Illinois Universities Create Homeland Security Education Alliance

This is an interesting concept that tries to pool e-learning university resources in emergency management and homeland security.


Illinois universities have created a homeland security education alliance that aims to equip students and professionals with emergency management tools and boost the state’s overall preparedness levels. This cooperative agreement allows students at any of the eight participating universities to enroll in an online course at any of the other schools and use the credit hours toward a homeland security degree or track. This alliance broadens the number of courses available to students.

Full article here:
http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.9123e83a1f6786440ddcbeeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=0abdb76030446110VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD

The Chief Learning Officer and preparedness training

Now, this is an seemingly unrelated story; HOWEVER, just think of the potential the business community has if this concept catches on with all the big players. The issue is is the rise of the CLO: Chief Learning Officer. Although it appears from the article below that the overall goal here is to tailor learning to the company's mission and goals, I would think continuity of operations would be one of THE biggest goals a company could have. Now we've made the link back to preparedness, whereby the CLO can bring personal preparedness, business preparedness, facility health and safety concepts, and continuity of operations concepts and training tools to all company employees.

To underscore my point:
"Bringing learning to the table is one of the biggest strategic advantages a company can have today," said Bill Byron Concevitch, chief learning officer for Verint Systems Inc., a global leader in work force optimization, which provides software solutions to help businesses and government agencies make sense of data. "If learning isn't woven into the fabric of the culture, a business will struggle to be successful and might not even know why it's not."

Concevitch sees his job as "giving the right people the right skills, at the right time, [to prepare them for] where they need to be."

Full article available at:
http://www.ajc.com/hotjobs/content/hotjobs/careercenter/articles/2007/12/07/1209_clos.html

Seattle gets award for web-based personal preparedness tool

Fabulous idea ... this is one of the final frontiers preventing this country from being truly prepared: personal and/or family preparedness. Of course, this is a bit self-serving as the city of Seattle wants/needs all these employees to pull multiple 12-hour shifts in the Emergency Operations Center (for example) during an emergency week ... but it is a necessary evil as local government has been poised as the first line of defense.

Dec 7, 2007, News Report
Mayor Greg Nickels announced Thursday that Seattle Office of Emergency Management has been awarded the Technology and Innovation Award by the International Association of Emergency Management for developing a web-based personal preparedness training program for city employees.
The Web-based training is designed to educate employees on the importance of being personally prepared at home so that they can continue serving the people of Seattle by providing critical services during an emergency.

http://www.govtech.com/gt/217558?topic=117693

AmeriCorps and Homeland Security

Barack Obama is pitching a massive expansion of AmeriCorps and added "units" to deal with special topics, to include homeland security. This, in part, could solve some workforce and credentialing issues at the scene of a large-scale emergency where many volunteers and/or citizen recruits would be needed.

Here's the AP article:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gQNzkvQdOVeBPKyqUTjgLct0wbNwD8TBI4OG0

Presumably, this would be an expansion of the National Civilian Community Corps
(for more info, see http://www.americorps.org/about/programs/nccc.asp), a program
I can vouch for as a dear friend's daughter is mid-way in her service and has nothing but really positive things to say about the whole situation.

Incident Command ... the Washington DC Way

An interesting piece written by someone in the fire service ... FEMA and DHS
need to listen to guys like this ... here a snippet of what this career firefighter
has to say about the new NIMS system:

We in the fire service who are familiar with the ICS and have, hopefully, already integrated its principles into our regular operations, are better able than some agencies (like the poor cops) to at least understand what has now become the core of the Command and Management component of NIMS. Other attributes of this bigger plan are an interest in fostering interoperability and standardization across jurisdictions and agencies, and a focus on preparation and resource management, each of which are admittedly goals that are best approached at a federal or at least multiagency level. The potential for this new government program to act as a conduit for bringing needed resources to bear on improving emergency preparedness is also a plus, even though funding (or, more specifically, the threat of losing it) is currently only used to enforce the program's mandatory adoption.
Unfortunately, like many government programs, NIMS creates layers of bureaucracy that will confuse and confound most emergency services workers and require a contingent of bureaucrats to make it operate. It expands on an already potentially complex schema (ICS) that is, in everyday practice in most communities, rarely implemented, and even more rarely necessary. Furthermore, as a collection of mostly untested components, the ability of such a contraption as NIMS to perform as designed is questionable.

A great deal of the awkwardness of NIMS's Command and Management features come from its attempt to accommodate multiple agencies and jurisdictions in a collaborative sense. Its creation of Multiagency Coordination Systems, a means of bringing together a collection of representatives from affected and involved jurisdictions and agencies; and corralling every Public Information Officer (PIO) into one of several Joint Information Centers (JICs), as part of a Joint Information System (JIS), are two examples of this theme. Although cooperation is certainly a good thing, the apparent intent is to address the real political issues inherent in any large-scale incidents (and many small-scale ones). The result is "management by committee." Basically, ICS got a D.C. makeover.

Another inherent flaw of NIMS as an incident management tool is that it builds upon only the most esoteric components of the ICS, the parts of ICS that are used the least for day-to-day emergency management activities. Multiple layers of decision making, liaison activities, and remote operating centers form the bulk of this government-sponsored disaster plan. That would be fine if NIMS were merely relegated to the bookshelf and only taken down and dusted off for periodic training and the occasional multijurisdictional disaster requiring its implementation, but experience with the ICS has shown that the opposite might occur.

Full article available at:
http://www.fireengineering.com/display_article/313283/25/none/none/BRNIS/Incident-Command-the-Washington-Way

Wiley and Gatlin to expand Emergency Mgmt e-learning options

WILEY: Wiley and Gatlin Educational Services Announce Online Emergency Management Program Hoboken
Wednesday, November 28, 2007; Posted: 06:03 AM

NJ, Nov 28, 2007 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- Global publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa) (NYSE: JWb), and Gatlin Educational Services, Inc. (GES), the worlds largest provider of online workforce development programs to colleges and universities, announced GES will exclusively deliver a comprehensive Emergency Management Training program from the Wiley Pathways imprint beginning Spring 2008. The program will be offered in an interactive online format to the public through GESs partner colleges and universities.

The Emergency Management Training program will include content from five Wiley Pathways titles, Introduction to Emergency Management, Emergency Planning, Disaster Response and Recovery, Technology in Emergency Management, and Hazard Mitigation and Preparedness. The five titles form a comprehensive program, emphasizing the core information essential for an understanding of the field.

To learn more about the Emergency Management Training program, please visit http://www.gatlineducation.com/emergency_management_training.html

Federal graduate education in homeland security expanded

This is an expansion on the popular graduate program offered
at the Naval Postgraduate School in California:

http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1181075311087.shtm

“Establishing the Homeland Security Academy is a significant achievement in the implementation of a comprehensive DHS education and training system,” said George Tanner, the chief learning officer for DHS. “Investing in the leadership and management capability of our employees is a top priority of the department.”

Testify! What's more, this will be located in my backyard (Shepherdstown, WV).
Here's a link to the cetner:
http://www.leadership.opm.gov/Locations/EMDC/index.aspx

National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security

Looks like there is a new academic consortium group out of Ohio State University

http://homelandsecurity.osu.edu/NACHS/index.html

Welcome to the web site for the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security. The Consortium comprises public and private academic institutions engaged in scientific research, technology development and transition, education and training, and service programs concerned with current and future U.S. national security challenges, issues, problems and solutions, at home and around the world.

This web site offers registered academic institutions the opportunity to share information describing its organizations, research projects, technology development and deployment activities, education and training programs or courses, and service activities pertaining to international and homeland security. It also offers you the capability to identify institutions, research projects and capabilities, education and training programs, and other activities concerned with various aspects of U.S. national security, at home and abroad.

Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security

New report is out by the Committee on Educational Paradigms for Homeland Security, National Research Council. Free pdf download through National Academy Press:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11141

This report explores whether there are core pedagogical and skill-based homeland security program needs; examines current and proposed education programs focusing on various aspects of homeland security; comments on the possible parallels between homeland security, area studies, international relations, and science policy, as developed or emerging academic thrusts; and suggests potential curricula needs, particularly those that involve interdisciplinary aspects. The report concentrates almost exclusively on coursework-related offerings, primarily at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Positive spin, instead of negative

Here's a good article on "lessons learned" and how they were applied
at the semi-recent bridge collapse in Minnesota. This is kind of treatment
these stories should be getting ... sure by all means let's call out the "Brownies"
when we see them (they're the ones doing a heck of a job and most likely
appointed), but let's look objectively and historically at disasters and see what
works and what doesn't. The sustainable part of this is to make sure you are constantly
building these lessons learned into future iterations of your emergency plans.

Here's just a snippet, full story below:
Forte said had the bridge fallen down five years earlier it would have been a much more chaotic situation. But on that night years of planning, training and building strong relationships with other agencies paid off for the survivors.

"Through mutual aid we were able to take our force of 100 firefighters to about 600 firefighters in a matter of about a half hour."

He said the city's investment in 800 megahertz radios enabled unprecedented communication among emergency responders from different jurisdictions.

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=270562