, those are things that have to be planned for. Those will have major impacts on the economy. And those things have to be planned for, to actually recoup.

In the case of the NGOs, that’s still a lot of work in progress because one of the biggest differences, and Wanda may disagree a little bit, but you never know who is coming into your area. A faith based organization could show up with all the good intentions in the world but now all of a sudden you’ve got 100 more people in the disaster area that you didn’t have there the day before. It’s that matter of coordination and once you find them, how do you steer them in the right locations? And so I think that’s still a lot of work in progress to do.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Now is there some work around the HSPD-12 and the identity management to address that issue?

TONY CIRA, FEMA

I think the credentialing is just starting. I think that now there’s an initial  contract out for the cards but you can imagine the same issues that were about a national driver license, or a national ID are going to surround the credentialing issue of how do we issue them and how do we maintain them. It’s the same issues all over again.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

We could talk for several hours around that issue around identity management. In fact we did, our last show was on that very subject. I want to shift now, we’ve got about 10 minutes or so left for the show and I’d like to give each of our panelists a little time, maybe about two minutes each here to talk to the issue of are we prepared in your mind for emergency and what do you see for the vision for the future or things that we will be seeing down the road?

Your vision for what would happen in the event of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or a pandemic type of event. Get your feel. Let’s start with Tim. Tim Peterson over at FCC, what are your thoughts on where we are today? Are we prepared for the various types of disasters and are we making progress? What is your vision?

TIM PETERSON, FCC

I think that we are making progress and we are getting better and better prepared. I’ve already mentioned that we’ve worked on plans and policies with some of our federal partners. Let me mention a few other things. We are concerned about interdependencies a good bit. I look at interdependencies from a traditional and nontraditional standpoint. Traditional meaning I’m in the utility arena so the traditional interdependencies would be electric, gas, water, communications to see how those groups work together.

But we are trying to broaden our vision to look at other nontraditional interdependencies. For example in our bureau we are dealing a lot with hospitals and health care providers, which typically is not a traditional interdependent group with the FCC, but we are finding that we are learning a lot from them and they are learning a lot from us and we can help them in their emergency communications planning and give them some other ideas on how to make sure that they have resilient and redundant communications that would be available in the time of crises.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Tim, very good comments. Bob?

BOB DIX, JUNIPER NETWORKS

We are better today than we were yesterday; we have a long way to go. I’ll give you an example; this week is TopOff4 which is a congressionally mandated tier one national full scale terrorism preparedness exercise. It’s being conducted international multistate, multilateral exercise.

This is the first time in the history of the TopOff 4 series that the private sector has a seat in the master control cell trying to give real time information about the impacts in the venues and nationally as a result of this exercise and the scenario around that. The government still doesn’t have a good understanding of just in time supply chain issues and the impact from incidents of national significance. So there is still a ways to go.

But what I will tell you, the good news is there is an enhanced awareness of those interdependencies both in terms of the networks, the IT and communications element, but the reliance that the government and industry have on one another to be successful in prevention, response, recovery and reconstitution in the event of an incident of national significance. We are better, but we still have a ways to go.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, and I like the fact just that we are looking at those interdependencies. I remember from my government days, we once took a look at who the treasury department and the major bureaus like the IRS, all of their supply chains and who they were dependent on to meet their critical mission and it really opens your eyes when you realize that it’s not just your own organization, you are dependent often times on dozens and dozens of other entities that are somewhere in your supply chain in order to meet your critical mission. Wanda, what are your thoughts, what’s your vision here on being prepared and some final thoughts on all this?

WANDA GIBSON, FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA

Well, when you ask me for a vision, my vision is this. It’s seamless. Something happens and everything comes into place because all of these issues that we’ve talked about have actually been worked out and we kind of don’t have a view of our independent if you will structures and whatever because it’s a common problem for everybody to have to deal with. And so we kind of lose our independent identities so to speak.

And also a common message, which is a very important part of this because when you are in a region such as ours and you have people all over the place during the day. They live one place they work another place, etc. They need to have good information quickly that’s accurate about what to do and how things are going to be handled when they are away from home with their children with their families. So I have a vision that this is actually going to come together and though the commercial sector and progress and in this country, this nation over time, some of that is going to actually naturally occur.

These things are going to come together because the technologies and things are going to be there in place and that’s going to help to make these things not so much of a burden to think about and to plan for.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thank you so much. It’s so important upon us because you’ve brought a lot of these points home. This is about our country, this is about our children, this is about national security. When you think of the stakes, it’s incumbent that we do everything in our power to make sure we are successful in this area. Doug? What are your final thoughts on where this is all going?

DR. DOUG HIMBERGER, BAH

I was thinking this week about whether we are better prepared. I did a search on headlines, are we better prepared? Let me tell you:

Headlines:

·         New Ohio committee discusses better emergency communication.

·         FEMA working on Hawaii hurricane plan.

·         Emergency notification available on email, voice mail.

·         FEMA reconsidering aid for tornado-struck North Dakota community.

·         Ohio community flu vaccination clinic doubles as training exercise.

·         Ill prepared pandemic flu could cripple government.

These are not all good headlines. FBI, DHS, FEMA and other US agencies prepare for nuclear attack drill. On and on. I’ve got pages of this. So are we better prepared?

Sure, I think we are because what this is about, as Jim Caverly says, from DHS, he says that plans aren’t important; it’s planning that’s important. So planning makes us think about the right things and ask the right questions. So we are thinking about the right things and we are asking the right questions and it leads us to the kinds of things we see in the headlines.

 We are asking for things, we are training for things, we are exercising for things, we are doing the things that we are talking about today. So we are bound to be better prepared. I just don’t see any other end state. And by the way, I think that it’s this road. It’s the road to preparedness that’s important. There is no end state of preparedness; it’s the journey towards preparedness that matters.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well, put. When you think about that the number of articles daily about this, if you went back several years you’d probably be hard pressed to find any. Tony, I guess when you talk about: are we more prepared? FEMA comes to everybody’s mind. FEMA’s been through some rough times and FEMA’s the one I think when the country thinks about the agency that we want to be, have a warm feeling about being prepared it is FEMA. Can you give us your thoughts on preparedness from a FEMA standpoint?

TONY CIRA, FEMA

I think FEMA, over the 11 months that I’ve been there, is absolutely much better prepared. I think as Director Paulson has said in numerous speeches there’s an old FEMA and there’s a new FEMA. The difference in the people that are there now, at least in new positions that have been created, are more proactive than they are reactive, so I know almost within the last any disaster of national significance, not the local where that is, 72 hours in advance the director’s on the phone with the governor or the mayor of where ever the projected damage is so trying to lean forward, not to interfere but what is it that you think you’re going to need.

On the planning side I would say that the legislation from last year is really important to two areas. FEMA’s about ready to hire its senior law enforcement official which will report directly to the director, and that is to make that tie between us and the law enforcement community, with a fairly well respected person from that community.

The issue of the regional advisor working groups, where each of the regions now the head count literally is going to be put in the regions versus the headquarters. And that regional advisory group will be a group of senior people from those affected states who will help that region plan for the effort. As Wanda says, we ran a little scenario for New York, it’s not about your state any more, if there was something that happened in New Jersey, the whole of the north east corridor would freeze up; you couldn’t get a car in there if you wanted to. So it is a regional effort. When we were redoing the Louisiana planning this year, six states had to house all the 260,000 people that were going to have to be evacuated. So it’s hard to imagine that you could do that in one state by yourself.

The other piece of this that I’ve got to say is that the individuals have really got to let down their jurisdictional issues. You will never get to working together on a catastrophic incident unless the jurisdictional boundaries go away.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well put Tony. Just a quick summary remark or two from notes I jotted as we were talking. I heard again the issues that are important are people, processes, accountability, dealing with culture of the organizations, looking at governance. I like the idea to talk about this issue in terms of risk, corporate relate to risk, as risk relates to the bottom line, relates to the stock price. It changes the level of the conversation.

We talked about COOP and the difficulty getting it done and I heard a lot of conversation about telework. Can we put COOP and telework together and have TeleCOOP. Maybe we ought to talk about, instead of talking about just COOP, talk about telework, talk about some of the things we heard at this conference. About the future of wireless, broadband wireless and the importance it’s going to be for ubiquitous computing and mobile computing. Maybe there’s a way to start framing all those issues together to create a little different picture of what this is all could be as a way to generate more resources for this.

We are running out of time.

(Thanks to all.)