Transcript of Federal Executive Forum on Emergency Preparedness

Moderator

·         Jim Flyzik – The Flyzik Group

Panel (left to right)

·         Steve Cooper - CIO, American Red Cross

·         Suzanne Peck - CTO/CIO, District of Columbia

·         David Songco - CIO, NICHD/NIH

·         Tom Lockwood - Director Office of National Capital Region Coordination, DHS

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Welcome to today’s show. During today’s show we will discuss critical issues facing government and industry leaders as we move forward with emergency preparedness in the National Capital Region. We are coming to you from the CIO Forum and the Executive IT Summit.

With me today on the show are Steve Cooper, the CIO of the American Red Cross, Suzanne Peck, the Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia, Tom Lockwood the Director, Office of the National Capital Region Coordination, Department of Homeland Security, and Dave Songco, the CIO of Child Health at the National Institutes of Health.

Let’s get right into today’s topic. Let’s ask each of our panelists to talk a little bit about your involvement with emergency preparedness from your perspective. Tom Lockwood, you are set up by Congress to be the lead person in the Federal government on this. Could you give us a little overview of your role?

TOM LOCKWOOD, DHS

In the National Capital Region (NCR), we have six forms of constitutional government. This is where all of it comes together. We have over 231 Federal departments and agencies, but we have multiple jurisdictions. This is also a vibrant area for businesses. My role, my job is to coordinate, to advocate and to integrate. That’s what I do on a daily basis.     

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Tom. Steve Cooper. Steve I know you’ve had the opportunity to look at this issue from a couple of different vantage points. I know you were the CIO of the Department of Homeland Security and you left that and went over to become CIO at the Red Cross just in time for the largest hurricane in our nation’s history. But can you give us a little idea from your perspective Steve, on this issue?

STEVE COOPER, AMERICAN RED CROSS

As the Chief Information Officer for the American Red Cross, I actually wear two hats in the Washington metropolitan area. If anything were to happen in the National Capital Region, our local chapters actually have the lead. And we have about four or five key chapters in the Washington metropolitan area. My role there is to support their needs in responding to any type of disaster.

Whatever they need from an Information Technology asset perspective, be it hastily formed networks, some type of communications infrastructure, some of the applications to support the casework and delivery of services, we would back them up the local chapters in delivering that.

If at some point a local event then became a national event, I then take over as the lead in the Information Technology arena because the National Headquarters then has the lead for everything we do. The same types of things have to be delivered; it’s just that the scale and complexity changes rather dramatically for any type of national event.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Steve. To Suzanne Peck, the CTO and I just want to mention on the radio here that we are proud that Suzanne was named one of the top 25 technology executives in the country in a recent magazine. Congratulations to Suzanne for that and credit for taking the District of Columbia from what was seen as one of the worst use of technology to what is now seen as one of the premiere users of technology.

Obviously the District of Columbia, if we are talking about terrorists or some type of man made incident, the District is one of those targets that need to have certain special care in planning. Can you tell us your role as a CTO and what you do in emergency preparedness?

SUZANNE PECK, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT

Not only is the CTO of Washington DC responsible for the technology  support welfare of the citizens of the District of Columbia, but we have the singular franchise of being the capital of the free world, and of being the first responder to our national government and to our Congress. The District of Columbia owns many of the police forces, it owns all the fire trucks, it owns the emergency medical technicians, and it owns the jails that are used by our national government.

It is also a partner with the 18 surrounding jurisdictions in the National Capital Region in Virginia and in Maryland. In all those partnerships -- both in providing protective first responders for our national government and as part of a 19 member National Capital Region jurisdiction -- all of the technologies of those functions need to be seamless.

We have the happy circumstance in Washington of having an extraordinary group of technologists in the region and in the national government who are the most mature, the most cooperative group of people possible and who have really, really extended the reach of emergency preparedness in the National Capital Region.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Fantastic! Dave Songco, I have, and many of the audience do too, a great admiration for folks who have been in government and have done a lot of things and Dave and I were talking before the show here and Dave has 46 years of Federal service and has been serving the public. But Dave, over at NIH and your role there for the group that you are involved with, can you give us your perspective and where you come at this issue?

DAVE SONGCO, NIH

I’m the CIO of one of the 27 organizations at NIH. So you might ask yourself what I am doing on this panel with these distinguished guests. But as you progress down the table, you see you have the global aspect, you have the national aspect, you have the metro aspect and I am going to give you the ground up aspect as one CIO that actually has to do things that have to plug into all of this.

I got started about three years ago when my boss, Dr. Alexander was asked what do you do. And he didn’t know. He wasn’t comfortable with that and so he asked me to figure out what to do and develop the plan. He knew I had developed the IT plan already.

I’m very excited to be here, I think this is quite a challenge and I will try, I’m not an MD, PhD, I’m just an IT guy, but I will try to bring some pandemic flu threat input into this process because I think this is what has turned a lot of things from important but not urgent into urgent and important. I think this will be a very good panel. Thank you.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Thanks Dave. I want to jump around now with the panel and get into some issues. Back in the days when I ran Secret Service communications, I remember we did interoperability I used to line up six radios in the back seat of the car and say if you want to talk to the FBI use that one, the local police use that one, and I must admit that it was sort of somewhat discouraging and every incident that we had, every disaster, every natural disaster, every terrorist attack, we would do the debriefs and the after action reports, as well as the simulations we do.

We still struggle with this issue of interoperability. How do we get first responders and fire and police and all the various levels of Federal and state first response to communicate seamlessly so that they can get that right information to the right people at the right time? Let’s start with Suzanne. I know this has been a big issue on your plate in the District, I know you’ve done a lot in this area. Tell us, are we making some progress in this area?

SUZANNE PECK, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT

We are making tremendous progress in this area. As I give this answer I would like to acknowledge my friend Tom Lockwood from DHS. He and I are very great partners in this effort. Both the Federal component and the National Capital Region component are necessary to achieve the interoperability that we have.

The District of Columbia and the National Capital Region have achieved the highest national level of voice radio communications interoperability in the nation among all first responders. All first responders in our area can communicate with one another through their public safety radio networks. Most of these networks are seamlessly interoperable.

Interoperability with Prince George’s County Maryland and with Federal responders including the secret services, FEMA, FBI and Park Police among others are achieved through a very reliable radio patch technology. Just recently, as an example, all police, fire, emergency medical and other responders in the DC area conducted a tactical interoperability communications program exercise that fully demonstrated and validated this radio communications interoperability in the National Capital area. That’s voice interoperability.

The NCR and DHS are now focused on achieving that same interoperability in data through the National Capital Region through an interoperability program which is partly funded by DHS.

This function is deploying a regional wireless broadband network and is connecting regional governments’ fiber optics networks in very, very reliable communications forms giving us the capabilities for things like video, imaging, messaging, and LAN access across the National Capital Region.

So in terms of on the ground interoperability we have in the NCR 35,000 first responders who are interoperable, a number which increases to 65,000 when Federal first responders are added, and a cache of over 2,500 radios that can be distributed and are available to other responders.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Tom, Suzanne mentioned you and number one it’s just refreshing to hear the city coordinating with the Federal government. That in and of itself is a good message, but can you add to Suzanne’s comments?

TOM LOCKWOOD, DHS

First this region has really been committed to interoperability ever since the Air Florida crash into the Potomac. When September 11 happened, we didn’t have the interoperability problems that you have seen in other major disasters in other regions of the U.S. But this region has fundamentally really come together.

And going back to the three people here, about 2½ years ago the three of us got together with state and local CIOs. I feel like the old story about the guy who comes into town and just has a pot with nothing to put into it. I set up the pot by getting everybody together. Steve was the first person to put a little bit of incentive into that and say here’s a little bit of money, but you all have to agree on how that money will be spent.

Suzanne will tell you that was the hardest couple of million dollars that she ever worked for because you had to work this in a collaborative way. It was something that everybody had to go do and by working together as a group it started to get a framework for grant money. When you look at grants, it’s really about 2 – 3 % of the overall budget. Then it really allowed a framework for the CIOs to say if we waited for this grant money we will never get it done. This put us on a path for a convergence of voice, data, and clear interoperability when people get what they want, when they want it, in the form that they want it in.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Steve, how about at the Red Cross?

STEVE COOPER, AMERICAN RED CROSS

Jim, let me give you a real example. During Katrina, everybody knows that an awful lot of the evacuees were sheltered all across the United States, including here at the National Guard Armory in the nation’s capital. Our local Red Cross chapter, one of the greater metropolitan area chapters, which is actually in Fairfax, Virginia, had the lead responsibility for mass care and for actually working to manage the evacuees who were housed at the National Guard Armory.

We had no capability in the Red Cross local chapter itself around connectivity into the Guard Armory. However the work that has been done, that Suzanne and her team has led, that Tom has guided from the Federal perspective enabled us in a matter of hours to actually connect the National Guard Armory into the network that Suzanne was sharing and describing to you; and to link it back to both our national American Red Cross disaster operations center and to the local chapter’s emergency operations center.

And we seamlessly connected, interoperated and provided the mass care services and disaster support that was necessary to help the folks who actually came to the National Guard Armory. I would argue that’s a very real example of what Suzanne was describing. Now what we want to do is expand what the foundation provides to some of the additional non-governmental organizations so that we can provide, if you will, the second responders with capability and interoperability.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

OK, thanks Steve, this is great stuff. We need to take a short break and when we come back we are going to talk about making this issue a priority at the board level, at the agency head level and CEO level. Are we getting the right resources put on to this program?

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JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

What we want to do is shift the topic a bit to this issue. Reviewing a survey of some major corporations, the results indicate that CEOs and Boards of Directors agree that continuity of operations, emergency preparedness is an important issue yet less than 50% actually have a good plan in place or a tested plan in place.

How do we get CEOs and agency heads to focus on this and make this a real issue put the resources we need on this problem. Let’s start with you Dave. From the ground up as you have described, can you give us your thoughts on this issue?

DAVE SONGCO, NIH

From the NIH perspective, we’ve been working hard to do emergency response and continuity of operations and the organizations have considered it important but not so urgent. But with the pandemic flu threat, I think that changed all of that.

All of a sudden it is both important and urgent and all the organizations are scaling up. Whereas before because of budget constraints and competing projects, there was not sufficient attention for continuity of operations, but now there is and you see one by one the Institutes coming together and putting together their plans.

And it is interesting that even though NIH is one single agency in the huge Federal bureaucracy, it is snapshot of some of the issues that are global and national because it is 27 fiefdoms having to come together and have governance and it is not an easy thing to do. We do have a central group that’s headed by Mike Spillane that has put emergency coordinators together and things of that type.

I would like to give a couple of bullets on that pandemic flu because I think that it is accelerating our response and it is changing our plans dramatically. And I got these from a pandemic flu expert. The pandemic will mostly likely occur in waves, like in 1918; these lasted for 3 or 4 months. The fear of acquiring the disease is going to be as important as people with the disease. At least 40% absentee rate is possible and at least 3 to 6 weeks for survivors.

So it will come in multiple waves. So how does this affect us? Well we always had a plan for continuity of operations after you got past the response but we never figured that 40% of the population was going to be at home. So now all of a sudden work at home, telework becomes more and more important. There is also the issue of bandwidth. I’d like to hear what the rest of the panel has to say about bandwidth.

If we have 40% of our workforce at home, Comcast and Verizon are going to come to their knees. There’s no bandwidth for that. So I’d like to hear what we are going to do about that. The good news is that we probably have time. This is not like a terrorist event which is unpredictable. We probably have 6 to 18 months before we could expect anything and hopefully we will get our act together for that.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Let’s go to Tom. Actually I’d like to hear from all the panelists on this issue. Tom, do you have a couple of comments you’d like to make?

TOM LOCKWOOD, DHS

One of the main fundamental points in the National Capital Region is what do you do day-to-day and how is that available in the event of an emergency. So that the systems, the procedures, the protocols, the equipment are there in the event of an emergency and people really understand how to use them.

The whole issue of IT as an enabler it’s fundamentally revolutionizing enabling first responders.  Now when we talk about an issue like pandemic, how do we deal with day-to-day operations, continuity of operations? We have a bunch of adults in the audience here and adults have adult problems. Sometimes your key workers just can’t make it in because they have to take care of kids, or a loved one that’s sick.  

They can’t make it in to the office, but can they connect in? Have you established those business rules so the day-to-day quality of service is there? Is it expandable in the event of an emergency? As you look at the fundamental business rules, it’s not just a question of bandwidth, but can you access the data? Can you really communicate and coordinate with those people, groups, individuals that you need to in the event of an emergency? Or just to do routine business operations? That’s why when we think about COOP, going back to the question of why this is important, how is this part of day-to-day? And if we can’t show the linkage it’s tough to get executive leader focus on it.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Steve, how about you while we are talking about executive level focus on the issue?

STEVE COOPER, AMERICAN RED CROSS

Let me offer two points. The first is on executive level focus, that type of thing. We’ve actually worked, I’ve worked directly with our Senior Vice President for enterprise risk management and we’ve created a new position inside the American Red Cross.

We’ve created a Senior Director for IT risk management position and Bill Robertson is the first to fill this position. He’s actually in the audience today. Bill has a very challenging task. What we’ve done is: we are going to address how the IT organization will guide the IT disaster recovery for the entire American Red Cross everywhere it exists.

That’s across the United States and we are not where we need to be. That will be part of a comprehensive business continuity plan that is being guided at the CEO level across the entire American Red Cross. So that is what the American Red Cross is doing with regard to business continuity, and the associated enablements through IT around disaster recovery.        

Now let me give you the second topic and this is one where we are very openly asking for assistance and ideas for the American Red Cross because we have a very different challenge than most organizations and corporations. The service delivery model of the American Red Cross is when we deliver services is to move a ton of people and a ton of stuff into the disaster area to set up, effectively, service centers.

And then folks come to the service centers. They are either shelters; they are meal centers; they are kitchens, that type of thing. Now think about a pandemic. Nobody is going to show up at our service centers. That model gets turned on its head. And we have therefore to rethink the entire service delivery model of the American Red Cross. Now think about this: if you are an American Red Cross volunteer, are you going to go door-to-door to assist families that are under quarantine? Or are affected, contagious with pandemic flu? That’s a very real issue that we are working and we don’t yet have a full comprehensive answer.

We believe that telework plays a key role for our own folks, but not to the folks that we deliver services to. So on this one we are doing a lot of work, we are working as a member of the national task force for pandemic flu but we need some good ideas and I would turn to all the folks in the audience, and all the brain power, the corporations and entities that you represent to help us solve the service delivery problem of the American Red Cross in a pandemic event.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Boy, you have some good points there Steve and Dave you are right. The good news is that we’ve got a little bit of planning time but the real tough news is that it is a very difficult and complex issue that needs to be worked on. Suzanne, when it comes to executive, I did have the opportunity to read the article about you and the Mayor, the dynamic duo in Public CIO magazine.

Obviously working directly with the mayor that gives you by design the executive level attention, but do you see across the folks you work with this issue of getting people to take this issue seriously? Is that a problem for you or something that you feel like you have been able to overcome with your relationship with the mayor?

SUZANNE PECK, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT

We have an extraordinary opportunity for cooperation in the Washington area. I think I’d like to make two points and I’d begin with a point that David made but it’s a point that Steve followed up on as well.

And that is the ability and the necessity to anticipate what your critical systems are, what your critical functions are before the event so that you are prepared at the event. David mentioned bandwidth. On 9/11 all of you remember that the critical element that you couldn’t get to was that you couldn’t make an out bound phone call. You couldn’t make an out bound phone call because there was jam and contention at the out bound local dial tone.

When that happened in 2001 for the District, we said that that can never happen to us again. We can never either in voice or data not have the bandwidth assigned to us that we would need in a national emergency. For us that meant that we funded our own private government use network. It is a very, for practical purposes, it is an infinite capacity network. It is not a network in which we will ever want to be a private telephone company.

We will never take a single residential phone client. It is a network totally reserved to government but reserved to make sure that we never again are without the critical capacity that we need. That took great anticipation; it took great will of a whole series of players in the National Capital Region to put that capacity into place for the District government and for the National Capital Region.

The other point I would like to make is again the point that Steve made quite eloquently and that is that while the COOP is absolutely essential and an absolutely essential part of all of the critical infrastructure, the critical core management and all the other critical systems, you cannot think of it behind, you need to think of it in front.

So when you think of: do we have enough money to put in place such a plan, do we have the will to put in place such a plan, I think if you think about it not as an add- on after the systems are in place, but if you think about it as something that must be done, must be accomplished, is required at the time you lay out the statement of work for the system, at the time you lay out the business concept of operations for the system, it becomes part of the design of the system, it becomes part of the original deployment of the system, it becomes part of the operational necessity of the system rather than a back end add-on.

And if it is part of that original design and deployment then the cost, I think, is much, much less than if you come around at the back end and try to figure out what that COOP is going to be.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, excellent point Suzanne. We’ve learned that one over and over again. I want to switch over here to a topic about governance and coordination and concepts of operations. I did get to participate in a few post Katrina response reviews and it seemed that in all the reviews the issue of technology doesn’t seem to be the main issue. The issue that comes up is things like who is in charge, concepts of operations, working across the levels of government coordination and I know that issue has been worked on quite a bit.

Let’s start with Steve Cooper. Steve, at the American Red Cross, you were in the middle of this issue quite a bit. What are your thoughts about this? Is it the technology, is it the governance concepts operations and are we making some progress in those areas?

STEVE COOPER, AMERICAN RED CROSS

Well I believe Jim that we are making progress but I still believe that there is a lot more that needs to be done at all levels of government, in NGOs and in the private sector. If you reflect back at Katrina, I was down in Houston shortly after the levees broke and as we began to figure out mass care for around 26,000 evacuees who had come into the old Houston Astrodome complex and another 8,000 that were housed at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.

And one of the things that I will absolutely give credit to the state of Texas for doing is they had a very, very well understood and well practiced emergency response plan at the state level, at the county level and at the local jurisdictional level. They understood and already had identified who had key governance roles, and who were the decision making people. And they very quickly were able to put that plan in place because they had practiced it a number of times.

It included the Federal government, it included the American Red Cross, and it included several other organizations and entities that needed to be involved. That worked because it was preplanned, pre-communicated, pre-practiced and well understood among all parties. I know that Suzanne and Tom will be able to share a similar type of thing and I’ll let Suzanne share that.

But let me draw a contrast and I’ll probably get into a little bit of trouble for this but I mean it in an instructional way, not to represent anything other than a learning opportunity.

The state of Louisiana did not have the same type of pre-practiced, preplanned, pre-coordinated, pre-understood response plan at all levels of government and in partnership with organizations like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and other faith based organizations. I think a lot of us watched either on the ground up close and personal, or across your news channels the difference in how both of those states and the municipalities included in those states played out.

Again I don’t mean that to in any way pick on the state of Louisiana. I’m offering it as an instructional and learning opportunity that simply says if we do what states like Texas and Florida have already done, (California also has done a terrific job in this preplanning, putting in place governance, understanding who the actual individuals are by role and responsibility), then we can absolutely do what was needed to be done in any type of disaster be it national or be it local. And now I would like to let Suzanne share with you again real examples of how the nation’s capital has done the right thing to be prepared.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP Suzanne?

SUZANNE PECK, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT

The National Capital Region is very experienced historically in types of functions like mutual aid agreements. Often local incidents in the national capital area are tristate and involve Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, so we have a great deal of practice historically. With terrorist activities however, comes a greater responsibility.

Some of the things that we have done most recently is that we’ve recognized that there needs to be a National Capital Region concept of operations and of governance and under the leadership of Allison Moore who is the CIO for Montgomery County, Maryland, the 18 jurisdictions in the National Capital area have built a regional concept of operations. The national capital area of Washington DC is also one of 8 jurisdictions in the nation which have a nationally certified emergency management plan. The District of Columbia was the second of the national communities to receive certification on that plan.

And then lastly just as a proxy for the fact that we regularly exercise not only that plan but that we regularly exercise, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s representative in Congress recently often mentions the fact that the District of Columbia and the surrounding municipalities have had two successive 4^th of July exercises in which they take advantage of so many people flooding into the city to see the fireworks to exercise a mass evacuation plan for the nation’s capital and both of those successive July 4^th exercises have been very, very successful.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP:

Terrific, sounds like we are definitely making progress. Tom Lockwood you are seen as the Federal coordinator for concepts of operations on that. Do you see a lot of progress being made at the Federal level?

TOM LOCKWOOD, DHS

Again, my job is coordinating across all levels, so Federal, state, local, the regional authorities, the private sectors, profit and not for profit in the National Capital Region. One of the key pieces on governance is what do you do on day-to-day?

How do the CIOs and the Chief Technology Officers come together as a community to sort out what their mutual problems and priorities are even before you talk about exercises? Laying out their foundation of where do they want to be in the next 3 to 5 years. And how does that match with where organizationally they are positioned? They’ve done a terrific job. Whether it was Wanda Gibson who has just transferred the leadership over to Allison Moore, Dave Mulchany, but the community has done a terrific job in coming together. We do more exercises, more national security events in the National Capital Region than any other place in the nation.

And what we have looked at is these events are wonderful real world exercises to demonstrate those capabilities. To roll them out so that you are not waiting for a major emergency or disaster, but that you are really integrating it, using it as a research capability for these types of events. The evacuation issue has always been a discussion that people have had in the National Capital Region, they say, well what are we doing about it?

To be able to work and coordinate between the traffic management centers, those fusion points for traffic management information. To be able to time your lights so that you can move large quantities of traffic and people out; to time the individual pedestrian traffic to say how do we really move people out; to link that back over to our commercial providers, so we can make an informed decisions about immigration and information technology as an enabler.

How do we structure day-to-day so that we have those relationships and understanding of what your partner needs or does? Going back to the question of who is in charge. Every one of you knows the answer for your own organization of who is in charge in the event of an emergency in your organization.

But when it happens in real life you are going to have an incident commander and that doesn’t mean that any one of you will have any less authority or responsibility. The question is how we support that incident commander who will always be at the local level, who will get support through an operation center. That is why information fusion real time is so important, so that they can get what they want and what they need.

And that information, if it goes beyond an individual jurisdiction, they go to their neighbors in that region or the Federal government or the private sector for the help that they need. Putting that framework in place, that it is flexible, that it is transportable is critical. And that is what we are working on.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Dave, I want to hear from you. When we come back, I’m going to ask each of our panelists the tough question and the question is do you believe that we are ready today in the National Capital Region for a terrorist incident or a natural disaster or a pandemic?

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Get Ready. Hurricanes. Snowstorms. Floods. Pandemic scares. Terrorist attacks. Transportation strikes. What if you, or if anyone in your organization, couldn't get to the office? How would you continue to work if none of your employees could access their PCs? Is your office prepared "In Case of Emergency"? SSL VPNs can help to keep agencies and businesses functional by connecting people even during the most unpredictable circumstances — even under quarantine or isolation events — for an extended period of time. With the right balance of risk and cost, the new Juniper Networks Secure Access ICE (In Case of Emergency) solution addresses the dramatic peak in demand for remote access during disasters, ensuring your business continuity. A superior Juniper solution can help you access all your critical resources remotely — even from home — and let you continue to deliver services to customers, and meet all government mandates, no matter the situation (all with best-in-class functionality and industry-leading security). So partner with a proven provider, not a second-tier vendor . Click here for more information

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When we went to break we talked a little bit about technology versus governance issues. Dave I believe you had a comment to add to that from your perspective. Tell us how you see that issue at NIH.

DAVE SONGCO, NIH

Yes I just wanted to make a quick comment. It was really good to hear that we have made a lot of progress and that we’ve focused on first responders and   management and concept of operations. I just want to reiterate that from the ground up perspective we need to focus more on the public and the public needs to know what to do and where to go and find that information and it needs to be a consistent message that we send out to them.

At NIH we have provided a one pager for our people in terms of what to do at home and different guidance and where to go to get information. But I think that as this infrastructure develops and there are things to do, we need to make sure that it gets out. The real challenge is not that the information isn’t available; it is getting people to go and get it and be proactive. So we need a campaign, we need to do more over the airways and media to encourage people to get guidance so that they know what to do and will follow these operational aspects.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Good comments! I like to think that’s what we are doing today, working with some of the practitioners and our listening audience to do that. Dave let’s just stay with you. I have a last question for each of the panelists and I know it is not an easy one, but the question is, are we ready in the National Capital Region? Do you feel that we are prepared today for an emergency, whether it is a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or pandemic flu?

Are we ready today, have we come a long way, are we getting ready? Dave let’s start with you and I’ll ask each of the panelists to give their thoughts on that issue.

DAVE SONGCO, NIH

All right, I’ll try to be brief but I don’t think we are ready. From a management point of view, I’m not sure I’m ready and I know what to do, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I think the general public is not ready yet; they are waiting for guidance. We are much further along on the regular COOP plans, but we are definitely not ready for a pandemic flu threat and we’d better get ready.

If I could make one last plug! One of the reasons I’m still working for the Federal government is the national children’s study. This is off topic but I can’t resist. It’s the largest cohort study ever attempted of 100,000 children and their mothers from pre birth to age 21, because children are more at risk with the environment and that’s what keeps me young and that’s what keeps me working.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s a noble cause too and it is an important topic and it is related because that’s part of fixing this problem.

Suzanne, I know this issue has been near and dear to your heart too and getting ready and the Washington DC area being what it is, the capital of our country and let’s be honest about it, a target. Can you address the issue? Are we getting ready or are we ready?

SUZANNE PECK, WASHINGTON, DC GOVERNMENT

I think that our National Capital Region technology and interoperability plans are excellent. I think our implementations to date have been excellent. I am so grateful to the Department of Homeland Security and to the Federal government for the ability to say that. For example the National Capital Region now has the finest push to talk public safety radio network for our first responders in the nation.

That was to a very great extent because of the $45 million Federal grant that we received so that we could do all that in one fell swoop. But in terms of our implementations, our interoperability implementations, our technology implementations, we continue through the Council of Government and through jurisdictional leadership here in the NCR to ask for Congressional and DHS funding considerations that recognizes. Just as you have said Jim, that we are a very special target, a very special threat target, and we ask for this funding to allow us to complete those implementations that will make us safe and secure.

If I may in closing, I’d like to just spend a minute talking about something again in which the Federal government was a very substantial contributor, contributing about $24 million, we have just opened in the District of Columbia in ward 8 a campus directly opposite the Federal government’s St. Elizabeth campus the unified communications center.

That happened two weeks ago. It is a glorious 127,000 square foot facility that is a state of the art 911, 311, mayor’s command center, regional incident command and control center, hub for the entire National Capital Region in times of local or national emergencies and this center is one icon, one proxy for the sophistication of the readiness that we now have in the National Capital Region.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great, thanks Suzanne, congratulations on that major accomplishment; I’m sure it will play a vital role in the future for us. Steve, the American Red Cross, one would think that preparedness is what it is all about in a number of ways, so could you address that?

STEVE COOPER, AMERICAN RED CROSS

Very definitely Jim! I would echo what Suzanne has said. I think that the national capital area is in fact well prepared from an organizational and governmental perspective. But I also want to echo what Dave said and that is from an individual preparedness perspective I’m not sure that I would give us quite such high marks as being far enough along.

The American Red Cross obviously is very, very focused on helping individuals, families and communities be prepared. And very simply the guidance we offer is: get a kit, make a plan, communicate that, make sure you understand among families and loved ones exactly what you are going to do in any type of local or catastrophic event. Very simply I think I would close with this.

There is one very simple thing that will count tremendously as part of that preparedness. And that is simply, work out in advance how you will communicate with your loved ones and significant others and put that in place now. Prearrange for somebody outside of the area, could be a friend, could be a relative, any individual in your family can contact so that you have a way to know that each other is safe.

Because the single most important thing that we have learned in any type of catastrophic event or disaster, first and foremost people care about their loved ones and that kind of gets in the way of mass evacuations or things like that. So help everyone be prepared by taking care of yourself and your family first.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Some tremendous advice there Steve, I appreciate that a lot. Tom Lockwood is the Director of the Office of the National Capital Region as the position set up by the Congress, I would think that you live this issue, getting prepared and thinking through this issue. This is your day-to-day bread and butter kind of thinking you need to do. Give us your perspective on where you think we are and how far we have to come.

TOM LOCKWOOD, DHS

Are we ready? Ready or not, here we come. Every day things work; every day 911 centers work; every day there are responses and your expectation is when you dial 911 and you get what you want, when you want it, in the form that you are going to need it. You are never going to have to pick up the phone and say I need an epidemiologist or a virologist.

So have we integrated those in, and as everyone here has said, this is not an issue of technology, it is one of culture. It is one about establishing partnerships, collaborative agreements and really working in a distributive environment as a matter of course. You’ve heard the need for your people to be prepared. In the National Capital Region, there’s no reason why you can’t be pushing this back over through your HR people.

We’ve put together a common plan amongst all the communities in the region that links and is part of the ready.gov but also separate, this is what the region wanted to do here. It’s www.makeaplan..org Every question that Steve had came up here. Download the PDF push the PDF back over through your organizations and ask your colleagues to fill it out at work with your partners at work. And fill it out at home with your partners at home.

It answers the question of who do you call in an emergency, if you can’t get home, what is your rally point. It’s so important for organizations for the people to be functional. If we can’t take care of the people in our families we are not going to have that capability as a matter of course.

We didn’t really talk too much about the private sector. The private sector whether it’s not for profit or for profit is critical to our quality of life. Energy, water, power the whole fabric of our society, it’s not just government. So in the event of an emergency how do we come together?

How do we make sure that our assets are protected so that we can provide those services? During a pandemic it could be a critical in your value chain to say whether that overall capability is fielded or not. So again think about your dependencies, think about your people and again I just want to thank you for the time that you have spent with us today.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Well, thank you very much. I don’t know if we are fully prepared but I do know one thing, we’ve got some very bright and dedicated people like Steve Cooper, the CIO of the American Red Cross, Suzanne Peck, the CTO of the District of Columbia, Tom Lockwood the director of the Office of the National Capital Region coordination for DHS and Dave Songco the CIO for child care at the NIH, working this issue and working it every day. And I want to thank them for taking time from their busy panels to be here.

And for our audience just so you know we are here live in front of about 200 IT practitioners and CIOs and the reason we chose this venue is to make this issue a working issue for all of us so that we can collectively find ways to help our panelists with their awesome tasks of getting ready for such things as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, pandemics. So I want to thank our panelists and sponsors and invite our audience to join us again next month when we will be visiting a related issue, identity management and HSPD 12 implementation.

Thank you.

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