Homeland Security Planning at Different

Homeland Security Planning at Different Organizational Levels

The planning requirements for homeland security differ from level to level. Each level has different planning and management capabilities and responsibilities, ultimately convening on the White House itself at the federal level. The state and local levels have planning responsibilities involving the specifics of each location, including the first response to any disaster or attack. In this way, the planning and responsibilities can be divided up to help ensure a structured yet cohesive unit within the homeland security apparatus. It is important to recognize that no one level or agency holds the key to successful emergency response and reaction and that each level or striation works together to enable one another.

Distributed Preparedness

Homeland security has always been at the heart of emergency preparedness even as far back as the end of World War Two. The Cold War taught America to become prepared for the possibility of nuclear attack. Through this concern were born many different agencies, both federal and state organized, which helped to prepare the citizens and organizations for such an attack. Eventually, these preparations began to pay off in times of natural disorder and disaster, so such preparedness was adopted toward these threats as well. This type of preparedness philosophy became known as distributed preparedness due to the multi-layer nature of the organization.

As authors Collier and Lakoff (2008) describe,

"Distributed preparedness was initially articulated in civil defense programs in the early stages of the Cold War, when U.S. government planners began to conceptualize the nation as a possible target of nuclear attack. These planners assumed that the enemy would focus its attacks on urban and industrial centers that were essential to U.S. war-fighting capability. Distributed preparedness provided techniques for mapping national space as a field of potential targets, and grafted this map of vulnerabilities onto the structure of territorial administration in the United States. It presented a new model of coordinated planning for catastrophic threats, one that sought to limit federal intervention in local life and to preserve the characteristic features of American federalism."

Interestingly, homeland security planning was based upon the foundation of a Cold War preparedness strategy of allowing each locality freedom to adapt or expand upon the basic federally guided and mandated principles and requirements.

Furthermore, the authors explain, "Over the course of the Cold War, distributed preparedness extended to new domains, and following 9/11 it has moved to the center of security discussions in the U.S." (Collier and Lakoff, 2008, 7). So in the post 9/11 world, the emergency planning has taken the shape of being able to adapt to nearly any emergency, whether man-made or natural in origin.

State and Local

At the most local level, homeland security responsibilities lie with the first responders within a city or area. These first responders are made up of state and local police and fire agencies as well as hospitals and tribal authorities. These first responders are the first contacts in the field for the Department of Homeland Security, so they must be prepared to adequately react and assess a situation. The DHS has built an extensive training program for these local groups and has disseminated it through the internet and computer-based training. More specifically,

"The Department of Homeland Security provides support to "first responders" in jurisdictions throughout the United States. These responders must plan for various threats and their response to various emergency scenarios. Under this task, LMI gathered requirements from a sample of the emergency management community at the local, state, and tribal levels. This Concept of Operations addresses the requirement for modeling and simulation to support various emergency management functions and the requirements for training, maintenance, and other support." (Duncan, Gribko, Kolschina, and Lee, 2009, 2).

The planning and training requirements at this level are assessed based upon the responsibilities and limitations of these first responders. However, the DHS looks at these groups as the most important link in the chain of disaster and emergency response, since these agencies will be dealing directly with the citizens on a personal level.

The challenge for local and state homeland security planning lies with the top-down nature of disaster response and relief and the technologies that are needed in order for adequate response to become possible. As authors Schafer, Carroll, Haynes, and Abrams (2008) write,

"Emergencies often have causes and effects that are global. However, emergencies are also inherently local: They occur in a particular place and point in time. While it is critical for governments and society to better organize emergency management top-down, it is also important to become more aware of local community-level values, planning, involvement, knowledge, and skill. Local communities plan collaboratively for potential emergencies of varying scales."

This means that the federal government, though ultimately responsible for the state and local planning, must take a secondary or passive role in the planning at these lower levels due to the fact that the federal government is not equipped with the very specific local knowledge and capabilities as the local first responders.

Federal

The federal requirements for planning are outlined in an interagency planning element called the Incident Management Planning Team (IMPT), which was established to provide national contingency and crisis action incident management planning to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from natural disasters and terrorist acts. (Christopher, Frye, and Reissman, 2010). This team was created in direct response to the Hurricane Katrina debacle, which left many feeling as though the federal government missed its opportunity to take care of its own citizens. This planning team is responsible, on the federal level, for building and enacting new homeland security planning strategies based upon the ever-changing tactics and threats posed by terrorists and other groups looking to do harm to the U.S.