The PNSR Homeland Security Team consists of an extensive and growing network of over 60 homeland security and emergency management professionals providing problem analyses and solution sets for structural and process reform in the homeland security/emergency management space.  Virtually all Team members have or have had operational line authority to execute missions at the Federal, state or local levels, or in the private sector/non-governmental organization (NGO) community.  From a very operationally-driven perspective, the Team takes the view that strategic guidance, policy development and execution is a cross-sector, interagency function which has an intergovernmental dimension awaiting a structural and process solution.

 

In December 2009, the Team completed its Recalibrating the System: Toward Efficient and Effective Resourcing of National Preparedness white paper.  The report cites unresolved intergovernmental conflict over all-hazards risk and inadequate state and local capabilities for catastrophic operational planning as fundamental and interrelated structural and process problems plaguing the National Preparedness System.  It recommends that DHS and FEMA should effect resourcing by direct federal funding of an intergovernmental, interagency Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Staff (RCPS) in each region.  Further, state and local authorities would assign representatives to an RCPS for temporary duty and receive federal reimbursements under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility program.  In Recalibrating the System, the Team has done most of the policy and analytical work—the “whys” and the “whats.”  In its discussions with mission partners and its pursuit of taskings, the Team is now moving into the implementation phase to tackle the “hows.” 

 

The PNSR HLS Team’s second current initiative is the Net-enabled Information Sharing Environment (N-ISE) Pilot, with a N-ISE white paper forthcoming.  N-ISE is an aggregated technology- and governance-based information sharing and analysis architecture—a “to-be” for information sharing and analysis.  This collaborative environment will:

 

 

The HLS Team is implementing its N-ISE recommendation by way of an ongoing pilot to beta test the concept.  The Team and mission-partner users will come together to conjoin their database, information exchange and governance regimes with advancing technologies first to characterize the N-ISE and then to begin using it both against story-lined scenarios (i.e., what if and/or crisis conditions) and on a daily basis (i.e., in steady-state conditions).  As opposed to conceiving a top-down information sharing enterprise, the Team is designing the pilot to determine and validate the collaborative environment’s bottom-up, user-driven, operations-centric informational requirements.  The N-ISE Pilot will proceed along a phased implementation schedule assuring proof-of-concept against measurable benchmarks to address incrementally technical, security and governance issues.