Stovepiping and information sharing: change the culture and change the outlook | 10.31.2006 | 03:05:05 | Views: 6652 | ID: The ability to communicate and bring new ideas to the forefront is essential when thinking about homeland preparedness. Local governments need to communicate better between each other. They need to make sure that their first responders are properly coordinating their plans, training etc. First reponders need to cross train so that they better understand functions other than their primary function area. They need to insist that training etc. be conducted beyond functional and jurisdictional lines. They need to be constant and effective advocates for the safety needs of their community Private Industry need to share their expertise. They need to participate in local planning and exercises. Community/citizens need to be prepared to protect their homes and families during the first few days of an emergency. They need to be more awre of weather threats etc. They need to make sure they have advanced knowledge of resources present in their community, and how to access them. Currently, there is too much "stovepiping" among agencies and groups involved in homeland security. We've gone from a process of constantly recreating the wheel, to a process of everybody recreating the wheel all at once. A, 1) greater use of learned lessons documents 2) More Complete implementation of the Incident Command Sysytem, and the National Incident Command System. 3) More multi-agency, multi-jurrisdictional exercises 4) More cooperation/ communication between groups and angencies involved in emergency management/homeland security policy and planning. 5) increased use of internet for both training, and bringing interested parties together. Parochialism on the part of the people involved. There's too much of an NIH ( Not invented here) attitude involved. Just because an idea originated elsewhere doesn't make it a bad idea ! I think we would be better of concentrating on properly coordinating the groups and agencies we already have. The homeland security knowledgebase and planning structure is at the moment a bunch of scattered mush. At the local level I think it is more about the need for a change of attitude than technology. However as i have expressed before I think we need to make better use of the internet for things like training, planning, policy making etc. Its about working together better, the rest is just the tools.
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