StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Sorry I’ve not posted for a few days, but "my day job" had me consumed with ‘playing chicken with a Mack truck" and I simply had no free time.

Anyway, the first anniversary of Katrina (and then Rita) has come; the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th are soon.  With all of the money spent on homeland security, are we prepared or do we simply want to believe that we are better prepared than we were?

Thanks to my subscription to the Homeland Security Daily Newswire we have this:

9/11, Katrina anniversaries highlight radio interoperability problems

Perhaps it is a case of "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Have emergency responders failed to develop integrated emergency radio systems? Roger that. The anniversaries of the 9/11 attack and Hurricane Katrina bring the issue to bear. Here is how the AP described a problem that is becoming all too common across the homeland security sector: "While the hurricane debacle brought new immediacy, action has remained scarce beyond the creation of more joint panels and task forces that, like their predecessors, have been bogged down by disagreement over how to do it, how to pay for it, and the frictions that typically arise whenever multiple arms of government ‘work together.’" That the reporter chose to put ‘work together’ in quotes says a lot in and of itself.

Take the case of Philadelphia. Brotherly love has done nothing for the city’s emergency radio systems. "The police and fire emergency radio communication systems are unreliable on the underground sections of the city subway. The ambulance dispatching system does not allow city rescue crews to communicate directly with hospitals," reports the New York Times. Consider also the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Reports the Tulsa World: "The state is spending $28 million to extend an 800-megahertz radio signal linking first-responders across the state. While the radio channel will cover a large swath of Oklahoma, key cities such as Broken Arrow and Oklahoma City would be dead to the signal without a frequency patch."

What is to be done? DHS already offers grants through the Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program (SAFECOM), but the program has little oversight or coordinating authority. Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation offers a few suggestions, neatly summarized for us by Christian Beckner of the must-read Homeland Security Watch blog:

1. Put first things first
2. Open emergency management frequencies as dual-use spectrum
3. Don’t send money; set standards
4. Buy services, not infrastructure or technology

Despite Steps, Disaster Planning Still Shows Gaps
[Alternate source for the article]
…In New Orleans, extraordinary steps have been taken to care for the disabled, the elderly and tens of thousands of others without cars if another major hurricane arrives. In New York, city officials say, up to three million people could be evacuated from coastal areas and 600,000 accommodated in shelters stocked with food and supplies.

But in large chunks of the country, far more limited progress has been made to prepare for catastrophe, a recent federal assessment concluded. The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency, rated only 27 percent of the states and 10 percent of the cities evaluated as adequately prepared “to cope with a catastrophic event.” Dallas, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Philadelphia were among the low scorers…

Interoperable communications, Talking Through Disasters: The Federal Role in Emergency Communications

From September 11, 2001, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress and the Bush Administration have wrestled with the challenge of improving emergency management communications. An unprecedented federal spending spree has yielded scant progress, however, and Washington’s programs should be scrapped. It is unlikely that they will ever be able to achieve, either efficiently or effectively, the goal of cre­ating the kind of emergency communication systems the nation needs to respond to national disasters.

The right approach would include adhering to a set of policies that promote effective public–private sharing of the emergency management electromagnetic spec­trum, create a national capability to deploy a wide-area emergency management communications network for catastrophic disasters, and establish coherent national leadership for emergency response communications.

What Is Being Done?

In the rush to enhance emergency management communications after 9/11, the government’s solu­tion has been to throw money at the problem, mostly through a variety of federal grants.[1] The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Program (SAFECOM), but SAFECOM has very limited author­ity either to oversee and coordinate federal, regional, and state efforts or to direct funding.

SAFECOM was an E-government project initiated by the Office of Management and Budget before the department was created.[2] By some estimates, SAFE­COM programs will require over 20 years and $40 billion to achieve a national interoperable emer­gency communications system.[3] Likewise, a pro­posed National Integrated Network that would bring together federal law enforcement agents from the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Treasury into a single wireless infrastructure may take 15 years to build with a price tag esti­mated at up to $10 billion.[4]

In short, the federal government is spending a great deal of money on projects that are not well-coordinated.

Throwing money at the problem is a troubling strategy. The government’s record with information technology acquisition and implementation is poor. Typically, programs lack clear requirements, as well as strong executive leadership, and underestimate the time, money, and human capital necessary to achieve what is needed. Federal efforts to promote more effective emergency management communica­tions show little promise of doing better…

If you feel better after reading this, well…I don’t.  Communications interoperability, as will as systems compatibility remain as one of the primary vulnerabilities faced by the U.S.

Current Affairs, Federal Policy, National Security, Opinions