Adfero Group HSPI

Whether businesses see the G20 as welcome or not, it does present an opportunity to revise and test business continuity plans. When information does become available, the business is ready for the worst case scenario and down-grade its planned response, rather than being forced to plan for difficult circumstances on the fly.

By Lynn Ann Casey
As DHS starts to create a new way to acquire solutions and considers whom to invite to the table, they currently faces two not-very-appetizing alternatives.

The desire to create a Cyber Czar not only is delaying the pursuit of the President’s priorities; it is creating an artificial separation of the physical and cyber world when the industry and the market are clearly moving toward convergence of the two domains.

FEMA Director Craig Fugate, along with Dave Maxwell of the National Emergency Management Association, made the case during a recent congressional hearing for a comprehensive plan to leverage the day-to-day capabilities of local communities — from first responders to housing and infrastructure to private sector interests. It was an eloquent argument. Unfortunately, some in Washington are still focused on re-aligning organizational charts in the federal bureaucracy rather than engaging a debate on how to establish a truly national emergency management strategy.

Yesterday the US Senate’s Ad hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery held a hearing on “Focusing on Children in Disasters: Evacuation Planning and Mental Health Recovery.” With notable witnesses including FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate and Mark Shriver of Save the Children, the hearing examined one of the most vulnerable populations in emergencies – children.

Melissa Hathaway’s decision to leave the Administration simply confirms what everyone already knows – the Obama Administration’s cybersecurity initiative is being strangled in its crib.

For as much as we all love to talk about everything under the sun, as Americans, we’re more doers than we are talkers. We just go do things and that’s how we got started in this thing we call, “homeland security.” Nearly eight years after 9/11, we are finally making time to have some long-overdue conversations and defining what it means to make the homeland secure.

As Congress has been unusually busy on a range of fronts – health care, executive compensation, climate change, even “cash for clunkers” – one front that has been unusually quiet has been the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

Global political and financial summits are held in the name of open dialogue and mutual collaboration. Those who attend but are outside the summit are, for the most part, here for the same reason, to project their message to those at the meeting, and to the wider world.