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HAS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

IMPROVED ITS ABILITY TO MAINTAIN SITUATIONAL 

AWARENESS SINCE HURRICANE KATRINA? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT, 

INVESTIGATIONS, AND OVERSIGHT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JUNE 20, 2007 

Serial No. 110–51 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 


Congress.#13
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi, Chairman 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California, 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

JANE HARMAN, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin 

Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York 

AL GREEN, Texas 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PETER T. KING, New York 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

TOM DAVIS, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee 

JESSICA HERRA-FLANIGAN, Staff Director & General Counsel 

ROSALINE COHEN, Chief Counsel 

MICHAEL TWINCHEK, Chief Clerk 

ROBERT O’CONNOR, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT, INVESTIGATIONS, AND OVERSIGHT 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi (Ex 

Officio) 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TOM DAVIS, Virginia 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PETER T. KING, New York (Ex Officio) 

JEFF GREENE, Director & Counsel 

BRIAN TURBYFILL, Clerk 

MICHAEL RUSSELL, Senior Counsel 

(II) 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Christopher P. Carney, a Representative in Congress From 

the State of Pennsylvania, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Management, 

Investigations, and Oversight ............................................................................. 1 

The Honorable Mike Rogers, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Alabama, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Management, 

Investigations, and Oversight ............................................................................. 2 

The Honorable Yvette D. Clarke, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of New York ................................................................................................ 14 

The Honorable Bobby Jindal, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Louisiana .......................................................................................................... 47 

The Honorable Ed Perlmutter, a Representative in Congress From the State 

Colorado ................................................................................................................ 11 

WITNESSES

PANEL I 

Mr. Frank DiFalco, Director, National Operations Center, Office of Operations 

Coordination, Department of Homeland Security: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared Sttement ............................................................................................... 5 

PANEL II 

Mr. Darrell L. Darnell, Director, District of Columbia, Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management Agency: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 34 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 36 

Colonel Terry J. Ebbert, USMC (Ret), Director, Office of Homeland Security 

& Public safety, city of New Orleans: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 31 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 33 

Ms. Eileen Larence, Director, Homeland security and Justice Issues, 

Government Accountability Office: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 19 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 21 

Mr. James M. Walker, Jr., Director, Alabama Department of Homeland 

Security: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 40 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 42 

(1) 

HAS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND 

SECURITY IMPROVED ITS ABILITY TO 

MAINTAIN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS 

SINCE HURRICANE KATRINA? 

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT, INVESTIGATIONS

AND OVERSIGHT, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1 p.m., in room 1539, 

Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Carney [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Carney, Clarke, Perlmutter, Rogers, 

and Jindal. 

Mr. CARNEY. [Presiding.] The Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight will come to order. 

The subcommittee is meeting today to receive testimony on ‘‘You 

Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: Has the Department of Homeland Security Improved Its Ability to Maintain Situational Awareness Since Hurricane Katrina?’’ 

In the early morning hours of August 29, 2005, Katrina’s waters 

overwhelmed the levees around New Orleans and began to fill the 

city. The National Weather Service knew it and reported it. The 

Transportation Security Administration knew it and reported it. 

Local officials knew it and reported it. Indeed, throughout the day 

of landfall, Federal, state, local and even nongovernmental organizations all were issuing reports that detailed the unfolding catastrophe. 

Yet somehow the Homeland Security Operations Center, what 

DHS called the ‘‘nation’s nerve center for information sharing and 

domestic incidents management,’’ did not get or did not process the 

message. 

That evening, even as the National Weather Service was urging 

New Orleans residents fleeing to their attics to take an axe or a 

hatchet with them so they can cut their way onto the roof to avoid 

drowning, the HSOC issued a situation report to the secretary of 

homeland security and to the president that said, ‘‘Preliminary reports indicate the levees in New Orleans have not been breached.’’ 

Katrina was the HSOC’s first major test, and it failed. 

But we are not here today to revisit those mistakes. Instead, we 

are here to assess what improvements DHS has made to ensure 

that they do better next time. 

2 

I am pleased to say that there has been significant improvement. 

Too often, the tendency in Washington is to circle the wagons and 

refuse to acknowledge error, even when it is staring you in the 

face. 

Today, however, we will hear about how it should have been 

done. We will hear about what can happen when career public 

servants do the opposite, when they set pride and ego aside into 

a cold, hard appraisal of what went wrong and how to fix it. 

Our first witness is uniquely positioned to give us this perspective. He was deputy director of HSOC during Katrina and led the 

difficult effort of trying to right what went wrong. The new National Operations Center has not yet faced a test even close to 

Katrina, and we won’t really know if all the fixes have worked unless or until it does. But I am confident that even if some of the 

changes do not pan out, we are much better off today than we were 

on August 29, 2005. 

Now, I look forward to the witnesses’ testimony. 

The chair now recognizes the ranking member from the subcommittee, the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Rogers, for an opening statement. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling 

this hearing for us to make assessments on what progress we have 

made in this area. 

I first want to thank our witness for being here and the witnesses we are going to have on the second panel. 

I especially want to welcome Mr. Jim Walker, the homeland security director from my home state of Alabama. Mr. Walker will 

outline a number of new programs in Alabama that include streamlining video, as well as a partnership with Google to help maintain 

situational awareness. 

Nearly 22 months ago, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf 

Coast. To say the least, there was a breakdown in communication 

and leadership in response to Katrina, all of which seriously damaged recovery efforts. Several weeks after the storm hit, reviews 

were launched by DHS, the White House, the House Bipartisan Select Committee and the Senate Committee. These reviews began 

the process of assessing the failure at all levels of government, especially regarding the response to the flooding in New Orleans. 

One of those issues was the operations of the department’s 

Homeland Security Operations Center. The Katrina investigations 

found a number of failures in how the center performed. In response, Secretary Chertoff restructured this function and created a 

National Operations Center. We look forward to hearing from our 

witnesses as to how the new center is performing and how it plans 

to respond to the next disaster. 

We also will hear about model programs at the state and local 

levels to help maintain situational awareness. Hurricane Katrina 

proved, tragically, that collecting and sharing information is critical 

for government agencies when responding to disaster. We need to 

ensure DHS gets it right. 

I would ask unanimous consent that Mr. Jindal from Louisiana 

be allowed to participate. 

With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CARNEY. Without objection, so granted. 

3 

Members of the subcommittee are reminded that, under the committee rules, opening statements may be submitted for the record. 

I would like to first welcome our guest, our witness, Mr. Frank 

DiFalco. Mr. DiFalco is currently the director of the Department of 

Homeland Security’s National Operations Center. He joined the department in May 2004 as the deputy director for the Homeland Security Operations Center. Prior to that, Mr. DiFalco served for 26 

years in the United States Marine Corps, where he served as an 

infantry officer and held a variety of command and staff positions. 

Among other awards, he received the Legion of Merit medal and 

the Bronze Star medal with a combat V. 

Without objection, the witnesses’ full statements will be inserted 

in the record. 

I now ask Mr. DiFalco to summarize his statement for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DiFalco? 

STATEMENT OF FRANK DIFALCO, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL 

OPERATIONS CENTER, OFFICE OF OPERATIONS 

COORDINATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. DIFALCO. Good afternoon, Chairman Carney, Ranking Member Rogers and distinguished committee members. Thank you for 

the opportunity to testify on behalf of the DHS National Operations 

Center. 

For background, I would like to state that the National Operations Center, known as the NOC, is part of the DHS Office of Operations Coordination, which is known as OPS, and OPS reports directly to the DHS secretary. 

During my time with you today, I will describe the DHS OPS’s 

and NOC’s missions, explain the composition of the NOC, and detail the operational improvements that we have made since Hurricane Katrina. 

Homeland security presidential directive 5 identifies the secretary of homeland security as the principal Federal official for domestic incident management. The DHS mission includes the responsibility to lead the unified national effort to secure America. 

Likewise, OPS is an operations staff directorate. 

The mission of OPS is directed by Vice Admiral Roger Rufe, 

United States Coast Guard, retired. The mission is to integrate 

DHS interagency planning in operations coordination in order to 

prevent, protect, respond and recover from terrorist threats or attacks, or other manmade or natural disasters. 

The NOC is a 24/7 multi-agency operations center. The mission 

of the NOC is to be the nation’s primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operating picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications and operations 

coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and 

domestic incident management. 

Also, the NOC serves as a national fusion center, collecting and 

immediately fusing all source information to quickly determine if 

there is a terrorism nexus and shares all threats and all hazards 

information across the spectrum of Federal, state, local, tribal, private sector and other homeland security partners. 

The NOC was officially established on May 25, 2006, with the 

approval of the national response plan notice of change, and it is 

4 

codified in section 515 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 that 

states that the NOC is the principal operations center for DHS and 

shall provide situational awareness and common operating picture 

for the entire Federal Government and for state, local and tribal 

governments as appropriate in the event of a natural disaster, act 

of terrorism, or other manmade disaster, and to ensure that critical 

terrorism and disaster-related information reaches government decision makers. 

The NOC enables the DHS secretary and other leaders to make 

informed decisions and identify courses of action during an event 

or threat. The NOC is comprised of five elements: the NOC-Watch, 

the NOC intelligence and analysis, FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center, the Office of Infrastructure Protection’s Coordinating Center, and the NOC planning element, which is known as 

the Incident Management Planning Team. 

Since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Government has 

done a tremendous amount to ensure that there are improved and 

better coordinated efforts undertaken to manage all threats and all 

hazards incidents. For example, at DHS, we have instituted improved policies, processes, procedures, training programs, and systems to better enable the department to function in support of the 

secretary as the domestic incident manager. The capabilities developed are based on an incremental approach and is fueled by interagency cooperation. 

Major examples include: establish the DHS Office of Operations 

Coordination; establish the NOC; establish a common operating 

picture known as the COP, which is accessed via the Homeland Security Information Network by Federal and state partners; assign 

information responsibilities to interagency partners; identify and 

collect the critical information requirements to better provide key 

incident information to decision makers; institutionalize the structure and processes for information flow from the field to the national level; establish the permanent planning operations staff 

within the NOC called the Incident Management Planning Team, 

who develops national concept plans and provides planning training to the interagency; automate the data entry for incident reports 

in geospatial displays; and establish and maintain the communications system; deploy and resource a national planning execution 

system; establish the DHS crisis action process and a phased notification system; establish a NOC training program that includes 

daily shift drills and is expandable to include DHS and interagency 

operations centers; provide training to the interagency PFOs and 

state emergency management personnel on HSIN and COP reporting; participate in major exercises like Ardent Sentry that tested 

operations processes, procedures and tools like the COP; organize 

and develop groups to facilitate interagency coordination that include the operations coordination group, the operations centers 

work group, the senior leadership group, COP users working group, 

HSIN Management Coordinating Council, HSIN Advisory Council, 

and daily NOC coordination calls; led the DHS participation at the 

White House Homeland Security Council’s domestic readiness 

group policy coordination committee; and conducted mission blueprint analysis by outside experts to look at policies, procedures, 

5 

processes and organizations and technologies to define the OPS and 

NOC way forward. 

While a lot of improvements have been made, there is much 

work to be done to continuously improve the unity of effort and 

operational capabilities in order to ensure mission accomplishment. 

We have taken the post-Katrina recommendations provided by 

Congress, the White House, and the GAO very seriously and are 

making enhancements to DHS operations. 

We appreciate the recommendations GAO has recently offered regarding DHS Op Centers, including, one, our collaborative practices; two, that there are no major barriers to executing our mission; and three, the report conclusions including the importance of 

defining common outcomes and joint strategies. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. [Presiding.] Mr. DiFalco, if you could wrap up 

please, sir. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes, sir. 

In addition, we look forward to providing additional tours and 

briefs to the GAO and Congress to enhance visibility on OPS and 

the NOC. 

This concludes my oral statement. I am glad to answer any questions. 

[The statement of Mr. DiFalco follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FRANK DIFALCO

Good morning, Chairman Carney, Ranking Member Rogers, and Members of the 

Subcommittee. I am Frank DiFalco, Director of the National Operations Center 

(NOC) at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Thank you for inviting 

me to discuss what DHS, the Office of Operations Coordination (OPS), and the NOC 

have done to increase situational awareness within DHS and among the interagency 

stakeholders, streamline the information flow process during incidents, and improve 

our contingency and crisis action planning efforts. 

As way of background, I would like to briefly describe the roles of OPS and the 

NOC. The mission of OPS, which is directed by retired VADM Roger Rufe, USCG, 

is to integrate DHS and interagency planning and operations coordination in order 

to prevent, deter, protect, and respond to terrorists threats/attacks or threats from 

other man-made or natural disasters. The NOC is a 24x7, multi-agency operations 

center that collects all-threats and all-hazards information across the spectrum of 

federal, state, local, tribal, private-sector, and other key sources. Its mission is to 

be the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operating picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and operations coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management. 

DHS takes these missions and the overall responsibilities laid out in the Homeland Security Act and various Homeland Security Presidential Directives seriously. 

We work every day of the year to ensure the situational awareness needs of DHS, 

other federal agencies, state and local partners, and other homeland security stakeholders are met. As you know, this is an evolving process. Lessons learned from 

real-life incidents and exercises are continually applied to improve the way the NOC 

and other DHS offices work. I hope my time with you today can help you better 

understand how the operations efforts of the NOC work within an overarching DHS 

framework. 

‘‘Yesterday’’ 

Since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Government has done a tremendous amount to ensure there are improved and better coordinated efforts undertaken to manage all-hazards incidents. For example, at DHS, we have instituted improved policies, processes, procedures, training programs and systems to better enable the Department to function in support of the Secretary as the Domestic Incident Manager. 

I will spend most of my time with you today relating how DHS, and the NOC 

specifically, has taken positive action prompted by the recommendations from Congress, GAO, and the White House. In addition, DHS, like other federal departments, 

6 

looked closely at how we did business, and recognized that we have to continuously 

improve how we provide a national unified effort and manage domestic incidents. 

Since Katrina, much progress has been made in providing the Secretary and the 

President with better situational awareness than what was available during the 

time immediately following landfall of Hurricane Katrina. 

For example, at the time of Katrina, the Homeland Security Operations Center 

(HSOC) had responsibility for providing situational awareness to the now defunct 

Interagency Incident Management Group (IIMG), while the Incident Management 

Division, a component of the IIMG, had responsibility for coordinating the federal 

response to the incident. The major ‘‘gap and seam’’ identified in this instance was 

that the HSOC and IIMG reported through two separate chains of command. This 

resulted in a disjointed information flow and other problems relating to situational 

awareness and incident management. These challenges have since been remedied 

with organizational improvements, standardized processes and procedures, interagency coordination at several levels, and aggressive training and exercising. 

There are many other examples where DHS and other Federal efforts had friction 

during Katrina. The House, Senate, White House, GAO, DHS and other entities 

have thoroughly reviewed the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and chronicled 

every step of the process from pre-landfall to response and recovery efforts. I think 

the reports and their recommendations speak for themselves and provide a needed 

analysis of the Federal, State and local response to this massive natural disaster. 

DHS took these efforts seriously and implemented many of the recommendations. 

For example, OPS is in the process of fully implementing the seven applicable White 

House Katrina lessons learned report recommendations summarized below. • Establish the National Operations Center (NOC) • Establish National Information and Knowledge Management System • Establish a National Reporting System • Establish a National Information Requirements and a National Information 

Reporting Chain 

• Establish and Maintain a Deployable Communications Capability • Develop and Resource a Federal Planning and Execution System • Establish a Permanent Planning/Operations Staff within the NOC 

These recommendations have greatly enhanced operations and other areas of the 

Department, as well as improved the overall capability of the Federal Government 

to respond to and recover from significant incidents. 

‘‘Today’’ 

Over the past year, we have further improved upon the above recommendations 

with lessons learned from real world events and exercises. Below, I will provide additional information on each of the following key OPS efforts. • The NOC • The Common Operating Picture (COP) 

• Department Situational Awareness Team (DSAT) 

• The Incident Management Planning Team (IMPT) and the National Planning 

and Execution System (NPES) 

• DHS Crisis Action Process (CAP) 

• OPS Mission Blueprint 

• Coordination with Other Federal Partners 

• Notifications 

• Training and Exercises 

National Operations Center and the Common Operating Picture 

OPS has made significant advancements in many operational matters that directly facilitate the Secretary’s execution of the Homeland Security Act, Homeland 

Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)–5, and HSPD–8 responsibilities. To enable 

us to more efficiently coordinate the offices within the Department and connect 

them with our interagency partners, we established the NOC and are implementing 

the COP. 

The NOC was officially established on May 25, 2006 with the approval of the National Response Plan (NRP) Notice of Change. The NOC is comprised of five elements: (1) the NOC Watch, which integrates the functions and personnel of the 

former multi-agency HSOC; (2) NOC Intelligence and Analysis, which incorporated 

the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) intelligence watch and warning element; 

(3) FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center (NRCC); (4) the Office of Infrastructure Protection’s National Infrastructure Coordination Center (NICC); and (5) 

the NOC Planning Element (IMPT), that institutionalizes interagency deliberate 

and crisis action planning processes. 

The NOC, in collaboration with the Office of Intelligence & Analysis, fuses allsource information to quickly determine if a threat or event contains a nexus to terVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
7 

rorism. The NOC functions as a national fusion center that synthesizes reporting 

from State and Local Fusion Centers, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, national level intelligence, emergency response, and private sector organizations. The 

NOC disseminates homeland security information to senior federal officials, appropriate intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and to other homeland security 

partners. The NOC serves as the primary focal point for the Secretary and senior 

administration officials to receive domestic situational awareness relating to natural 

and man-made disasters, acts of terrorism, and incident management within the 

United States. 

The COP is the principal situational awareness tool within the NOC and is the 

cornerstone of the National Reporting System. This real-time, web-based tool ties 

together key homeland security partners primarily at the Federal, State, and Joint 

Field Office (JFO) levels. The COP was the direct result of the Department’s internal reviews following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the White House Katrina 

lessons learned report. It was initially available for the 2006 Hurricane season and 

has the following features: • Is accessible through the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) • Provides Federal departments and agencies with the capability to share critical information 

• Establishes an inter-agency common operating database • Develops a shared interagency understanding of the situation • Provides information integrity for reporting requirements • Facilitates timely decision making 

The COP includes functional screens that address the National and International 

Situation Summaries, executive actions, requests for information, responder status, 

chronology of events, critical infrastructure, mapping products, media reports, 

streaming video from the incident site, the latest incident updates, metrics, and 

other HSIN information. 

As part of our incremental approach, we are advancing the COP capabilities from 

natural disasters to all hazards and all threats. Our ‘‘next steps’’ are intended to 

further enhance the COP capabilities from exclusively an unclassified, hurricanes/ 

natural disaster centric tool to include a classified, all-hazards capability. We are 

currently focusing on the ‘‘worst case’’ scenarios for nuclear/radiological incidents 

and will use national exercises and real world events to validate and continue its 

overall development. 

Department Situational Awareness Team 

DSATs are made up of DHS personnel who provide key situational awareness reporting to incident managers by providing data directly from the scene of the incident. This data can include information from streaming video which can be posted 

on HSIN, satellite communications, and other tools that provide incident managers 

vital information in near real-time. This capability supports Federal, State, and 

Local domestic incident managers and allows our collective emergency response to 

be coordinated with key homeland security partners such as the Principal Federal 

Official (PFO). 

Incident Management Planning Team & National Planning and Execution 

System 

The White House Katrina lessons learned report identified two specific recommendations to address planning limitations at the national level. The first recommendation called for the creation of a permanent planning body within DHS. 

DHS addressed this recommendation through the creation of the Incident Management Planning Team (IMPT). The IMPT is an interagency element that develops 

strategic level contingency plans predicated on the National Planning Scenarios. 

These contingency plans unify the interagency prevention, protection, response and 

recovery actions with respect to an event or threat. 

The mission of the IMPT is to provide contingency and crisis-action incident management planning through a collaborative, interagency process in support of the 

Secretary’s unique responsibilities as the principal Federal official for domestic incident management as articulated in HSPD–5, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 

and other key homeland security authorities such as the preparedness functions of 

HSPD–8. It is comprised of two components: (1) a core group of 15 full-time planning representatives from key DHS elements (e.g., TSA, CBP, I&A, FEMA, Coast 

Guard) as well as other key interagency members (i.e., DOD, DOJ, the FBI, HHS, 

DOT, DOE, EPA and the American Red Cross); and (2) an ‘‘on-call’’ staff of 38 planners that includes other members from DHS as well as the interagency. The IMPT 

was established in September 2006 and its members underwent a robust training 

program to prepare each of them for the planning responsibilities they have been 

asked to execute. 

8 

The IMPT’s initial actions have been focused on the development of federal interagency concept plans (CONPLANS) that address each of the 15 National Planning 

Scenarios. The all-threats and all-hazards scenarios include nuclear, chemical, biological, natural disaster and cyber incidents. Each plan developed by the IMPT identifies the specific actions that individual departments and agencies intend to take 

in the event a given scenario were to occur. The primary value of the IMPT is to 

identify the efforts of the entire interagency in one comprehensive document. This 

planning process serves two distinct purposes: it facilitates the ability of Secretary 

to fulfill his/her coordination responsibilities under HSPD–5 by providing awareness 

of the individual capabilities that a specific agency plans to deliver; and it also identifies existing seams and gaps that exist within the interagency planning efforts for 

a particular scenario. 

The second recommendation identified the need for a federal planning process to 

unify the planning efforts that occur across the interagency. DHS addressed this 

recommendation through its development of the National Planning and Execution 

System (NPES) which is a formal curriculum based planning process used by the 

IMPT to build interagency contingency plans. OPS leadership recognized that the 

success or failure of the IMPT would hinge largely on its ability to develop a planning process that could coordinate the efforts of this interagency group and facilitate 

the development of a shared planning culture across the federal government. Prior 

to NPES, few federal departments and agencies adhered to a formal planning process that organized the operational planning efforts within their respective departments. To achieve this goal, OPS created NPES, which integrates current and 

emerging interagency planning ‘‘best practices,’’ is consistent with the NRP, and adheres to the core concepts and terminology addressed in NIMS. 

NPES was converted to a curriculum that was taught to each member of the 

IMPT. The feedback from this training has been overwhelmingly positive and has 

resulted in numerous requests by interagency members that this training be offered 

to others within their respective departments and agencies. In addition, many State 

and Local governments have requested copies of the NPES and related training. 

DHS has actively engaged in promoting and sharing NPES throughout the interagency to assist in the development of supporting plans. Over the past ten months, 

the IMPT has trained over 500 interagency planners on the NPES and more training sessions are scheduled. The DHS Office of the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) and 

the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) are currently working with the IMPT 

to develop an accredited NPES Program of Instruction. By formalizing the instruction and subsequently offering it at an accredited institution, the NPES training 

will become available to a greater number of planners in the near future, advancing 

its adoption throughout the interagency. 

The DHS Crisis Action Process 

The Crisis Action Process (CAP) is a standard process by which DHS leadership 

manages a domestic incident response by following a general sequence of events 

while simultaneously engaging in a continuous cycle of actions. Over the past 6 

months, in an effort to bolster preparations for real-world events, a number of refinements have been made to our processes. Two refinements of note are the formalization of the Senior Leadership Group (SLG), which the Director of OPS chairs, 

and the establishment of the Crisis Action Team (CAT) to manage incidents. 

The SLG is comprised of the various DHS Assistant Secretaries that report to the 

Secretary and other select leaders within DHS. The SLG can be convened by the 

Secretary at any time and its primary purpose is to facilitate the Secretary’s ability 

to receive input and recommendations from his most experienced leaders during 

times of crisis. When convened during times of crisis, the Secretary can also issue 

initial guidance to the SLG members regarding actions he deems appropriate. 

The CAT is the main focus of the Crisis Action Process. The CAT is a multi-agency coordination entity comprised of over 60 personnel, many from the interagency 

IMPT, and is designed to facilitate the Secretary’s ability to coordinate interagency 

operations for threats and incidents in accordance with the responsibilities identified in HSPD–5. The CAT provides the Secretary and the Federal government with 

an immediate incident management capability and ensures seamless integration of 

threat monitoring and strategic cross-directorate operational response activities. By 

incorporating guidance from the Secretary and SLG into its incident management 

activities, the CAT is able to translate executive level guidance into operational action. 

The CAT’s incident management activities include, but are not limited to, developing course of action recommendations, conducting national level planning, facilitating access to critical resources, prioritizing incidents and resources, serving as a 

9 

central point for information collection and evaluation, and coordinating the flow of 

information and resources for complex and/or multiple incidents. 

OPS Mission Blueprint Analysis 

OPS conducted a Mission Blueprint Analysis in September 2006. In this Blueprint 

Analysis, we took a hard look at our policies, processes, procedures, organization 

and technologies in order to help define the way forward for OPS in order to meet 

and exceed the Department’s capabilities required to fulfill HSPD–5, the Homeland 

Security Act, and highlighted in the White House Katrina lessons learned review. 

The Blueprint analysis was conducted by an outside team that performed a topdown strategic review of the organization, its mission capabilities and perceived future requirements. In addition, the team also employed a bottom-up assessment of 

existing capabilities and supporting activities. Over 100 individuals within OPS, 

DHS, and throughout the government were interviewed during the course of the 

study. This effort provided analysis and recommendations for ensuring OPS more 

effectively meets its current and emerging integrated mission requirements within 

DHS and across the larger homeland security community. 

OPS and NOC Coordination within DHS and with Other Federal Partners 

The NOC from its inception adopted an interagency approach to its business process. The NOC, through the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and 

COP training programs, the PFO and JFO support concepts, the deliberate and crisis action planning processes, and the interagency operation directorate and operation center coordination working group venues, has recognized that operations coordination is very much an interagency enterprise. DHS has engaged in interagency 

coordination at multiple levels and across the core domestic incident management 

functions as the composition of the NOC and IMPT demonstrate. Further, the OPS, 

NOC and COP outreach and training initiatives have been interagency focused 

every step of the way. These have proven invaluable in building relationships, developing skill sets, identifying and integrating interagency requirements, and gaining 

interagency understanding of the NOC’s capabilities and the role the NOC plays in 

order to help prevent, deter, protect, respond and recover from terrorists threats/attacks or threats from other man-made or natural disasters. 

Also, in order to enhance integration and coordination, we established the Daily 

NOC Elements Conference Call. This conference call provides the NOC Element Directors, Operation Centers (Senior Duty Officers), and staff members a daily forum 

to highlight operational matters, address process issues, and conduct coordination 

as appropriate. 

Another OPS led effort to enhance DHS and federal operations is DHS’s Operations Coordination Group (OCG). This forum provides inter and intra departmental 

information sharing at the ‘‘strategic operations officer’’ level and includes representatives from DOD’s Joint Director of Military Support, NORTHCOM Joint 

Staff J–3, National Guard Bureau J–3, FEMA, ICE, CBP, USCG, TSA, USSS, and 

CIS (additional members can be added at the discretion of the Group). This homeland security body enhances information flow and ensures that issues regarding 

planning, training, exercises, and incident management are properly coordinated in 

a timely manner. This semi-formal process with established agency and department 

representation helps foster needed interactions and feedback from peers on operational matters. 

Likewise and under the umbrella of the OCG, the NOC led the effort to establish 

the DHS Operations Centers Working Group. The purpose of this group is to establish an Operations Centers venue to share information, address major issues, integrate efforts, enhance coordination, build relationships, and increase overall operational effectiveness. While this group is initially comprised of DHS OPS Centers, 

the intent is to expand the group into an interagency forum. 

The partnership between the NOC and FBI is growing at a steady pace. For example, the NOC provides Patriot Reports to the FBI which have been useful in developing case leads. These reports often contain unique information provided to the 

NOC by private citizens. In addition, the FBI has addressed technology issues that 

inhibited access to their Secret level pre-case data system, Guardian, allowing full 

use to the NOC. The Program Manager for the developing unclassified version of 

the system, known as eGuardian, has worked closely to facilitate NOC access and 

use of that system when it comes on line, including the designation of the NOC as 

one of the pilot sites. 

DOD’s NORTHCOM, or Northern Command, has developed as a clear mission 

partner with DHS and the NOC is the common point of entry between the two organizations. NORTHCOM leadership has visited the NOC, and vice versa, and information sharing is routine—each entity displays the other’s common operating picture. DOD is becoming increasingly integrated into the NOC COP during an inciVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
10 

dent providing the best form of information sharing as early as possible. In addition, 

OPS has detailed a member of the Senior Executive Service to be the Department’s 

representative at NORTHCOM and NORTHCOM has provided a senior representative to DHS. 

Notifications 

Notifications are a critical NOC function and as part of an ongoing review of its 

processes and procedures, OPS implemented the DHS Operational Phase System on 

March 1, 2007. The four operational phases under which the NOC now operates are: 

Steady-State; Phase 1—Awareness; Phase 2—Concern; and Phase 3—Urgent. The 

new system enables recipients to quickly understand the conditions of the situation 

for which they receive a notification message, understand the corresponding severity 

of the event/threat, and provide key information in standardized formats. 

Training and Exercises 

We have recently established a comprehensive NOC Training Program. The NOC 

Training Program consists of daily (one per shift) operations drills that enhance the 

NOC’s capability to detect and evaluate events, conduct the proper notifications, develop deliverables, and execute national level reporting responsibilities. The NOC 

plans to expand its training program to involve DHS and interagency operations 

centers. 

The NOC has come a long way since Katrina. However, just having new tools, 

programs and processes are not enough. It is vital to participate in exercises and 

table-top discussions to validate current efforts and to integrate lessons learned. The 

NOC participates in major exercises and uses these venues to accomplish training 

and exercise objectives and spearhead operational improvements. In particular, during the month of May 2007, OPS and other DHS components participated in the 

DOD exercise Ardent Sentry which was designed to test and validate DOD Homeland Defense operations and Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) operations. Ardent Sentry consisted of numerous scenarios for which OPS had established roles and responsibilities. Two scenarios provided significant OPS participation including a hurricane making landfall in Rhode Island and a 10 kiloton nuclear 

detonation in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

In regards to the hurricane scenario, OPS was able to exercise national information flow and test the ability of the NOC and all its elements to prepare, coordinate 

and publish situation reports (SITREPS) and executive summaries (EXSUMS) before the 2007 hurricane season. The 10 kiloton explosion allowed for testing the 

DHS CAP, testing the CAT concept of operations, testing the IMPT’s Improvised 

Nuclear Device Contingency Plan, and developing the classified COP requirements 

that include secret, law enforcement, and proprietary information. Finally, this was 

an excellent opportunity to exercise together with NORTHCOM and keep DHS and 

DOD on track to improve our national incident management capability. 

Information Flow—Hurricane Example 

To help provide some additional information on how our tools, policies and procedures are brought to bear in an incident, I will illustrate what happens when possible hurricane approaches. If a Tropical Wave, Depression, or Storm is projected 

or forecasted to impact the United States or a U. S. Territory, the first step the 

NOC will take is to transition to Phase 1—Awareness. Upon this transition, the 

NOC will transmit a DHS notification message, prepare and disseminate a NOC Incident Report, and establish a National Situation Summary on the COP. The NOC 

will maintain and continually update the COP and also disseminate NOC Update 

Reports at 0600 and 1800 daily. 

When a Hurricane or severe Tropical Storm is projected or forecasted to impact 

the United States or a U.S. Territory, the NOC will transition to Phase 2—Concern. 

Upon this transition, the NOC will conduct the same actions for a Tropical Wave, 

Depression, or Storm. In addition, EXSUMs will be initiated and disseminated at 

0600 and 1800 daily. SITREPs will commence when the Hurricane or severe Tropical Storm is 24 hours from landfall and will be disseminated at 0600 and 1800. 

Although the NOC may transition to Phase 3—Urgent due to the projected severity at landfall of a Hurricane or severe Tropical Storm, no differences exist between 

Phase 2 or 3 reporting or information requirements. The primary differences that 

do exist between Phase 2 and 3 involve operational posturing. For example, the Crisis Action Team will most likely be activated during an event that would meet the 

Phase 3 threshold. 

When a tropical event ends or no longer poses a significant threat to the United 

States or a U.S. Territory, the NOC will transition back to the Steady State Phase 

and will transmit a close-out DHS notification message and terminate reporting. 

Conclusion 

11 

Mr. Chairman, please know that DHS is committed to ensuring that all possible 

steps are being taken to address the various threats and incidents that can endanger our citizens. DHS will continue to work together with all partners across the 

homeland security spectrum, including Congress, to ensure the best policies, practices, processes, and technologies are integrated into the daily DHS operations 

framework. 

The efforts described earlier, like the COP and the NPES, are now part of the 

day-to-day operations of DHS, OPS, and the NOC. They allow for better national 

reporting, situational awareness, information sharing, operations coordination, unity 

of effort, and mission accomplishment for all-threat and all-hazard events. We will 

continually enhance our efforts and operational effectiveness by implementing lessons learned during real-world events and exercises. 

Thank you for this opportunity to testify today and I look forward to answering 

your questions. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. I want to thank you for your testimony. 

I will remind each member that you will have 5 minutes to question Mr. DiFalco. 

Now, I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DiFalco, we know that during Hurricane Katrina, HSOC received reports of massive flooding and levee breaches from numerous sources. We also know that the director of the HSOC and other 

senior DHS officials were not aware of either the reports or the 

flooding itself. What we don’t know is what happened in the layers 

between where the reports come into the HSOC and where they 

are sent to the senior leadership. 

Why didn’t the reports reach the officials, if you know? 

Mr. DIFALCO. When the reports came in during Katrina, it was 

basically 35 to 40 agencies forwarding their situation reports, sending them in. We were sorting through them there. 

Since then, we have developed a common operating picture and 

information management program to make sure that key information that comes in gets put on the common operating picture so it 

is available for everybody to see at real-time, because it is on the 

Homeland Security Information Network. So everybody can see it 

real-time. We know it is in. We are able to check it and confirm 

it with other agencies that are providing reports. 

In addition to that, we have outfitted the National Operations 

Center with information knowledge management officers—excuse 

me—incident management officers that monitor the common operating picture in these reports that come in. 

Additionally, part of the common operating picture is a spot report forward, and the sport report is a report of something that is 

urgent that comes in that cannot wait until the next reporting 

cycle. It goes up on nat boards for everyone to see also. 

So we have taken steps to make sure that information that 

comes in gets highlighted, while we are de-conflicting it. So it is 

being passed and everybody is seeing it at the same time while we 

are trying to either de-conflict the information or confirm it. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. ‘‘De-conflict’’ meaning there are different kinds 

of reports coming in to you and you are trying to figure out which 

one is correct? What do you mean by ‘‘de-conflict’’? 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes. An example during Katrina was that the levees were breached. OK, well, some of the reports that came in said 

they were toppled. Some said that they weren’t breached, but they 

had breaks in them that were letting water through, but there 

12 

wasn’t a complete breach. In that case, we were trying to confirm 

it with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to see exactly what the 

situation was. 

Sometimes the information comes in and it is opposite. It says 

there is no breach and there is a breach, as an example. So, OK, 

we don’t know what is ground truth. The systems and the information integrity pieces we put in place for the common operating picture and for basically national reporting for a hurricane identifies 

subject matter experts who provide the information. So if we get 

information from a different source, we are able to go to them more 

quickly and de-conflict or get a confirmation on that particular part 

of the information. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. OK. Thanks. 

I am glad to hear of improvements that have been made using 

this COP program in the National Operations Center, and I look 

forward to further improvements. But I am concerned about NOC’s 

use of this common operating picture through HSIN, through the 

Homeland Security Information Network. 

Recently, we had a hearing and we received a GAO report which 

described HSIN’s ongoing problems, including not having a clear 

mission and not having all first responders and similar stakeholders on the network. 

How are you able to reconcile the problems with HSIN with the 

importance of the sharing that you have through your common operations picture and your NOC center? 

Mr. DIFALCO. HSIN is critical to that information sharing. It is 

a Web-based network. It is real-time. Everybody that is on it sees 

the information at the same time. So it is simultaneous distributed 

information. 

HSIN was ruled out on threat conditions when it was first put 

out, and at the time it was needed to get a network out there that 

everybody could be on. The business practices and the processes or 

procedures were gapped. That was life at the time, and that is the 

way it is during some operations during threat conditions. 

We are working outreach efforts. There is a program office set up 

to help stabilize and to work through those particular gaps on 

HSIN. There is also a HSIN Advisory Council set up and a requirements council was set up to make sure that we get everybody’s 

input and make the corrections that you are referring to. 

The one thing I would like to say on HSIN, though, it is the only 

network out there that has all the Federal, state, local, tribal, private sector players on it. We get a lot of questions as to, well, we 

are using different types of systems. We are using WebTA or there 

are different networks. Why aren’t we including DOD networks? 

The reality of the situation is each agency has their own network 

or state and local have their own network that they are using. But 

HSIN is the only network that allows everyone on it. 

If it is a law enforcement network, you have to be a law enforcement officer to be on it. DOD does not want the private sector on 

the network, and those types of things. So when you start peeling 

back the onion, HSIN is the only network that allows the full complement across the spectrum of homeland security partners to be 

on it. It is the common operating network that we are using for 

homeland security. 

13 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. 

My 5 minutes have expired, so now I would like to recognize the 

ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Rogers, from Alabama 

for his 5 minutes of questions. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you. 

I understand that the NOC has an intelligence analysis function 

now. Could you tell me how you coordinate this intelligence gathering information with others? Or do you? 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes, we do. The NOC has it. The IA, intelligence 

analysis component, is integrated into it. It was also integrated 

into the HSOC, the Homeland Security Operations Center. It 

stayed integrated into the NOC-Watch, which is located at the 

NAC there. They are integrated into the IC community. They receive all information that all the intelligence community agencies 

receive. We get it there. We are tied in there also with NCTC and 

all the other agencies. 

So that comes in. The overall fusion mission for the NOC is to 

take intelligence information and fuse it with state and local incident management, all-source information, fuse it, do a quick look 

on it, determine if there is a terrorist nexus to it, and then keep 

that information available for IA to conduct longer-range analysis 

on it, like trend analysis, pattern analysis. 

Mr. ROGERS. Do the locals have a chance to interface with you 

to gather information? 

Mr. DIFALCO. To receive that information? Yes, that is one of our 

primary missions is information sharing. We do that. If it is information coming in from an intelligence agency or any agency, we always request appropriate tear-lines to make sure that we can share 

it with state and local. 

For us to have the information at the NOC and not being able 

to pass it to the right people is worthless, so we want to make sure 

that we are able to do that, and we do that. That is our intent. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. I understand also that the NOC now includes 

FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center. How does this organizational structure work? 

Mr. DIFALCO. OK. The NOC operates as a matrix organization. 

There are five elements. We coordinate and work together because 

the NRCC, as an example, is still the component operations center 

for FEMA as a component, and conducts their coordination and 

their efforts within FEMA. 

The fact that they are integrated into the NOC means that we 

have very close coordination with them. We do daily conference 

calls with them. They are on the NOC portal, which is our collaboration portal for internal processing. They are on the common operating picture. They feed it. They are part of the daily operations 

that we do. 

That is one of the key things is the training that I mentioned 

earlier. We conduct training within the NOC. We are expanding to 

the NOC elements. The exercises include the NRCC, all the elements of the NOC. We work on a daily basis together. We want to 

basically train like we fight, so we make sure that we are using 

the same network, same procedures on a daily basis that we are 

going to use during an emergency. 

Mr. ROGERS. Where is the NOC physically located? 

14 

Mr. DIFALCO. The elements of the NOC are in different locations. 

The NOC-Watch is at the NAC, the Nebraska Area Complex in DC. 

The NRCC is located at the FEMA headquarters. The NICC, the 

National Infrastructure Coordinating Center, is located at TSOC. 

Mr. ROGERS. And TSOC is? 

Mr. DIFALCO. I am sorry. TSOC is the TSA building out at Herndon, Virginia. The planning element, the IMPT, is also located at 

the Nebraska Area Complex. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. And you made reference a little while ago to 

the Homeland Security Operations Center. Tell me a little bit 

about how you interact with that entity in the event of—let’s get 

away from terrorist acts—hurricanes coming. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Do you mean the Homeland Security OC or the 

NCTC? 

Mr. ROGERS. Homeland security. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Basically, sir, the NOC absorbed the Homeland Security Operations Center. At one time, and during Katrina, what 

I mentioned earlier was that an operations directorate was stood 

up. Before Katrina, operations functions were spread out throughout DHS. So that was brought together under one directorate. 

Mr. ROGERS. That is what I was getting at. You absorbed it is 

the bottom line. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes, we did. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. I have no further questions. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Now, the chair will recognize the congresswoman from New York, Ms. Yvette Clarke. 

Ms. CLARKE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for attending today’s hearing. 

I think that we have all acknowledged that the inability of the 

Homeland Security Operations Center to give accurate, real-time 

situational awareness to top decision makers is central to the 

‘‘why’’ of the department and its failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 

While it is tragic that DHS responded so poorly to that disaster, 

I am glad to see at least in this particular instance the department 

has been willing to admit its mistakes and take the initiative in 

improving its procedures. 

I agree with my colleagues that the work being done by the National Operations Center is very promising. However, we will never 

know whether NOC can be successful until our nation is put in the 

very unfortunate circumstance of dealing with another event of the 

magnitude of Katrina. By then, it may be too late to make the improvements before lives will be put on the line and put at stake. 

Mr. DiFalco, what sort of testing have you done to ensure the 

success of NOC operations? And how is this different from the testing and exercise performed by the HSOC? 

Mr. DIFALCO. It is basically in three areas: the planning, training, and exercises. That is simulation, trying to work through and 

simulate real-world conditions for the efforts that you just mentioned. The planning element— 

Ms. CLARKE. Let me just ask about the simulation. How is that 

done? Is it sort of table-top exercises? 

15 

Mr. DIFALCO. It includes table-top exercises and live exercises 

where we are actually processing information from field units, just 

like we would during an actual incident. 

The planning element did not exist. One of the major gaps was 

that there was no planning done at the national level, no integration of the plans. Each of the agencies were doing their own plans, 

and basically it was in a cylinder fashion. They would do it for 

their agencies, but it wasn’t coming together at the national level. 

That has been filled now with the IIMPT, the Interagency Incident 

Management Planning Team. They are conducting the planning at 

the national level, integrating plans and bringing that together. 

They also established the crisis action process for DHS. They provide crisis action planning, which was not available during 

Katrina. Those have been exercised during actual exercises like Ardent Sentry and Vigilant Shield and the other major exercises that 

have been going on. We conduct training in addition to that. That 

is internal training within the NOC. Every day, every shift there 

is a drill that goes on to make sure that we can process the information and get the word out. And then we conduct outreach training not only in planning, but also in reporting, common operating 

picture, HSIN, with everyone from the Federal through state and 

local partners. 

We participate in all major exercises, and some regional and 

other exercises depending on the situation. We always play like we 

fight in the exercises. We use the actual networks, actual people, 

and the actual processing and structures that we will be doing during an incident. We take the lessons learned and feed them back 

in and make adjustments to improve the process. 

The other thing that we started is basically an operational posturing procedure. It is a notifications procedure. It helps with situational awareness and building up to an incident. When an incident happens, there is steady-state. There is phase one awareness, 

phase two concerned, phase three urgent. We do notifications based 

on those phases in 12 different thresholds for the incidents or 

emerging incidents. 

So we are able to take the information, process it in NOC, post 

it on HSIN and COP, get the word out to those groups at the Federal down through state and local levels as to what is going on, and 

they are able to see the information in near real-time within like 

25 minutes. 

Ms. CLARKE. Mr. DiFalco, my time is running down. I just had 

a question around municipalities. I know that there is such a wide 

range across this nation. How are we getting feedback from the 

local level about their planning and their integration into the overall national plan to mobilize? 

I think that was one of the things that sort of frustrated people 

when they saw the unfolding of the event known as Katrina, that 

the municipalities seemed to be so powerless or felt they were so 

powerless in being able to move their own citizenry under those 

conditions. Has there been anything done that provides the municipalities with a standard response, emergency preparedness training? Can you give us just a little indication of that? 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes. The IMPT-level planning is strategic level. 

Underneath that is operational level, even though it is nationwide, 

16 

but it is operational level, and includes FEMA. The particular 

things you are talking about, FEMA has done outreach to the 

major municipalities and states to take a look at their plans and 

offer help with the planning, and incorporate them into the operational level plans. That will feed up into the strategic level as appropriate or if needed. 

Training teams for planning are available and have gone out. I 

think we have trained over 400 agency people in different regions. 

But that is really done at the component level and FEMA is the 

heavy lifter for that. 

Ms. CLARKE. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. DiFalco, I think we will take another pass. 

All of us will ask you a few more questions if we have any more 

questions. I would like to start by just getting a chain of command 

here, going back to that basic. We have all sorts of organizations 

and task forces and initiatives and acronyms and everything else. 

Who do you report to? 

Mr. DIFALCO. I report to the operations director. I report to the 

deputy director, Wayne Parent, who works for Admiral Rufe. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. So who is the top of the command for you, in 

responding to an incident or an event? 

Mr. DIFALCO. Within operations, it is Admiral Rufe. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. OK. And then who reports to you? Is there a 

clear line of command to you? 

Mr. DIFALCO. In the operations center? 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. In the operations center or in responding to an 

event, because I think one of the things that just in looking at your 

statement and reviewing what happened with Katrina, there were 

different lines of command going on and they weren’t really talking 

to each other. 

It is not that I think this has got to be strictly military right up 

the command. There ultimately has to be a buck stopping someplace, and I want to make sure that all that information gets to 

somebody if that is really needed. 

Mr. DIFALCO. That is needed. What we call it is information flow 

and coordination, and that is done through the center. The information comes from the other operations centers from not only 

DHS, but the interagency. As you know, command and control 

doesn’t work interagency because it is really command coordination, just because it is the interagency environment. 

We work every day with the interagencies and the other op centers to make sure we are getting the information flow into the 

NOC. That has come a long way since Katrina. Before Katrina and 

even during it, to include exercises, a lot of the committees and 

panels or things that we would go to when we were developing an 

exercise, as an example, DHS was a lot of times an afterthought. 

It wasn’t built into it. It was like, oh, you know, we do our own 

stuff, and that unifying effort was not there, and we are really trying to push that. 

Now, when we go to meetings and stuff like that, everybody understands better the DHS role, the role of HSIN and COP and 

those type of things, and are actually integrated in. So there is not 

a reporting chain of command like that for the op centers, but we 

17 

all work together on a daily basis to make sure that information 

comes in. 

Yes, interagency friction is still there. OK, that is kind of inherent in just the nature of the operations in the interagency world, 

just like it is with state and local or anything else. That friction 

is there. I think we taken some good steps toward jointness, comparing it to the military jointness, having jointness in the interagency. That is where this needs to go so that everybody is on the 

same sheet of music and cooperating. I think some big steps have 

been made in that direction. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. My last question is, you were talking about 

you have had some major exercises. You have had some table-tops 

and different kinds of drills. Have you had any events that have 

triggered the whole NOC operation coming into effect? Maybe it 

was a hurricane that blew by last year or some other kind of an 

event like that. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes. In 2006, the hurricane season, that happened 

on several occasions for what we thought were emerging hurricanes, where the information people were deployed; information 

was flowing in; EOCs were providing information; JFOs were beginning to get set up. But then they never materialized into a fullflown hurricane, so then we would pull back. 

So we are leaning forward doing that, and that happened consistently and worked very well during last year’s hurricane season. 

The exercises are an example. The Ardent Sentry, the one we just 

finished, had a full-blown hurricane in it, with the JFO, principal 

Federal officials, the whole shooting match. And that information 

flow came in and we processed it. 

The nuclear incident piece of that involved the JFO and a PFO, 

and basically the terrorist spectrum part of it, the threat piece, 

with all the information coming into the NOC, to include us using 

the crisis action process to process that information, provide 

courses of action, and do incident management planning. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Last one—I already said last one—but the tuberculosis patient who crossed the border a couple of weeks ago, is 

that something where your center would be involved? Did you guys 

get called into that? 

Mr. DIFALCO. Yes, we did. We were involved in that from the 

time we were notified on it. The coordination that we did there was 

bringing together HHS, which includes, of course, the Centers for 

Disease Control and the FDA, the Federal Drug Administration, 

and all their agencies, coordinating them with TSA, Transportation 

Security Administration, CBP for the borders piece, and trying to 

bring that all together into one picture. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. 

Mr. Rogers, if you have any further questions? 

Mr. ROGERS. I didn’t until you asked yours. I want to follow up 

on what he initially pursued, and that is where the buck stops. 

I understand that your office is coordinating information, but 

there has to be, in the words of the president, the ‘‘decider.’’ Who 

is making decisions about what course of action to take that overrides this friction that you made reference to? 

Mr. DIFALCO. OK. The system is set up so that decisions are 

made at the lowest level, including in the field. The best operVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
18 

ational piece is to have the decisions made and de-conflicted and 

worked out at the lowest levels. As they bubble up, they either 

can’t resolve them or don’t have the resources to resolve them, or 

maybe aren’t thinking of them because it is outside the scope, but 

at the higher levels you can see it coming—as those bubble up or 

become apparent, then they go through layers. 

Basically, if it can be handled by the operations directorate, coordinating with the senior leadership group which is the secretary’s 

components and the staff, then the decision is made there if it is 

at that level. If it needs to go up to the secretary, then he will have 

to make the decision. From there, it can go up to the domestic 

readiness group at the Homeland Security Council. 

So it is an echelon chain that we can move the information up 

and down to make sure the right decision-makers are involved. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would like to thank you, sir, for your testimony, and the members for all their questions. 

The members of the subcommittee may have additional questions 

for you, which we will present to you in writing. We would ask that 

you respond to them as quickly as you can. 

Thank you very much for your time and your testimony. 

Mr. DIFALCO. Thank you. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would now like to ask that the second panel 

join us. 

I would like to welcome our second panel. 

Our first witness is Eileen Larence. Ms. Larence is director for 

homeland security and justice at the GAO. Her specific issue areas 

are largely focused on the sharing of homeland security information 

and the protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Ms. 

Larence has 29 years of experience managing a broad range of 

issues at the GAO. 

I will go through the whole panel. 

Our second witness is Colonel Terry Ebbert—good to see you 

again—the director of homeland security for the city of New Orleans. As such, he is assigned the operational and planning responsibility for the police department, the fire department, Office of 

Emergency Preparedness, and emergency medical services. Colonel 

Ebbert has over 40 years of experience in professional leadership 

positions. He is a twice-wounded combat veteran and the recipient 

of the Navy Cross, one of our nation’s highest awards for valor. 

Our third witness is Mr. Darrell Darnell, who became the director of the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency 

for the District of Columbia on March 19 of this year. He has 30 

years of military, Federal and private sector experience, including 

positions at the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Darnell is also a 2006 senior 

fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. 

Our final witness is Mr. Jim Walker, the director of the Alabama 

Department of Homeland Security, where he has served since January 20, 2003. Prior to that position, Mr. Walker was a lieutenant 

colonel in the United States Army, where he served for over 20 

years. His assignments include details as the aide-de-camp for the 

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and operations brief to GenVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
19 

eral Colin Powell, and as an aide to former President Ronald 

Reagan. 

Without objection, the witnesses’ full statements will be inserted 

in the record. 

I now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement for 

5 minutes, beginning with Ms. Larence. 

STATEMENT OF EILEEN LARENCE, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND 

SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, GOVERNMENT 

ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. LARENCE. Mr. Perlmutter and Ranking Member Rogers, I am 

pleased to be here today to discuss the results of our review of several homeland security operations centers, and the opportunities 

they have to better collaborate across their participating agencies. 

Doing so is vital because the mission of the centers is critical, to 

ensure that DHS is aware of developing situations, manmade or 

natural, that threaten the nation, and has the information it needs 

to help manage incidents that may result. 

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated we were not ready, and your 

oversight of progress in fixing the problems Katrina exposed is important and timely. As part of this oversight, Congress asked GAO 

to review the functions of operations centers within DHS. We reported the results of that review in October 2006 and recommended 

ways the department could promote more collaboration in the centers. We recently followed up on DHS’s response to those recommendations. 

We also obtained an overview of initiatives the department has 

undertaken in response to congressional and administration afteraction reports and recommendations. While we have not fully evaluated these initiatives because they are so new, they do present 

several oversight questions. 

Based on our work, I would like to make two key points this 

afternoon. First, the three multi-agency 24/7 operational watch centers we reviewed that are housed within DHS components such as 

Customs and Border Protection or the Transportation Security Administration, and to some extent the National Operations Center 

that Mr. DiFalco just discussed, could better collaborate across the 

components of the staff of these centers to achieve their common 

mission of providing situational awareness and incident management during a crisis. 

To date, the department has implemented some, but not all, of 

our recommendations. For example, we recommended that the operations centers in our review could better implement six actions 

GAO identified from the private sector as best practices for agency 

collaboration. 

We recommended that the operations directorate issue guidance 

to these different various centers about how to implement these 

best practices, and include, for example, making certain that all 

agencies understand the center’s common goal and outcome, that 

they have clearly documented the joint strategies that they are 

going to use to get there, and that they clearly define and document each person’s role in achieving that outcome. 

For example, it is important that the role of each center’s watch 

standard—and these are the persons that actually do the 24/7 surVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
20 

veillance—that their roles be documented and understood by all so 

that they understand their jurisdictions and their responsibilities 

and they avoid confusion, especially during emergencies and crises. 

We also pointed out that centers could getter assess the number 

and capabilities of staff they need compared to what they have onboard, leverage the expertise and plan ways to fill any gaps. DHS 

agreed with the recommendations at the time, and have taken 

some action on them. To its credit, the National Operations Center 

is addressing some of these best practices, such as defining their 

watch standard roles and implementing protocols for reporting information during an incident. 

However, the operations directorate does not plan to issue the 

guidance that we recommended. It maintains it doesn’t have any 

authority or control over the other operations centers within DHS. 

These individual centers themselves are not implementing the recommendations on their own. We maintain that full implementation 

of our recommendations would not exceed the NOC’s authority, 

would be consistent with their priorities, and quite frankly, relatively easy to implement, and would produce benefits. 

For my second point, while the operations directorate and center 

deserve credit for the changes they are implementing in response 

to Katrina problems and recommendations, we must acknowledge 

that the changes are still new and evolving, and DHS must address 

several challenges and next steps, so continued oversight will be 

critical. 

For example, as Mr. DiFalco enumerated, the directorate and 

center report that they are instituting a lot of new teams and processes and protocols to manage incidents under any significant scenario, including terrorist threats, but they still need 2 years to develop the plans for all 15 of these scenarios. 

They are implementing the common operating picture, and they 

are also establishing information requirements for each of these 

planning scenarios that I just discussed. They are establishing 

clear reporting channels for this information. They have identified 

who is in charge of validating the information that is first reported 

up. And they have established templates and deadlines for providing this information to senior leaders. 

While we have not evaluated the implementation and effectiveness of these initiatives in detail, our review demonstrates that 

DHS has accomplished a lot. It still has a lot of work to do, and 

raises several oversight questions. 

For example, the department focused its initial efforts on making 

changes in time for the 2006 hurricane season, but now must focus 

on other scenarios. Will it get the commitment it needs, especially 

from its own components and other Federal agencies? And will it 

be able to sustain this commitment over time, especially for resources? And was it ready for the recent TB scare? And would it 

be ready for a pandemic? 

Is the new planning process redundant to FEMA’s planning process? Has DHS resolved its organizational instability that stakeholders said delayed progress? Will it be able to resolve the problems that continue to plague its Homeland Security Information 

Network, and maintain enough users to make the system viable? 

Some DHS components, for example, are concerned about the lack 

21 

1GAO, High Risk Series: An Update, GAO–03–119 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2003); High Risk 

Series: An Update, GAO–07–310 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2007). 2 Report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Hurricane Katrina: 

A Nation Still Unprepared, United State Senate. (Washington, D.C.: May 2006). 3GAO, Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies, GAO–06–15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 2005). 

of security features and other issues with the system, and have 

asked DHS for waivers to use alternative networks instead. 

Finally, we and DHS itself acknowledge that the agency must 

implement ways to measure the effectiveness of its initiatives as 

insurance against future disasters. We commend DHS for testing 

its initiatives through a series of live exercises, but we also maintain that implementing more systematic measures, including soliciting feedback from state and local stakeholders—my peers on the 

panel—is important, as Katrina demonstrated, since they are our 

first line of defense and critical to incident management. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks. I would be happy to 

answer any questions. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Larence follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF EILEEN R. LARENCE

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in today’s hearing to discuss our work 

on assessing the relationship among various operations centers of components of the 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the agency’s overall National Operations Center in carrying out the important mission of maintaining situational 

awareness. 

When DHS was established as an organization, we recognized the challenges it 

would face in trying to integrate 22 legacy agencies into one new corporate entity. 

Therefore, in January 2003 we placed the integration and transformation of the department on GAO’s high-risk list—composed of those federal agencies, programs, or 

activities that pose the highest risk to the nation—because we recognized the country could not afford to have DHS fail. The Department’s transformation remained 

on our high-risk list for 2007 because DHS had still not fully addressed its integration, management, and programmatic challenges.1 Placing it on this list obligates 

us to continue to monitor how well the integration and transformation is succeeding. 

With similar concerns, as well as concerns with the response to events that have 

occurred since, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita and continuing terrorist 

threats, the Congress has been overseeing DHS’s transformation. As part of this 

oversight, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs requested that we identify the DHS operations centers (established to conduct monitoring and surveillance activities that can help detect, deter and prevent terrorist 

acts), to determine if any centers are redundant, and assess the functions and customers of these centers. Also, as part of this oversight, the Committee recognized 

that Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the department’s main operations center—the Homeland Security Operations Center—was not ready to effectively coordinate the sharing of information in a time of crisis and needed repair; therefore, it 

made a series of recommendations to address the problems identified and has been 

monitoring the agency’s efforts to ensure DHS makes these changes.2

In response to the Senate Committee’s request for GAO to review operations centers, we decided to assess those centers within DHS’s component agencies that, first, 

conduct operations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (24/7/365), and 

that, second, have a broader security mission that DHS has determined requires 

higher levels of collaboration from many stakeholders, including DHS component 

agencies, and other federal, state, and local agencies. These centers are the Air and 

Marine Operations Center and the National Targeting Center, sponsored by U.S. 

Customs and Border Protection; the Transportation Security Operations Center 

sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration; and the National Operations Center Interagency Watch, the successor to the Homeland Security Operations Center, run within the Office of Operations Coordination at DHS. We assessed the extent to which they implemented key practices that our work has shown 

helps to enhance and sustain collaboration,3 since such collaboration is important 

22 

4GAO, Homeland Security: Opportunities Exist to Enhance Collaboration at 24/7 Operations 

Centers Staffed by Multiple DHS Agencies, GAO–07–89 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 2006). 

to one of the main functions of each center, namely, sharing information needed to 

develop and maintain situational awareness of potential crises and terrorist activity 

nationwide. These key collaborative practices include defining and articulating a 

common outcome and joint strategies to guide multi-agency activities such as information sharing, and assessing staffing needs to leverage the resources other agencies contribute to the centers. We found that these practices can help agencies overcome barriers to collaboration, such as overprotection of jurisdiction and resources, 

as well as, incompatible procedures and processes that can result in agencies operating in a fragmented and uncoordinated way, wasting resources, and limiting effectiveness. 

Based on our work on operations centers, we issued a report in October 2006 with 

recommendations for the Operations Directorate develop and provide guidance to 

the centers to encourage that they implement these key collaborative practices as 

a means to enhance their ability to meet their missions.4 Today, we would like to, 

first, briefly review the collaboration issues and recommendations we presented in 

our report, then, give an update of DHS’s efforts to respond to these recommendations. 

In addition, we are aware of the Congress’s concerns about the performance of the 

Homeland Security Operations Center during Hurricane Katrina, and the recent efforts made in response to these and other concerns identified in hurricane after-action studies and reports. Because these efforts to some extent affect DHS’s response 

to our recommendations, we briefly describe some of the steps DHS recently reported to us that it has taken to address problems Katrina exposed, although it is 

too early to assess these actions to determine how well they are being implemented 

since a number of them are relatively new. 

Scope and Methodology 

To determine the extent to which operations centers managed by different offices 

and components within DHS had implemented key practices that our work has 

shown can enhance collaboration among federal agencies, during our original work, 

we reviewed transition, management integration, and planning and policy documents from the department. We also reviewed strategic plans, as well as annual 

performance reports and planning documents from DHS and its component agencies. In addition, we reviewed and analyzed the results of studies undertaken by 

DHS to assess and improve coordination and collaboration at the multi-agency centers as well as reports from GAO, the Congressional Research Service, the DHS Office of Inspector General, and others that addressed the integration, coordination, 

and collaboration of departmentwide program functions. To determine the extent to 

which they reflect how DHS has encouraged the use of the key collaborative practices, we also met with the acting director and other responsible officials from the 

Office of Operations Coordination to discuss its role and responsibilities. 

To obtain updated information on DHS’s efforts to implement our recommendations, we visited the National Operations Center, the National Infrastructure Coordination Center, the National Response Coordination Center, and Transportation 

Security Operations Center and met with center managers. In addition, we spoke 

to officials at the National Targeting Center. We also received a series of briefings 

on organizational and operational changes implemented since Hurricane Katrina 

and reviewed documentation provided to explain these changes. We relied on these 

visits and briefings for updated information on DHS’s response to our and postKatrina after action report recommendations; we did not verify the accuracy of 

DHS’s officials’ statements or the effectiveness of the implemented actions. We conducted our original and additional audit work in accordance with generally accepted 

government accounting standards between October 2005 through September 2006, 

and March 2007 through June 2007, respectively. 

Summary 

In our October 2006 report, we reported that the centers had the opportunity to 

better implement most of the key practices we identified that enhance collaboration. 

While we did not identify any major problems or barriers to executing their missions, enhanced collaboration could further ensure robust situational awareness and 

support to incident response. For example, we found that while DHS had implemented one key collaborative practice—leveraging its resources—by having staff 

from multiple agencies work together at the four operations centers, it could better 

implement the following collaborative practices: • Defining and articulating a common outcome or joint strategies. This helps 

to provide, for example, a compelling rationale for agencies to collaborate. 

23 

5For the purpose of our report, we used the term ‘‘watchstander’’ to refer to an individual 

required to work full-time on a rotating 24-hour schedule, 7 days per week, to maintain situational awareness, conduct information assessment and threat monitoring to deter, detect, and 

prevent terrorist incidents. A watchstander may also act as a liaison between his agency and 

other agency representatives at the center, and may manage response to critical threats and 

incidents. 6The HSIN is an unclassified, Web-based system that provides a secure, collaborative environment for real-time information sharing that includes reporting, graphics, and chat capabilities, 

as well as a document library that contains reports from multiple federal, state, local, and private-sector sources. HSIN supplies suspicious incident and pre-incident information, mapping 

and imagery tools, 24x7 situational awareness, and analysis of terrorist threats, tactics, and 

weapons. 

• Assessing each center’s needs in order to leverage resources, especially 

human resources or staffing needs. This helps to ensure efficiencies and that 

the functions of a center are not compromised by the workforce limitations of 

a single agency. 

• Defining roles and responsibilities, especially of the watchstanders 5 in each 

center, those staff who come from other agencies and have the important job 

of conducting surveillance activities. This helps to ensure that people at the 

same center in the same role perform their responsibilities consistently. Because of the potentially critical, time-sensitive need for decisive action at 24/7/ 

365 operations centers, it is important that the roles and responsibilities of 

watchstanders are described and understood by both the watch staff as well as 

the officials responsible for managing the operations centers. 

• Establishing compatible standards, policies, and procedures, such as those for 

DHS’s Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) 6—the primary network 

DHS uses to share incident management and homeland security information 

across DHS, and with other federal, state, and local partners. This would provide a means to operate across agency boundaries and help ensure effective 

communications among the centers. 

• Developing mechanisms to monitor and evaluate results of joint operations, 

such as conducting joint exercises and assessing the after-action reports. This 

helps management, key decision makers, and both stakeholders and customers 

obtain feedback to improve governing policy and operational effectiveness. 

• Reinforcing agency accountability for collaborative efforts by recognizing joint 

efforts and outcomes achieved in published strategic and annual performance 

plans and reports. Joint accountability and recognition can provide an incentive 

to collaborate. 

We found that the Operations Directorate, established in November 2005 to improve operational efficiency and coordination, provides DHS with an opportunity to 

more fully implement these key practices. Therefore, we recommended that the Secretary of DHS charge the Director of the Operations Directorate with developing 

and providing the guidance necessary to help ensure the four centers take the following six actions to implement best practices for collaboration and help better position the centers to achieve their common missions: • Define common outcomes and joint strategies for achieving their overall mission; 

• Conduct staffing needs assessments to better leverage resources within centers; 

• Clarify the roles and responsibilities for watchstanders so that they understand each person’s expected duties and contributions, especially during an 

emergency; 

• Apply standards, policies, and procedures to promote the more extensive use 

of DHS’s information network to improve communications; 

• Prepare mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the results of joint and collaborative efforts to ensure effectiveness; and 

• Address the results achieved by collaborative efforts in strategic and annual 

performance plans and reports to increase accountability. 

At the time of our report, DHS agreed with these recommendations, but according 

to DHS officials, has yet to implement them. In recent meetings, DHS said that they 

believe some changes at the National Operations Center are responsive to several 

of these recommendations. For example, the center is taking steps to better define 

the role of watchstanders, and DHS has designed a strategy and set of initiatives 

to improve the usefulness of the information network. However, according to Operations Directorate officials, they have not been directed by DHS to issue the overall 

guidance we recommended. They also do not plan to issue such guidance at this 

time because they stated they do not have any administrative, budgetary, or operational authority or control over the other three component centers. While we unVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
24 

7 Executive Office of the President, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons 

Learned. February 2006. 

derstand that these centers have missions unique to their sponsoring agencies and 

are not subject to the Operations Directorate, providing these centers guidance that 

is not mandatory but strongly endorsed on ways to better collaborate internally 

would enhance their effectiveness within their own centers as well as in providing 

the national center the information it needs, especially during a time of crisis. 

DHS officials said another reason they had yet to implement our recommendations is in part because, instead of focusing on these intra-department collaboration 

issues, DHS has been giving priority to fixing critical inter-agency and inter-governmental issues that hindered its ability to respond to major, national incidents and 

disasters, particularly Hurricane Katrina. DHS officials said there were a number 

of post-Katrina initiatives underway which could build relationships among the centers so that they are more disposed to implement the recommended key collaborative practices in the future. For example, DHS points to its efforts to: • Establish standard roles and procedures among all stakeholders, both within 

and outside DHS, for reporting information during a major incident. Now, according to DHS, information must be verified and clarified at the field and 

headquarters level before it is placed on its information network. 

• Create the Common Operating Picture—a real-time, web-based tool designed 

to provide a common view of critical information during a crisis—within DHS’s 

Homeland Security Information Network. 

• Create working groups of partners within and outside of DHS to enhance information flow on planning, training, and incident management, to resolve 

interdepartmental conflicts, and to facilitate decision-making at higher levels. 

While it is too early to assess to what extent DHS has successfully implemented 

and institutionalized these initiatives since some are only recently established, they 

appear to be designed to address several key recommendations from congressional 

and administration Post-Katrina assessments.7 DHS acknowledges it still has a substantial way to go to fully implement these initiatives and measure their results, 

but it has recently tested some of these initiatives during interagency training exercises and has plans to do more of these tests in the future. Continuing to focus on 

efforts to measure how well these initiatives are working, and, as importantly, to 

what extent key stakeholders, such as state and local governments and the private 

sector, anticipate that these initiatives will meet their needs is critical, given that 

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated these stakeholders are the first responders and 

key to effective disaster response and recovery. Finally, it is clear that Congressional oversight has been and will continue to be a key driver in accelerating DHS’s 

efforts to be better prepared to respond to and manage national incidents. 

DHS’s Four Multi-Agency Operations Centers Have Unique Missions and 

Responsibilities, but Also Have Opportunities to Enhance Collaboration 

In our October 2006 report on DHS multi-agency operations centers, we found 

that they were not unnecessarily redundant in that they have distinct missions but 

also contribute to the larger effort, carried out by the National Operations Center, 

to provide national situational awareness and incident management across DHS. In 

terms of key collaborative practices, DHS had implemented one practice—leveraging 

its resources—by having staff from multiple agencies work together at the four operations centers, but could take advantage of other relevant practices we have found 

to be important to enhancing and sustaining collaboration among federal agencies. 

We also reported that the establishment of the Operations Directorate provided 

DHS with an opportunity to more consistently implement these practices. As of 

June 2007, DHS had taken some actions but had not yet implemented our recommendations for several reasons, including the stated concern that the Operations 

Directorate does not have authority over component centers. Nevertheless, we continue to see merit in the wider use of the key collaborative practices we identified 

and a role for the Directorate to encourage their use across centers. 

The Centers Do Not Define and Articulate Common Outcomes and Joint 

Strategies, a Key Practice Intended to Enhance and Sustain Collaboration 

At the time of our review, the three DHS components responsible for the four 

multi-agency centers had not developed or documented common goals or joint strategies that incorporated all the agencies within the centers and that our work has 

shown could, in turn, enhance collaboration among these agencies. Officials at the 

multi-agency operations centers we visited said they did consider formally documenting working agreements but concluded it was not essential since all of the 

agencies involved were part of DHS. While this may be true, documenting common 

outcomes can provide a compelling rationale for agencies to collaborate and docuVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
25 

8Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Office of Inspections and Special Reviews, An Assessment of the Proposal to Merge Customs and Border Protection with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, OIG–06–04 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 2005). 

menting joint strategies ensures everyone is working in concert toward the end results that collectively need to be achieved. Our work shows that agencies strengthen 

their commitment to collaborate when they articulate agreements in formal documents such as memorandums of understanding, interagency guidance, or interagency planning documents. 

Last year, officials from the National Operations Center said that the lack of formal agreements is a reflection of the speed with which the center was established 

and the inherent flexibility offered to DHS agencies in order to get them to staff 

the operation center positions. While recognizing the benefits of such flexibility, it 

is important to balance the trade-off of ensuring that all participants understand 

the common goals and objectives to be achieved. In addition, within DHS, external 

and internal memorandums of agreement and other interagency joint operating 

plans are often used to document common organizational goals and how agencies 

will work together. For example, the Office of Investigations at Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection’s border patrol have a 

memorandum of understanding that governs the interaction between the two components as they carry out their missions to investigate and reduce vulnerabilities in 

the customs and immigration systems and to protect our borders, respectively, and 

formalizes roles and responsibilities in order to enhance information sharing. In addition, the DHS Office of Inspector General has reported that memorandums of understanding are valuable tools for establishing protocols for managing a nationallevel program between two organizations.8 For these reasons, we recommended that 

the Operations Directorate develop and provide guidance to the three agencies that 

sponsor the operations centers to help ensure they define common goals and joint 

strategies that incorporate all the agencies working at the centers. 

In our recent follow-up to our recommendations, DHS officials said that they had 

not issued such guidance, but pointed to several other post-Katrina actions DHS 

was taking that it believes are examples of common strategies and plans that are 

put into action daily and that enhance collaboration, and thus, situational awareness. For example, DHS said it has developed national reporting requirements and 

a coordinated national reporting chain for submitting homeland security information 

during a crisis, in part in response to Hurricane Katrina lessons learned. The national reporting requirements and reporting chain is to define procedures that component centers, among others, are to follow for inputting and confirming information 

used during a crisis. 

In addition, our past work has demonstrated that agencies should involve nonfederal partners, key clients, and stakeholders in defining and articulating outcomes 

and decision-making. Along those lines, DHS has created or plans to create several 

working groups with state, local, and private sector members to enhance information flow for incident management, and facilitate decision-making at higher levels. 

For example, the Director of the Office of Operations said DHS plans to establish 

a HSIN Advisory Council to provide a forum for providing feedback on ways to improve information sharing among communities of interest. 

The Centers Are at Varying Stages of Assessing Staffing Needs; Doing So 

Could Help to Ensure Centers Have Enough Staff to Leverage Resources to 

Increase Efficiency 

The extent to which officials responsible for managing the four multi-agency operations centers had conducted needs assessments to determine the staffing requirements of each center as a means to leverage resources varied at the time of our review. For example, CBP officials conducted an evaluation in June 2005 that addressed the Air and Marine Operations Center’s capabilities and continuing staffing 

needs related to its personnel, but it did not clearly address the need for, or responsibilities of, U.S. Coast Guard staff assigned to the center. Transportation Security 

Operations Center and National Operations Center officials said they had not documented a needs analysis for staff from other agencies. They said they viewed crossagency staffing as a historical edict based on a general assumption that such expertise was needed to fulfill the mission of their operations center, and believed that 

the supporting agency providing the staff best knew the staffing requirements to 

fulfill its role at the centers. Our work has shown that identifying and leveraging 

resources, including human resources, ensures efficiencies and that the functions of 

a multi-agency operations center are not compromised by the workforce limitations 

of a single agency. 

26 

9GAO. High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO–07–310 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2007). 

Since our report, DHS said it is updating mission requirements for the Operations 

Directorate and will subsequently assess the National Operations Center’s staffing 

needs, although DHS did not say when that assessment would be completed. On the 

other hand, Officials at the National Targeting Center and the Transportation Security Operations Center told us they have not assessed cross-component staffing 

needs because they considered such assessments to be the responsibility of the agency providing staff. Nevertheless, we maintain that such assessments continue to be 

useful to ensure efficiency and that operations centers have the correct mix of staff 

to perform their missions. Therefore, while we understand that the Operations Directorate has taken the position it does not have control over the component center 

resources, we maintain that providing guidance to component agencies to assist 

them in conducting such staffing needs assessments would allow the component 

sponsoring the center to leverage resources more efficiently to meet the operational 

needs of the center. 

Not All Centers Have Established a Definition of Watchstander Roles and 

Responsibilities for All Agencies at Each Center; Doing So Would Help Ensure Staff Understand Each Others’ Duties during Emergencies 

Our work has shown that collaborating agencies should work together to define 

and agree on who will do what and how they will organize their joint and individual 

efforts, and that this facilitates decision-making. Agencies use handbooks, charters, 

standard operating procedures, and other methods to document these agreements. 

We found, however, that while three of the four multi-agency operations centers had 

developed descriptions for the watchstander position staffed by their own agency at 

the time of our review, only one center—the Air and Marine Operations Center— 

had developed a position description for staff assigned to the center from another 

DHS agency. For example, at this center, officials require that Coast Guard staff 

meet a standardized set of requirements for radar watchstanders. The other centers 

relied on the components that provide staff to define their watchstanders’ roles and 

responsibilities. While we recognize components may be in the best position to define how their staff should contribute, we maintain that it is important that each 

watchstander’s position within a center be clearly defined and communicated so that 

staff understand not only their individual role, but each other’s responsibilities and 

span of control, as well as their expected joint contributions, most critically during 

major events. In addition, because of the potentially time-sensitive need for decisive 

action at 24/7/365 operations centers, it is important that the roles and responsibilities of watchstanders are described and understood by both the staff and the officials responsible for managing the operations centers to enhance and sustain collaboration. Further, a definition of the watchstander role and responsibilities is important for supporting agency officials who must make staffing decisions about assigning qualified and knowledgeable personnel to the centers. 

According to DHS, since our report, it has taken steps to further define the role 

and responsibilities of the watchstanders in its National Operations Center and documented them in its Standard Operating Procedures, as well as to develop Memoranda of Agreements with the components that will codify the role of the 

watchstanders they provide to the National Operations Center. Such an action, like 

that of the Air and Marine Operations Center with regard to Coast Guard 

watchstanders, helps ensure that the staff received from partnering organizations 

possess the necessary skills to support the operations center to which they are assigned. Given that DHS has recognized the importance of this key practice within 

these two instances, we continue to maintain it is important for DHS to ensure the 

other centers likewise have clearly defined and communicated the roles and responsibilities of watchstanders. 

DHS Has Taken Some Steps to Provide Centers with Standards, Policies, 

and Procedures, Especially for Information Sharing, to Operate across 

Agency Boundaries, but Challenges Remain 

Since January 2005, we have designated information sharing for homeland security a high-risk area because the federal government still faces formidable challenges in analyzing and disseminating key information among federal and other 

partners in a timely, accurate, and useful manner.9 Likewise, Hurricane Katrina 

demonstrated that the inability to share information during a disaster can impair 

the speed of response and recovery efforts. Each operations center shares information so as to understand threats, maintain situational awareness, and facilitate the 

management of responses to incidents. One of the key technical tools DHS has decided to use to provide for this information-sharing is the HSIN, and organizations 

27 

10GAO, Information Technology: Numerous Federal Networks Used to Support Homeland Security Need to Be Better Coordinated with Key State and Local Information-Sharing Initiatives, 

GAO–07–455 (Washington, D.C.: April 2007). 11Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Office of Information Technology, HSIN Could Support Information Sharing More Effectively, DHS/OIG–06–38 (Washington, D.C.: June 2006). 12Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, Office of Information Technology, Homeland Security Information Network Could Support Information Sharing More Effectively, OIG–06–38, June 2006. 

participating in multi-agency operations centers need to be connected to the network 

and have the training and guidance that enables its use, among other things. DHS 

implemented HSIN in 2004 and reports that 18,000 individuals across DHS, other 

federal agencies, as well as state and local government and private entities are authorized to use it. However, we, the DHS IG, and the department itself have identified continuing concerns with this system, which is used for sharing a variety of information, including law enforcement and emergency response information used to 

support situational awareness and incident response 

In April 2007, we reported 10 that DHS did not fully adhere to collaborative practices or Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance in coordinating its efforts to implement HSIN through state and local information-sharing initiatives. 

OMB guidance requires DHS to foster such coordination and collaboration as a 

means to improve government performance, including enhancing information sharing and avoiding duplication of effort. Key practices to help implement the guidance 

include establishing joint strategies and developing compatible policies and procedures to operate across agency boundaries. However, DHS did not fully adhere to 

these practices or guidance in coordinating its efforts on HSIN with key state and 

local stakeholders. As a result, the department faces the risk that, among other 

things, effective information sharing is not occurring and that its HSIN system may 

duplicate state and local capabilities. The department has efforts planned and underway to improve coordination and collaboration, but these efforts have just begun 

or are being planned with implementation milestones yet to be established. As a result, we made recommendations to the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure 

that HSIN is effectively coordinated with state and local government informationsharing initiatives. The Inspector General’s June 2006 report had similar findings 

that DHS did not provide adequate guidance, including clear information sharing 

processes, training, and reference materials, needed to effectively implement 

HSIN 11 so that stakeholders were sure of how to use the system. 

The HSIN program manager pointed to a number of initiatives being implemented to address these challenges. These actions include the issuance of a strategic 

framework and implementation plan, creation of a Mission Coordinating Committee 

to define component information requirements for the network, and, as mentioned 

previously, the planned establishment of a HSIN advisory committee comprised of 

experts, users, and other stakeholders involved in homeland security operations 

around the country. This committee is intended to provide DHS with comments and 

feedback on how the HSIN program can better meet user needs, examine DHS’s 

processes for deploying HSIN to the states, assess state resources, and determine 

how HSIN can coordinate with these resources. Nevertheless, the program manager 

also identified challenges in getting components to participate in the process of identifying user needs, and said that the department still faced challenges in gaining 

widespread acceptance and use of this tool. Furthermore, one component that sponsors a key portion of HSIN, the Preparedness Directorate, is considering whether 

to continue to support and maintain portals to provide connectivity to private sector 

owners and operators of critical infrastructure sites, or whether to pursue other alternatives, raising questions about the overall utility of HSIN. Finally, the DHS Office of Inspector General plans to conduct an evaluation of the HSIN beginning later 

this year as a follow-up to its 2006 report to determine the progress the Department 

has made in fixing the shortcomings identified.12

Three of Four Centers Had Not Developed Methods to Monitor and Evaluate the Results of Joint Efforts 

With the exception of the Air and Marine Operations Center, the multi-agency 

centers had not developed methods to monitor and evaluate the results of joint efforts at the time of our review, a key practice for ensuring collaboration. For example, the Office of Management and Budget’s assessment of the National Operations 

Center for 2005 determined that center officials had not established effective annual 

or long-term performance goals, a first step in an effective performance management 

and measurement process. Nor were performance measures or other mechanisms in 

place to monitor and evaluate the joint efforts of multiple DHS agencies at the 

28 

Transportation Security Operations Center and the National Targeting Center. 

Without annual goals and a means to measure performance, it is difficult for an organization to determine how well it is functioning and identify how it could be more 

effective. Likewise, our work has shown that developing performance measures and 

mechanisms can help management, key decision makers, and both stakeholders and 

customers obtain feedback to improve operational effectiveness and policy. 

To date, DHS has not provided guidance to the multiagency centers to help implement mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the results of collaborative efforts. However, as we further discuss later in this statement, the Operations Directorate said 

the National Operations Center, and, as relevant, other centers, have participated 

in, and will be participating in, exercises to test some of the changes the centers 

have implemented. These exercises provide a means to monitor and evaluate collaboration during real or hypothetical events, and the after-action reviews or lessons 

learned reviews conducted such as Katrina after-action reports and recommendations, as well as its own exercises and lessons learned, such as the exercises to test 

and revise HSIN and the Common Operating Picture (COP). The center director 

also described several new inter-agency groups designed to improve operations that 

also offer a means to monitor and evaluate results as well. 

The Centers Are at Various Stages of Using Joint Agency Planning and Reporting to Reinforce Accountability for Collaborative Efforts 

In our prior work, we determined that neither DHS nor the component agencies 

responsible for managing multi-agency operations centers consistently discussed, or 

included a description of, the contribution of the centers’ collaborative efforts in the 

components’ strategic or annual performance plans and reports. Our work has 

shown that federal agencies can use these plans and reports as tools to drive collaboration with other agencies and partners, as well as to establish complementary, 

consistent, and reinforcing goals and strategies for achieving results. Published strategic and annual performance plans and reports make agencies answerable for collaboration, and help to ensure that Congress has the information necessary to monitor, oversee, and effectively make investment decisions. 

In terms of using strategic and performance plans to reinforce collaboration, the 

most recent DHS strategic plan, issued in 2004, neither included a discussion of performance goals for, nor addressed the joint operations of, the multi-agency centers. 

On the other hand, the Air and Marine Operations Center’s strategic plan for 2005 

generally discussed the importance of strengthening collaboration with other component agencies and included a goal to strengthen component agency partnerships to 

maximize homeland security strategies. 

In terms of using published reports to increase accountability for collaboration, 

CBP’s 2005 annual report on the operations of the National Targeting Center did 

include a section dedicated to the contributions of personnel from other DHS components. But, reports from the other components that manage the centers did not address the roles and contributions of supporting agencies in accomplishing the centers’ missions. Thus agencies are missing an opportunity to reinforce the value of 

partner agency contributions and investments. Likewise, reports from the DHS 

agencies that provide staff to these centers also did not address their participation 

in their own performance reports. 

DHS’s Operations Directorate Has Given Priority to Fixing the Problems 

that Hurricane Katrina Exposed 

According to DHS officials, the Operations Directorate and the National Operations Center have been focused on responding to the congressional and administration reports and corresponding recommendations generated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These reports pointed to a number of failures and problems attributed to the predecessor to the National Operations Center—the Homeland Security 

Operations Center—including unclear roles and responsibilities; problems with the 

flow of information in and out of the center, especially to senior leadership; a lack 

of planning; problems confirming and validating information, and clarifying conflicting information; and untimely reporting. The reports concluded that as a result, 

senior leaders in the Department and the Administration were not aware of problems with the levees and flooding as early as they should have been. To address 

these problems, the after action reports made a series of recommendations, including the: 

• Creation of a national operations center to provide national situational awareness, facilitate incident management, and a common operating picture; 

• Establishment of a permanent planning element for incident management 

and a national planning and execution system; and 

• Creation of a national reporting system as well as national information requirements and a reporting chain. 

29 

In response to these concerns, among others, DHS reported that it made a series 

of changes to its operations, organization, and procedures for sharing information 

in order to maintain situational awareness and provide for incident management. 

The changes included giving priority to improving coordination with external stakeholders, such as other federal agencies, state and local entities who are the first responders and ultimately manage recovery efforts, and its own components and their 

respective operations centers. The DHS National Operations Center staff with 

whom we spoke maintained that implementing these changes could in turn create 

an environment where the components and centers may be more disposed to implementing the key practices for improving collaboration that our work has identified. 

To address problems with collecting, analyzing, and timely disseminating of critical information during an incident that Katrina exposed, DHS officials said the Operations Directorate and the National Operations Center established several initiatives within the last year or so. Among other things, these initiatives included a new 

notification system aimed at providing protocols for sharing information on a graduated scale (from steady state to awareness, concern, and finally urgency). The Operations Directorate and the National Operations Center also defined a reporting 

structure, ranging from more real-time, unvetted information available from and to 

a wide range of stakeholders to reports intended to be more complete, vetted and 

validated through designated lead agencies and higher-level summaries geared for 

more senior leadership. DHS has initially developed these protocols and processes 

for sharing information for hurricane response and recovery and is expanding them 

to other scenarios and concerns. 

One other major DHS initiative to better share information for situational awareness and decision support that responds to key post-Katrina recommendations also 

depends on HSIN. DHS has created the Common Operating Picture within HSIN 

as a web-based tool designed to be available to all HSIN users, including key federal, state, and joint field office homeland security partners, to provide the information needed to make critical decisions during crises. Initially, DHS created COP 

templates to address hurricane disasters in time for the 2006 hurricane season. The 

tool includes, among other things, current summaries of specific situations, the location and operational status of critical infrastructure, media reports, and streaming 

video from the field that provides a real-time picture of developments, especially at 

an incident site, to enhance situational awareness. DHS also has created COP 

Training Teams that provide training and technical support to DHS components, 

and other partners. DHS said training was provided to 17 states on the Gulf and 

East coasts in 2006, the most hurricane-prone areas of the country. However, DHS 

is still resolving operational issues with COP. For example, DHS reported in January 2007 that a comprehensive backup capability for the COP was under development but that the Department was prepared for contingencies related to power, telecommunications and server outages. DHS also reported that it continues to develop 

information requirements for use in other scenarios, such as pandemics and incidents involving nuclear devices, among others, as well as to further refine the system. 

DHS officials said they have created several new working groups and organizational entities within the Operations Directorate or National Operations Center 

aimed at improving capabilities. The new units include: 

• Senior Leadership Group. It is comprised of key DHS officials across the 

major components and intended to provide a forum for the Secretary to obtain 

critical advice from those with the most direct incident management responsibilities, to communicate decisions, to facilitate the integration and coordination of intradepartmental operational missions, activities, and programs at the 

headquarters level; and to assist in resolving intradepartmental issues. The 

group convenes as necessary, such as during an actual incident or major exercise, although the Secretary or the Director of Operations Coordination may 

convene the group at any time. 

• Incident Management Planning Team—consisting of 53 members drawn from 

22 DHS components, 25 partner departments or agencies, and the American 

Red Cross—that has begun the coordination of existing plans and the use of resources for domestic disasters. According to DHS officials, the team is developing plans for the most likely, and then the most dangerous, of the National 

Planning Scenarios—the 15 all-hazards planning scenarios for use in national, 

federal, state, and local homeland security preparedness activities that are representative of the range of potential terrorist attacks and natural disasters and 

the related impacts that face our nation. 

• Disaster Situational Awareness Teams. These teams are to be comprised of 

field staff from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement since they can be more 

30 

13Department of Homeland Security, National Capital Region Housing Master Plan: Building 

a Unified Department, Washington D.C., October 2006. 

easily deployed and are to be at a site within 24 hours to provide situational 

awareness reporting and other assistance. 

• Crisis Action Teams. These multi-agency teams, whose membership overlaps 

in part with the new planning teams, are to provide interagency incident management capabilities and to, among other things, recommend courses of action, 

help prioritize incidents and resources, and serve as a central point for information collection, evaluation, and coordination, especially for complex or multiple 

incidents. 

Finally, DHS has completed a study of its operational capabilities and gaps to 

guide its future mission and initiatives. Called the Operations Mission Blueprint, 

DHS operations staff said the results are still under review; therefore, that they 

could not provide us with a copy. Part of this study includes a plan to consolidate 

DHS operations centers in headquarters and its components in a facility located at 

the St. Elizabeth’s West Campus in Washington, D.C.13 The plan cites a number 

of organizational benefits to collocating facilities, including enhancing collaboration 

by bringing together a large number of DHS executives and line employees currently dispersed across the region. 

While DHS provided us with background briefings, some supporting documentation, and some after action reports on the initiatives we have outlined, we did not 

evaluate the extent to which they have been implemented and are effective at addressing the problems Katrina identified, in part because they are so new and in 

some cases still concepts. DHS officials themselves, however, identified some challenges and next steps in implementation. These include, for example, continuing to 

outreach to and better integrate DHS components as well as other stakeholders in 

planning and implementation, such as state, local, and private sector partners. 

As to this latter challenge, DHS has tested several of its new initiatives, such as 

the COP, through daily use, as well as interagency exercises. For example, through 

an exercise conducted last year, the National Operations Center identified opportunities to improve implementation of the COP. DHS recently completed two other exercises and plans additional exercises this fall and over the next two years that can 

also provide helpful performance information. We agree that the use of exercises, 

and more importantly the after-action and lessons learned analyses and recommendations to fix identified problems, are good methods to help determine how 

well initiatives are working, especially when testing under live, real-time circumstances is not possible. 

Complementing this with more systematic performance measures and ways to obtain feedback from key users and stakeholders on how well the initiatives meet 

their needs would also be helpful. For example, officials noted that there are systematic methods for evaluating what has been achieved. The objectives of the HSIN 

implementation include providing measurable performance metrics as well as obtaining stakeholder feedback through its new Advisory Committee, when constituted. Implementation of the system is to be based on both agency and industry 

best practices. Following through on implementation of these types of measures and 

feedback loops is particularly important for state and local stakeholders, as Katrina 

demonstrated, since they are the first responders and key to effective incident response planning and implementation. 

Concluding Observations 

Our prior work demonstrated that the three component multi-agency operations 

centers we reviewed have a critical mission to meet for their own agencies, as well 

as a common mission to support the National Operations Center, the key hub for 

sharing information on nationwide situational awareness and for coordinating federal support during major disasters. Centers rely on staff from multiple agencies to 

achieve their missions, so it is important that the centers can collaborate effectively 

among the agencies within a center. Our work provides a blueprint of key practices 

the centers could use to achieve this collaboration, and also demonstrates that they 

have opportunities to implement these practices more extensively. The payoff can 

include assurance that all staff clearly understands roles and responsibilities, especially during a crisis, and that centers have a common goal for achieving their joint 

missions, the right staff from across agencies to do so, and ways to evaluate results 

achieved and implement needed corrective actions. In turn, this can better position 

DHS, and the nation, to prevent, mitigate and respond to a critical event, help the 

Congress to fulfill its oversight and homeland security responsibilities, and help the 

department better integrate into a cohesive unit. While we understand that the Directorate does not control component centers and is reluctant to issue guidance to 

31 

them on ways to implement these best practices as we recommended, we continue 

to think that the Directorate can reinforce these practices through such guidance 

and example, not only as it works with external stakeholders, but also with its internal component centers. We believe the Directorate could be more proactive to accelerate implementation so that centers achieve anticipated benefits sooner given 

current priorities and available resources. 

We also understand that the department set its priorities to first focus on fixing 

the problems Katrina exposed, as the Congress and Administration tasked, and recognize that such focus has, and will continue to be, a key driver in effecting change 

to improve situational awareness and incident management capabilities at DHS. We 

also believe that the initiatives DHS is implementing in response appear to be the 

proper steps moving forward, given that they focus on better planning for disaster 

response and better information sharing, as well as include the necessary key players. However, while these initiatives are aimed at putting the right players, processes, protocols, and practices in place, both we and the department recognize that 

implementation is early, measures of effectiveness must still be put in place, and 

challenges must be overcome. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, this completes my prepared 

statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions that you or any members 

of the subcommittee may have at this time. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. I have been a little lax with the 

time, but that is because there are only two of us here, so I figure 

let you finish. So thank you. But try to keep your remarks within 

the 5 minutes, but as you can see, there is latitude as well. 

Thank you very much, Ms. Larence. 

Now, Colonel Ebbert for your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF COLONEL TERRY J. EBBERT, USMC, RET., 

DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND PUBLIC 

SAFETY, CITY OF NEW ORLEANS 

Colonel EBBERT. Mr. Chairman and committee members, it is a 

pleasure to appear today before this committee. I am currently 

serving as the director of Homeland Security for the city of New 

Orleans. My tenure predates Katrina and includes nearly 2 years 

of recovery since the storm. 

Your discussion today on maintaining a common operating picture at every level of government during emergency response is 

clearly vital, as situational awareness is the foundation of success 

in responding to major disasters. 

The failures of having accurate situational awareness had a negative impact on initial response to Katrina. Its shortfalls have been 

well documented, so there is little value in returning to the days 

of late August 2005. My thoughts are to the improvements made 

and the challenges still facing all of us who have the responsibility 

to respond to major emergencies. 

The topic areas important to situational awareness are: one, communications; two, mission and plans; three, logistics; and four, command, control and coordination. 

The foundation of multiple layered situational awareness is good 

communication. This encompasses personal face-to-face, voice and 

data communications. One of the difficult issues of poor communications during Katrina has been addressed in Southeast Louisiana with the operational testing of our new Region I interoperable radio system. We are one of the only major urban areas with 

a shared radio system. We are able to talk across six parishes with 

over 40 local, state and Federal agencies on one shared system. No 

agency owns the system and it is managed by a governing board 

32 

made up of one member from each of the parishes and one state 

representative. 

I want to single out Secretary Chertoff for his grant and contract 

technical support. Without his support and FEMA loaned radios, 

this system would never have been deployed. We truly have one of 

the finest systems in the Nation and it has already improved our 

situational awareness on daily issues, major events, and emergency 

exercises. This new tool, along with additional Federal, state and 

FCC backup, has ensured that we will be able to communicate in 

a future crisis. 

Formal local, state and Federal emergency plans form an important leg in our ability to maintain a common operating picture 

throughout emergencies. If everyone understands the mission and 

how they intend to carry it out, constant conversation is not required. All of our plans at every level have been improved over the 

last 3 years. Technical assistance through the Department of 

Homeland Security contractors has been a tremendous assistance 

to me and my staff because they brought with them the understanding of the requirements of all levels of government. 

Areas which need continued improvement are: understanding at 

every level of government what capabilities-based planning is all 

about; and two, the need for increased emphasis on mission—which 

I qualify as risk management—versus compliance or risk avoidance, and the importance of those in planning for initial response. 

The third leg of obtaining a common operating picture is the understanding that this is a logistics war. We will win or lose on our 

ability to save lives, stabilize infrastructure, and provide security 

based on our ability to manage people and material. We have no 

national logistics system which ties together local, state and Federal agencies. 

It is a matter of concern that this nation has not developed such 

a system. If we created this capability, everyone at every level 

would have at their fingertips a complete status of all logistics. 

This information is the vital situational awareness upon which 

emergency managers must have to make decisions if we are to prevent failure during the next major emergency response. We have 

a logistics system in the military and we must develop a counterpart for universal use in civilian response. 

Command and control up the chain of command is a somewhat 

hazy subject for those of us at the local level. We have expended 

major resources to ensure that we stay current with the national 

incident management system. This has assisted greatly in improving our command coordination at every level. It is a sound foundation that has already produced a much improved staff functioning. 

We utilize incident command, unified command, and area command, but when we get to the senior level at the joint field office, 

it shifts to a coordination agency. In major disasters, the mission 

requirement is greater than the capacity to respond. I don’t believe 

that situation can be coordinated. Somebody has to be in charge 

and somebody has to be able to direct. 

In closing, I would like to state that the Department of Homeland Security has continued to support Southeast Louisiana and we 

are improving in every capacity. I do think we must work together 

to solve the critical issues I addressed earlier. We are a great naVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
33 

tion with the intellectual and material capacity to provide for the 

safety and security of our citizens. 

Thank you very much for the honor of testifying today. 

[The statement of Colonel Ebbert follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COL TERRY J. EBBERT, USMC (RET) 

Mr. Chairman and Committee members, it is a pleasure to appear today before 

the Committee on Homeland Security. I am COL Terry J. Ebbert, USMC (Ret) and 

currently serve as the director of Homeland Security for the City of New Orleans. 

I have the responsibility for the Police Department, Fire Department, Office of 

Emergency Preparedness and during emergencies Emergency Medical Services 

(EMS). My tenure predates Katrina and includes nearly two years of recovery since 

the storm. Your discussion today on maintaining common operating picture at every 

level of government during emergency response is clearly vital, as situational awareness is the foundation of success in responding to any major disaster. 

The failures of having accurate situational awareness had a negative impact on 

initial response to Katrina. Its shortfalls have been well documented so there is little value in returning to the days of late August 2005. My thoughts are to the improvements made and the challenges still facing all of us who have the responsibility to respond to major emergencies. 

The topic areas important to Situational Awareness are: 

1. Communications 

2. Mission/Plans 

3. Logistics 

4. Command, Control and Coordination 

The foundation of multiple layered situational awareness is good communication. 

This encompasses personal face-to-face, voice and data. One of the difficult issues 

of poor communications during Katrina has been addressed in Southeast Louisiana 

with the operational testing of our new Region 1 Interoperability Radio System. We 

are one of the only major urban areas with a shared radio system. We are able to 

talk across six parishes with over 40 local, state and federal agencies on one shared 

system. No agency owns the system and it is managed by a governing board made 

up of one member from each of the parishes and one state representation. 

I want to single out Secretary Chertoff for his grant and contract technical support. Without his support and FEMA loaned radios, this system would never have 

been developed. We truly have one of the finest systems in the nation and it has 

already improved our Situational Awareness on daily issues, major events and 

emergency exercises. This new tool along with additional federal, state and FCC 

backup has ensured we will be able to communicate in a future crisis. 

Formal local, state and federal emergency plans form an important leg in our ability to maintain a common operating picture during emergencies. If everyone understands each other’s mission, and how they intend to carry it out, constant conversation is not required. All of our plans at every level have improved over the last three 

years. Technical assistance through Department of Homeland Security contractors 

has been a tremendous assistance because these contractors understand the requirements of all levels of government. Areas, which need continued improvement, are: 

• Understanding of ‘‘Capabilities Based Planning’’ 

• Need for increased emphasis on Mission (Risk Management) vs. Compliance 

(Risk Avoidance) in planning for initial response 

The third leg of obtaining a common operating picture is the understanding that 

emergency response is a ‘‘Logistics War’’. We will win or lose our ability to save 

lives, stabilize infrastructure, and provide security based upon our ability to manage 

people and material. We have no national Logistics system, which ties the local, 

state and federal agencies together. It is a matter of concern that this nation has 

not developed such a system. If we created such a capability, every one at every 

level would have at their fingertips, a complete status of all logistics. This information is the vital situational awareness upon which emergency managers must have 

to make decisions if we are to prevent failure, during the next major emergency response. We have a military logistics system and we must develop a counterpart for 

universal use in civilian response. 

Command and Control up the chain of command remains a hazy subject for those 

of us at the local level. We have expended major resources to ensure that we stay 

current with the National Incident Management System (NIMS). This has assisted 

greatly in improving our command coordination at every level. It is a sound foundation that has already produced a much improved staff functioning relationship. I believe we still have a shortfall in cases of catastrophic incidents. We utilize incident 

34 

command, unified command, area command, but when we get to the senior level 

(Joint Field Office) staff, it shifts to a coordination agency. In major disasters, the 

mission requirement is greater than the capability. I don’t believe that such a situation can be ‘‘coordinated’’, someone has to have the power to ‘‘direct’’. Someone has 

to be in charge. 

In closing, I would like to state the Department of Homeland Security has continued to support Southeast Louisiana and we are improving in every capacity. I do 

think we must continue to work together to solve the critical issues addressed earlier. We are a great country with the intellectual and material capacity to provide 

for the safety and security of our citizens. Thank you very much for the honor and 

opportunity to address this committee. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Colonel. 

And now we will turn to Mr. Darnell for his testimony. 

STATEMENT OF DARRELL DARNELL, DIRECTOR, DISTRICT OF 

COLUMBIA HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY 

MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. DARNELL. Good afternoon, Mr. Perlmutter, Ranking Member 

Rogers. I am pleased to have the opportunity to testify before you 

today about the District of Columbia’s perspective on the extent to 

which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has improved its 

ability to maintain situational awareness since Hurricane Katrina, 

as well as the district’s efforts to establish and maintain situational 

awareness and create a common operating picture. 

In the almost 6 years since the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon 

and the World Trade Center, the district and the national capital 

region have worked together, along with our Federal partners, to 

ensure that our city and our region are among the more prepared 

in the nation. We have responded by implementing planning, training and exercise activities that bring together district, Federal, 

state and local government entities to create a coordinated prevention, protection, response and recovery structure. 

The uniqueness of the national capital region demands coordination among a large city, two states, multiple local jurisdictions, and 

the three branches of the Federal Government. For the district, 

which functions as a city, a state and a county, this means developing coordination between the district and its neighboring states 

of Maryland and Virginia, between the district and the multiple jurisdictions of the NCR, as well as between the district and the multiple Federal agencies located within the city. 

This routine systematic collaboration is essential to the NCR on 

a day-to-day basis and absolutely critical to successful response to 

a major event on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. As part of our 

commitment to collaboration and coordination, NCR leaders established a senior policy group to lead decision making and coordination between local and state governments, as well as the Federal 

Government. 

This group works with our chief administrative officers who represent local government leadership to provide a coordinated and institutionalized process for defining and meeting needs across the 

region. 

The District of Columbia employs a number of interconnected 

systems to achieve and maintain situational awareness and establish a common operating picture with its regional partners, including the Federal Government. As a starting point, information flows 

into our EOCs, our emergency operations centers, through 911 sysVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
35 

tems and a variety of other methods, including a system that has 

been adapted from a civil defense application to natural hazards 

and terrorism warnings and alerts. 

The National Warning System, or NAWAS, is a 24-hour continuous private line telephone system that links Federal, state and 

local EOCs and was developed in the 1950’s to warn of an imminent enemy attack or accidental missile launch in the U.S. NAWAS 

is now used routinely to convey information about natural and 

manmade hazards, as well as to coordinate responses to day-to-day 

events. 

NAWAS is comprised of segments and the local portion is known 

as WAWAS or the Washington Area Warning System. DC’s homeland security and emergency management agency serves as a network control for all users in the national capital region, and coordinates all requests for the addition of warnings to the system. As 

such, the district serves as both a hub and a conduit of information 

between and among states and jurisdictions across the nation, as 

well as the Federal Government. 

My agency, HSEMA, and the surrounding states, jurisdictions 

and Federal partners, use WAWAS on a daily basis, demonstrating 

its worth while simultaneously preparing every day for an event as 

devastating as Hurricane Katrina. 

Another piece of the puzzle, and one implemented after August 

2005, is WebEOC. WebEOC is a tool designed to achieve a common 

operation picture among diverse agencies and jurisdictions. All of 

the NCR jurisdictions, as well as several dozen Federal agencies, 

including the DHS, DHS’s FEMA, the United States Secret Service, 

and the Coast Guard, have joined the network and are able to 

quickly and easily share information in real-time. 

WebEOC users have the option to post information relevant to 

the region to a common page that participant EOCs can all see. 

This system is the primary vehicle for sharing information and 

achieving situational awareness in the national capital region on a 

daily basis. 

Finally, the district is in the process of establishing a fusion center for information sharing and analysis. The ultimate goal of the 

fusion center will be to provide a mechanism where law enforcement, public safety and private partners can come together with a 

common purpose and improve the ability to safeguard our homeland and prevent criminal activity. By routinely analyzing disparate pieces of information, the fusion center will be a major contributor to enhanced situational awareness and achieving a common operating picture. 

The response to Hurricane Katrina exposed a number of areas 

for improvement at all levels of government, even for those of us 

who were tangentially involved. Since that time, we have worked 

closely with DHS to close gaps and improve existing prevention, 

protection, response and recovery protocols. In an effort to work 

closely with DHs to embrace the lessons learned from Hurricane 

Katrina, three successes stand out: full staffing of personnel in 

FEMA region III and in the Federal coordinating officers corps, as 

well as ongoing revisions to the national response plan. 

To that end, we in the national capital region are pleased to see 

FEMA’s region III headquarters fully staffed and have a full comVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:07 Jul 22, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-51\48925.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
36 

plement of FCOs. We have been working closely with our DHS 

partners to refine plans and procedures and ensure that our staffs 

are trained appropriately and participate in regular exercises. 

I have more to say, but my time is up. Thank you. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. If you would like an additional minute, please 

go ahead. 

Mr. DARNELL. Just 1 minute. Thank you. 

While we have noticed improvements since the National Operations Center was established to coordinate and integrate the national response and provide a common operating picture, we believe 

there is still room for progress. 

One of the early challenges in homeland security in general, and 

with situational awareness in particular, was the lack of information flow between the Federal Government and state and local governments. The dearth of information most acutely affected the district as the seat of the Federal Government and the national capital region, home of the numerous Federal agencies. 

While the reluctance to share information is gradually being 

overcome, we are now facing a different challenge: that of information redundancy. We often receive information from multiple 

sources within DHS, which can lead to information overload. 

Since the initial and arguably most difficult aspect of the information sharing challenge has been addressed, we are looking forward to working with our Federal partners to establish guidelines 

and protocols to streamline the flow of information. We believe 

minimizing redundancy and ensuring the accuracy of the information are the essential goals that we should be trying to achieve. 

While achieving situational awareness relies heavily upon established personal relationships, practice, policies and procedures, we 

are all dependent upon technology to enable efficient and effective 

information sharing. 

To that end, it would be helpful for DHS to continue to work toward establishing guidelines and criteria for interoperable communications technology. While the authorized equipment list and the 

standardized equipment list are useful tools, an evaluation of continually evolving technology—sort of a Consumer Reports-like approach—would be invaluable. 

Further, this availability of guidelines and resulting research 

and analysis would encourage consumers at the state and local levels to invest in technology that enables interoperability between 

and among jurisdictions, states and the Federal Government. 

I would like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before 

you today on this important issue. I am available for any questions 

that you may have. Thank you for the additional time. 

[The statement of Mr. Darnell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DARRELL L. DARNELL

Good morning, Chairman Carney and members of the subcommittee. I am Darrell 

L. Darnell, Director of the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency 

Management Agency (HSEMA). I’m pleased to have the opportunity to testify before 

you today about the District of Columbia’s perspective on the extent to which the 

U. S. Department of Homeland Security has improved its ability to maintain situational awareness since Hurricane Katrina as well as the District’s efforts to establish and maintain situational awareness and create a common operating picture. 

HSEMA’s mission is to administer a comprehensive, community-based emergency 

management program in partnership with residents, businesses and visitors to the 

37 

District of Columbia. The goal is to save lives, protect property and safeguard the 

environment. 

I have 30 years of military, federal and private sector experience, including positions at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Community Oriented Policing 

Service (COPS), and at the Department’s Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support (OSLDPS). I also have served as Director of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Headquarters Operational Integration Staff’s 

Preparedness Division. Additionally, I was a 2006 Senior Fellow at the George 

Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. 

Since assuming leadership of HSEMA on March 19 of this year, I have been involved in a broad range of activities, including strengthening relationships with 

community leaders and members of the private sector as well as continuing to work 

with our regional and federal partners to ensure that the District and all of the 

stakeholders in the National Capital Region (NCR) maintain the level of cooperation 

and collaboration that has enabled us to successfully address the myriad public safety and preparedness issues we face in the NCR. 

Collaboration and Coordination in the National Capital Region 

The National Capital Region is composed of the District of Columbia; Montgomery 

and Prince Georges counties in Maryland; Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince 

William counties in Virginia; and all cities in Maryland or Virginia within those 

counties. 

In the almost six years since the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World 

Trade Center, the District and the NCR have worked together along with our federal partners to ensure that our city and our region are among the most prepared 

in the nation. We have recognized the unique challenges resulting from living in our 

target-rich region and we have responded by implementing planning, training and 

exercise activities that bring together District, federal, state and local government 

entities to create a coordinated prevention, protection, response and recovery structure. 

In August 2002, the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, the Mayor of the District 

of Columbia and the governors of Maryland and Virginia convened a homeland security summit to bring together local, state, regional and national leaders in the NCR 

to announce eight commitments to action that had been developed and agreed upon 

by senior-level federal officials, the mayor and the two governors. 

The eight commitments are: 

• Citizen involvement in preparedness; 

• Decision-making and coordination; 

• Emergency protective measures; 

• Infrastructure protection; 

• Media relations and communication; 

• Mutual aid; 

• Terrorism prevention; and 

• Training and exercises. 

In the five years since the summit, the NCR and its federal partners have been 

successful in realizing many of the goals outlined in these commitments. Of particular relevance to today’s discussion is commitment two: decision-making and coordination. 

The uniqueness of the NCR demands coordination among a large city, two states, 

multiple local jurisdictions and the three branches of the federal government. For 

the District, which functions as a city, a state and a county, this means developing 

coordination between the District and its neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia, between the District and the multiple jurisdictions of the NCR as well as between the District and the multiple federal agencies located within the city. This 

routine, systematic collaboration is essential to the NCR on a day-to-day basis and 

absolutely critical to successful response to a major event on the scale of Hurricane 

Katrina. 

As part of the NCR commitment to collaboration and coordination, the NCR leaders established a Senior Policy Group to lead decision-making and coordination between local and state governments, as well as the federal government. This group 

works with the region’s Chief Administrative Officers, who represent local government leadership, to provide a coordinated and institutionalized process for defining 

and meeting needs across the region. 

Specific to situational awareness, the Council of Governments’ Emergency Managers Committee established a subcommittee known as the NCR Operations Center 

Coordination Group in August 2006. In addition to the NCR jurisdictions, current 

membership includes DHS and the Department of Defense’s U.S. Army Military 

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38 

gion. Through this standing body, the practitioners at the state, local and federal 

levels regularly seek ways to enhance information sharing and collaboration. Since 

the technological impediments to information sharing have largely been conquered, 

this body has turned its attention to establishing common agreements between 

Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) about what is expected in an incident and 

ensuring verification and dissemination processes. 

This subcommittee and other bodies have worked continuously to achieve the ultimate goal of this systematic, day-to-day coordination: situational awareness that 

leads to a common operating picture among all key stakeholders. As such, achieving 

and maintaining situational awareness has been an area of focused, dedicated effort 

since 2002. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina provided an unnecessary reminder of the 

criticality of the efforts to routinely share information to establish a common operating picture. Similarly, we have worked with our federal partners to avoid situations where errant aircraft may be shot down within the District borders but District officials not notified and where federal facilities such as the Capitol are evacuated without notification of District officials. While isolated incidents have proved 

a challenge, on the whole, the District, the National Capital Region and DHS have 

made great progress toward the goal of achieving and maintaining situational 

awareness. 

Achieving Situational Awareness 

The District of Columbia employs a number of interconnected systems to achieve 

and maintain situational awareness and establish a common operating picture with 

its regional partners, including the federal government. As a starting point, information flows into EOCs through 911 systems and a variety of other methods, including a system that has been adapted from a civil defense application to natural 

hazard and terrorism warning and alerts. The National Warning System (NAWAS), 

a 24-hour continuous private line telephone system that links federal, state and 

local EOCs, was developed in the 1950s to warn of an imminent enemy attack or 

accidental missile launch on the U.S. NAWAS is now used routinely to convey information about natural and man-made hazards as well as to coordinate responses to 

day-to-day events. 

NAWAS is comprised of segments, and the local portion is known as WAWAS, the 

Washington Area Warning System. DC’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency serves as the network control for all users in the NCR and coordinates all requests for the addition of warnings to the system. As such, the District 

serves as both a hub and conduit of information between and among states and jurisdictions across the nation as well as the federal government. HSEMA—and the 

surrounding states, jurisdictions and federal partners—use WAWAS on a daily 

basis, demonstrating its worth while simultaneously preparing every day for an 

event as devastating as Hurricane Katrina. 

Another piece of the puzzle—and one implemented after August 2005—is a tool 

designed to achieve a common operating picture among diverse agencies and jurisdictions called WebEOC. All of the NCR jurisdictions, as well as several dozen federal partners—including DHS’s FEMA, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Coast 

Guard—have joined the network and are able to quickly and easily share real-time 

information. WebEOC users have the option to post information relevant to the region to a common page that participant EOCs can see. This system is the primary 

vehicle for sharing information and achieving situational awareness in the National 

Capital Region on a daily basis. 

While WebEOC is used throughout the region for day-to-day operations, it can 

provide a specific forum for collaboration during a major event. Specific agencies 

and jurisdictions are granted access to a customized site where event-specific information is exchanged among those with a need to know, enhancing capability while 

protecting sensitive information. 

Expanding beyond the EOCs, information is shared widely through the Regional 

Incident Communication and Coordination System (RICCS), which is used to provide immediate text notification and update information during a major crisis or 

emergency to those not physically located in an EOC. RICCS provides alerts, notifications, and updates via email, cell phone, pager, and wireless device. RICCS ensures that situational awareness is not limited to those in command centers and, 

by including key players in the field, broadens the exchange of information. 

An additional, crucial element of situational awareness is public messaging. Because of the unique relationship between the National Capital Region and the federal government, managing public information in a way that ensures adherence to 

the joint information system is essential. Regional Emergency Support Function 15 

(RESF–15) includes public information officers from NCR jurisdictions as well as 

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39 

ropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the American Red Cross and the Board 

of Trade. 

The DHS Office of Public Affairs has provided RESF–15 members with key contact information and initial emergency coordination procedures for use during incidents and emergencies of all types. Additionally, Public Information Officers (PIOs) 

have access to the State Incident Communications Conference Line (SICCL), an 

emergency line maintained by DHS to share public information with all states. 

As part of the effort to promote a unified public message throughout the region, 

members of RESF–15 have created a virtual joint information system that allows 

them to share information and formulate messages collectively so that the goal of 

‘‘one message, many voices’’ is achieved. 

Finally, the District is in the process of establishing a fusion center for information sharing and analysis. The ultimate goal of the fusion center will be to provide 

a mechanism where law enforcement, public safety and private partners can come 

together with a common purpose and improve the ability to safeguard our homeland 

and prevent criminal activity. By routinely analyzing disparate pieces of information, the fusion center will be a major contributor to enhanced situational awareness 

and achieving a common operating picture. Integral to the success of the District’s 

fusion center is close, regular collaboration with existing fusion centers in our partner jurisdictions in the National Capital Region as well as with DHS’s National Operations Center. 

Working with DHS 

The response to Hurricane Katrina exposed a number of areas for improvement 

at all levels—federal, state and local—even for those of us who were only tangentially involved. Since that time, we have worked closely with DHS to close gaps and 

improve upon existing prevention, protection, response and recovery protocols. In 

the effort to work closely with DHS to embrace the lessons learned from Hurricane 

Katrina, three successes stand out: full staffing of personnel in FEMA Region III 

and in the Federal Coordinating Officers (FCO) corps as well as the ongoing revisions to the National Response Plan. 

In The Federal Response To Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, the White 

House recommends: ‘‘Below the headquarters level within DHS, we must build up 

the Department’s regional structures. . .Homeland security regional offices should 

be the means to foster State, local and private sector integration.’’ To that end, we 

in the National Capital Region have been pleased to see FEMA’s Region III headquarters fully staffed and have a full complement of FCOs. We have been working 

closely with our DHS partners to refine plans and procedures and ensure that our 

staffs are trained appropriately and are participating in regular exercises. 

Since August 2006, DC HSEMA has participated in four exercises with DHS that 

have included enhancing situational awareness and achieving a common operating 

picture as primary objectives. These exercises include: 

• FEMA Region III Hurricane Exercise—May 2006 

• TOPOFF 4 Command Post Exercise—June 2006 

• Tactical Communication Interoperability Plan (TCIP) Exercise—September 

2006 

• NCR Regional Response 07—April 2007 

These exercises all proved worthwhile and we look forward to continued nationallevel training and exercise opportunities. 

Areas for Improvement 

While we have noticed improvements since the National Operations Center (NOC) 

was established to coordinate and integrate the national response and provide a 

common operating picture, we believe there is still room for progress. One of the 

early challenges in homeland security in general, and with situational awareness in 

particular, was the lack of information flow between the federal government and the 

state and local governments. The dearth of information most acutely affected the 

District, as the seat of the federal government, and the National Capital Region, as 

the home of numerous federal agencies. While the reluctance to share information 

is gradually being overcome, we are now facing a different challenge: that of information redundancy. We often receive information from multiple sources within 

DHS, which can lead to information overload. 

Since the initial—and arguably most difficult—aspect of the information-sharing 

challenge has been addressed, we are looking forward to working with our federal 

partners to establish guidelines and protocols to streamline the flow of information. 

Minimizing redundancy and ensuring the accuracy of the information are essential, 

while vetting it and reducing duplication before dissemination are ongoing goals. 

While achieving situational awareness relies heavily upon established personal relationships, practiced policies and procedures, we are all dependent upon technology 

40 

to enable efficient and effective information sharing. To that end, it would be helpful 

for DHS to continue to work toward establishing guidelines and criteria for interoperable communications technology. While the Authorized Equipment List (AEL) 

and the Standardized Equipment List (SEL) are useful tools, an evaluation of continually evolving technology—a Consumer Reports-like approach—would be invaluable. Further, this availability of guidelines and resultant research and analysis 

would encourage consumers at the state and local levels to invest in technology that 

enables interoperability between and among jurisdictions, states and the federal 

government. 

I thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today on this important 

issue and am available for any questions you may have. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Darnell. 

I would now like to turn to Mr. Walker for your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES WALKER, JR., DIRECTOR, ALABAMA 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And a special thank you to Mr. Rogers, not just for the important 

work that you do on this committee, but for the leadership that you 

provide to the citizens of Alabama here in the Congress. It is a 

pleasure to be before you today, sir. 

Situational awareness is really relevant to where you stand. I 

spent 20 years in the United States Army and was convinced that 

a soldier standing in a post somewhere, that the rest of the Nation 

is there to support him, and that he is the frontlines for this country. Well, after our country was attacked on September 11, 2001, 

that dynamic changed just a bit. The defender of this country is not 

just a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. It is a police officer, a sheriff’s deputy, or a firefighter or emergency medical technician, a 911 

operator, and on and on and on. 

So as the director of homeland security for the state of Alabama, 

we are charged with the mission of what is it that we are doing 

to get the right equipment and the right information into the 

hands of the people that are at the tip of the spear. 

I also have the privilege of administering the state homeland security program family of grants. The Congress has been kind 

enough to send millions of dollars to the state of Alabama. We 

think we have used it wisely. 

One of the areas where we have seen a sea-change of growth in 

our state is in the area of improving situational awareness, and our 

ability to communicate with one another. 

If you read the 9/11 Commission report, two of the hijackers were 

stopped in a little town in Alabama, but the deputy pulled them 

over had no idea of knowing who they were or where they were 

headed. Situational awareness improvements occur when you have 

a system in Alabama now, where even in rural communities, a police officer can make a stop and use his personal digital assistant, 

his BlackBerry, his cell phone or any other mode available to him, 

and know who is facing and who that person is, their picture, 

where they live, their cars that are registered, who lives with them, 

et cetera. That is a sea-change of information as it relates to situational awareness for the cop on the street. 

For his supervisor, it is the ability for that police officer to be 

able to reach him via a reliable radio system so that his supervisor 

then in turn knows what he is faced with. So this is the way we 

back it up from the tip of the spear to the state level. 

41 

With our emergency management community, we have a Lotusbased software called the emergency management information 

tracking system that allows us to keep track of requests from our 

locals so that we know where personnel and resources are in the 

pipeline that can come to support the state. 

So for us, it is the ability of trying to take care of ourselves, and 

then in being able to turn around to a Federal partner and say, we 

can’t handle this in Alabama and we need your assistance and support. 

One of our newest flagship programs that I would like to tell my 

friend from Louisiana, his state just purchased last week, was a 

program developed in Alabama that is called Virtual Alabama. It 

uses a Google Earth platform. 

What we are able to do, sir, is take visualization pictures, GIS 

data that all counties fly around the country for tax parcel records, 

et cetera, but we are able to take these pictures and load them on 

a license that we have been given by Google, where we can firewall 

it and secure this information. We have a picture of what the state 

of Alabama looks like on the ground. 

Once you see that picture, you can start layering and tailoring 

information that is relevant to you in the county. If you are a sheriff, it is the location of every registered sex offender and whether 

or not where he is living violates his parole by being close to a 

school or a bus stop or a daycare center. If it is a firefighter, it is 

being able to draw in floor plans of schools and buildings, so that 

when you show up on the scene, you know what you are faced with. 

A most recent example was the tornadoes that affected us in Enterprise, Alabama. After Hurricane Katrina hit, my governor was 

incredibly frustrated because he wanted to see the pre-imagery, the 

imagery of Mobile County before the storm hit and mirror it up 

against the pictures that were taken after the storm passed 

through. We couldn’t do that. Had we had that information available, using a platform like Virtual Alabama, we could have provided assistance to the folks on the ground by knowing where their 

house was, what the tax assessed value, and we could start helping 

these folks get back on with their lives earlier. 

Since we have instituted Virtual Alabama, after the tornado in 

Enterprise, we had the before pictures of Enterprise High School, 

and then within 10 hours, we had the Civil Air Patrol up with a 

camera taking pictures and we could overlay the before picture 

with the after picture, and all of the tax data and tax records we 

could put on top, and the FEMA teams that come through writing 

checks can start making an immediate difference in the lives of displaced people. 

So it is an incredibly effective tool that really is only limited by 

the imagination of the users. So I can look at you and say, look, 

we are making positive impact in the lives of the first responders 

in our state today, using Virtual Alabama, improving our interoperable communications, giving better situational awareness to our 

criminal justice system, but there is still lots of work to do. 

So for all of the resources that you provide Alabama to tackle 

these problems, I thank you very much. I would ask you, don’t stop 

now. We have more work to do. There is much to be done, and I 

42 

appreciate the opportunity to share with you a handful of the 

things that we are doing in Alabama. 

I look forward to any questions that you might have, Mr. Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. Walker follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES M. WALKER, JR. 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

appear before you today. 

As Director of the Alabama Department of Homeland Security, one of my responsibilities is to administer the State Homeland Security Grant Program appropriated 

by Congress and managed through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

Since its creation on June 18, 2003, the Alabama Department of Homeland Security 

has administered four fiscal years of federal homeland security grant dollars totaling $115 million ($34.5 million in FY03, $36.8 million in FY04, $28.1 million in 

FY05, and $15.6 million in FY06). 

I would like to express my gratitude to the Congress, President Bush, and the 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the homeland security grants we’ve received in Alabama. It is my belief the receipt and responsible distribution of these 

grant funds in Alabama has saved lives and effectively served our citizens. Thank 

you for making these grants available. 

With homeland security grant dollars and the visionary leadership of Governor 

Bob Riley, Alabama has built 54 regional mutual aid teams to provide standardized 

prevention, response, and recovery capabilities. We’ve improved interoperable communications capabilities among public safety disciplines. We’ve exponentially improved information sharing and situational awareness within our criminal justice, 

law enforcement, emergency management, and public safety communities. We are 

able to provide specialized prevention and response equipment to any law enforcement agency in the state. We’ve conducted exercises and training events to test our 

capabilities, and we’ve built teams of stakeholders in each of our 67 counties so that 

everyone can contribute to making our citizens safer. 

The heart of our state homeland security program is having the tactics, techniques, and procedures in place that will ensure first responders and decision makers have the right information and the right equipment available when they need 

it. Advances in situational awareness and asset management have experienced a sea 

change of improvements in Alabama during the past four years. 

Within our response and recovery community, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency uses EMITS (Emergency Management Information Tracking System), 

a Lotus Notes-based software. 

EMITS provides a platform local and state agencies use to monitor operational information, make requests for personnel and resources, and track the status of existing requests for support. Situational awareness reports are forwarded to our Regional Operations Center in Thomasville, Georgia, daily or as requested. If we anticipate an incident cannot be met with existing state resources, a FEMA liaison is 

dispatched to our State Emergency Operations Center to coordinate the federal response. We believe it is imperative that the federal government not deploy assets 

or resources without first coordinating with the state. 

The ability for public safety officials to reliably communicate using radio networks 

is essential to gaining and maintaining a clear situational picture. Alabama has enhanced interoperable radio communications by upgrading existing systems and utilizing a common bridging platform to connect disparate radio systems across the 

state. Investing in one comprehensive statewide radio system with a common platform was not an affordable option for us. Instead, we leveraged technology by installing frequency bridges in each of Alabama’s 67 counties. This allows local agencies using different frequency bands to communicate. During a large-scale event 

where local interoperability can become overwhelmed, we have positioned eight regional communications vehicles throughout Alabama. In addition to having bridging 

technology, these vehicles have satellite communication connectivity, Internet access, and streaming video cameras. 

In Alabama we have developed an effective situational awareness framework in 

which to manage public/private sector programs and operational data. The program 

is called Virtual Alabama. It is an affordable visualization tool using Google Earth 

technology that employs the power of a secure Internet-based application to make 

a positive, immediate difference to first responders. The advantage to our first responder population is that Virtual Alabama is free for their use, and inexpensive 

to the state. Local and state officials can layer and tailor secure information about 

43 

their jurisdictions and feed it into a broader database that will give state and federal decision makers valuable and timely information. 

With existing state GIS (Geographic Information System) and orthophotographic 

data, we are able to transform massive amounts of useful information into a common operational picture. Examples of real-time applications include emergency evacuation routing, vehicle and asset tracking, critical infrastructure mapping, plume 

modeling, real-time sensor feeds, real-time streaming video, risk visualization, and 

post-event imagery placed alongside pre-event imagery. 

Virtual Alabama is less than a year old, yet we’ve already incorporated data from 

more than half of Alabama’s 67 counties. To date, we have more than 1,085 subscribers using Virtual Alabama, and hope to have all 67 counties participating by 

the end of 2007. 

Finally, Alabama has made remarkable strides toward improving information 

sharing and situational awareness within our criminal justice and public safety 

community. We’ve wisely invested our LETPP (Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program) homeland security grant funding to upgrade outdated 1980s-era flat 

file computer architecture. Alabama’s hard-wired terminal architecture has now 

been replaced with a real-time, 21st century Internet-based system available to all 

850 statewide law enforcement agencies, law enforcement officials, and other emergency responders throughout the state. This improved capability also includes a 

homeland security reporting system for providing information from the ‘‘cop on the 

beat’’ to our information fusion capability. We can take NCIC (National Crime Information Center) information and other criminal justice information and transmit it 

electronically to law enforcement officers with data terminals or any type of cell 

phone, Blackberry, or other personal digital assistant device. Additionally, this service is free of charge to local law enforcement and encourages their participation in 

sharing, gathering, and disseminating information. 

In the weeks and months ahead, Alabama will continue to develop and identify 

new requirements and systems to better serve our citizens. However, we must be 

able to rely upon federal assistance via the State Homeland Security Grant Program 

to further our efforts. We’ve made great strides, but important work remains. 

Thank you again for the privilege of appearing before you. I look forward to addressing any questions you may have. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Walker. 

I thank all the witnesses for their testimony. 

I now remind each member, Mr. Rogers, that he will have 5 minutes to question the panel. I will begin with my 5 minutes of questions. 

I would like to start with the three gentlemen who are in charge 

of the emergency management for their state and their city. I will 

start with you, Colonel. If Katrina were bearing down on New Orleans or the Gulf Coast today, what difference will we see within our 

ability to respond? 

Colonel EBBERT. Obviously, we have several areas, one, the individual areas and the individual plans which we have worked on, 

which are local, meaning 14 parishes and two states. The state of 

Mississippi is very much involved. 

So the detailed evacuation plans that have been put in place that 

did not exist down to the detail of moving 25,000 people without 

the capacity to leave the city is a huge effort on the part of the region, as well as the state and the Federal Government, with the 

funding of bus, aviation and rail assets to be able to move those 

people in a 24-to 30-hour block of time, is a monumental, a very, 

very complex plan that we have worked on and we scheduled. Last 

Friday, we just exercised it across the parishes, and so we feel comfortable in that concept. 

The second thing is the improvement in communications and our 

capacity to talk and communicate, not only with our regional areas, 

but with the state and the state to the Federal Government has 

improved dramatically. We have the advantage of being hit once, 

44 

is you still have a relatively strong organization of Federal resources located both in Baton Rouge and in the city of New Orleans 

in the way of FEMA. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Let me ask these two gentlemen if they would 

agree with that. 

You know, if we had another plane flying into the side of the 

Pentagon, how quickly can everybody communicate? 

Mr. DARNELL. I think it is dramatically improved since 9/11, sir. 

In fact, in our emergency operations center, we have a direct line 

with the FAA towers at Reagan National Airport, Dulles, BWI, and 

also contact with some of the smaller airports in the region. So that 

information, say, for example, if a plane gets inside the 25-mile nofly zone, we immediately have that information in real-time as that 

is coming through those towers. 

So we no longer have to wait for the towers to give us a call. We 

are hearing that information so we can begin the process of whatever actions we feel we need to take. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Walker, with your tornadoes, you probably 

have the most recent experience as to how the communications 

works. 

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, 3 years ago a lot of well-meaning 

police officers and fire chiefs around our state had invested in radio 

systems, but they were often disparate systems that couldn’t communicate. A firefighter couldn’t communicate with a police officer 

who couldn’t communicate with a sheriff who couldn’t communicate 

with the state. 

We have leveraged technology and we put bridging equipment, 

which basically fuses together all of the different radio systems in 

a county that now allows them to speak to one another, without 

buying new radios. It was a cost-effective approach. We did it in 

all 67 of Alabama’s counties. 

In addition to that, when you have something happen like a tornado, you need some sort of a regional capability because as state 

and Federal assets start arriving on the scene, the locals, their system will become overwhelmed. So we have some regional communications vehicles. They are Alabama products, where we were able 

to quadruple our capability, have streamlining video to the scene, 

so that my governor can sit in his office, if that is where he is, and 

watch the scene unfold on one of his assets, and he doesn’t have 

to rely on cable news. 

But the biggest thing for the most recent one was that we have 

become such creatures of habit. Our first responders, they have 

their radios, the ways to communicate. They will tend to rely on 

that dad-gum cell phone. And in the town where this tornado hit, 

there were about 300 hits and hour on the cell phone tower, and 

when the tornado came through, it went to about 3,000 an hour. 

It overwhelmed the system, and there was kind of a brain-lock for 

about 10 to 15 minutes. Nobody knew what to do until they said, 

oh my goodness, I have this radio over here and it is working just 

fine. 

So that is a product of education and training, but the systems 

that we had in place worked, and communication has improved. In 

Alabama, locally we have done well. We still have some challenges 

45 

with agencies that have statewide responsibility and our ability to 

reach outside the region. 

When you look at a multi-state incident like Katrina, what we 

learned was when there is total architecture failure, having more 

satellite communications on the ground made all the difference. Because during Katrina, it was those folks that had satellite communications who could speak back to areas of assistance. If you didn’t, 

you couldn’t use a cell phone and you couldn’t use a radio. So we 

have made some investments in improving our satellite communications. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Last question, for you, Ms. Larence. To what 

extent is information sharing within the NOC compromised by this 

HSIN system and its ongoing problems? 

Ms. LARENCE. I guess our concern is that recently both the intelligence and analysis office and the critical infrastructure protection 

office asked for waivers from HSIN, at least for a couple of years. 

The critical infrastructure protection piece is important because 

that was the link for the private sector to report information about 

the status of critical assets around the country into the NOC. 

So we are concerned about to what extent the users are hanging 

in there with the system. We are concerned that one of the major 

challenges the program manager said she continues to face is, quite 

frankly, getting support within the components of DHS itself to use 

the system and support it. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. 

Now, I recognize the ranking member, Mr. Rogers, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ROGERS. I thank the chairman. 

I wanted to follow up with Mr. Walker about the interoperability. 

You said you now in all 67 counties have the ability for the various 

first responders to communicate. How about across county lines? 

Mr. WALKER. The regional commu-van that we have, once they 

arrive on the scene, will provide for that. We still have challenges 

going county to county and building the regions of the state. When 

we started the process, we thought we have got to build from the 

ground up. So we obviously put our emphasis on the counties. 

So the counties I believe are in pretty good shape. We have two 

of our 67 counties that require a little bit more love than others, 

so we are struggling through it. But it is bringing counties together. We have the capability to do it, but not 24/7 day to day. 

We have to get to that point and we are not there yet, sir. 

Mr. ROGERS. You talked about the Google, the before pictures 

and the after pictures. The before pictures, are those pictures that 

are in the database from tax records? Why would there be a picture 

of Enterprise High School that you could pull, unless somebody 

thought to go and do it before they thought a tornado was coming? 

Mr. WALKER. One of the things that frustrated our governor in 

Alabama was the millions of dollars that we would spend flying the 

state. Different agencies with planes and contractors taking pictures of the state of Alabama, but then in a crisis when we needed 

the pictures, we couldn’t get our hands on them. 

So the governor says, ‘‘I am not spending another penny until I 

know what we have.’’ So he turns to his homeland security director 

as the honest broker and says, ‘‘Look, figure out a way to show me 

what we have, and then we will know how to plan forward.’’ 

46 

So we set out, and I have actually got an honest-to-goodness 

rocket scientist on my staff that the Army has loaned us from 

Huntsville. He sat in a room and canvassed the country for the 

best product that is forward-learning. 

That is why we partnered with Google. So what we are able to 

do is the pictures that our counties have, and they all have the 

data. They do it for building roads, keeping track of where folks 

and the growth are, and you capture this on the Google Earth platform, and then you have a picture. It may be a year old or it may 

be 2 years old, and then you give it back to the county. 

And then you have the most recent data, either at the six-inch, 

one-foot, one-meter level, and then when something happens, if you 

are able to go up immediately and capture the new pictures, you 

marry them together and you will know where the damage occurred. We even gave a license to the small town in Kansas that 

was 95 percent destroyed, loaded in their before pictures and their 

after pictures, and I think that if you will talk to our friends at 

FEMA, they were much quicker at being able to help these folks 

get checks and get their lives back together. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Darnell, I was a little concerned when we heard 

our last speaker talk about operational awareness across the country, to hear you say that you didn’t see that we had adequate operational awareness, situational awareness between DC and its contiguous states. Did I misunderstand what you were trying to communicate? 

Mr. DARNELL. I believe so, sir. I believe have situational awareness across the jurisdictions that make up the NCR through or 

WebEOC, through my EOC being a central hub for the region, and 

some other systems. I think where we need to improve, quite frankly, is with the Federal Government. 

For example, in their COPS, their common operating picture system, we are not hooked into that. And being the seat of the Federal 

Government and the Federal agencies in the country, it is my hope 

that DHS would allow us to be a part of that system, and currently 

we are not. 

The second point I would like to make with respect to the HSIN 

system that Mr. DiFalco spoke about, while I think it is a good system and has the potential to do a lot of things, I think the problem, 

at least from a state and local perspective, or my perspective quite 

frankly, is that there are a lot of different portals on there with a 

lot of different information. So it is not the most user-friendly system that you have, where you can go in and really find relevant 

information very quickly. 

I would echo Ms. Larence’s comments, being a former DHS employee, the challenge really is trying to get those agencies within 

DHS to really take a look at how we can efficiently use that system 

and put relevant information that we can use at the state and local 

level. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. My last question, and my time is about up, is 

you made reference to several successes, but I wanted to say you 

didn’t make reference to any glaring deficiencies that still remain. 

You did talk about that there had been a lack of info flow, but now 

there was a redundancy problem. Is that what you are making reference to now? 

47 

Mr. DARNELL. Yes, pretty much. It sort of manifests itself in a 

lot of different ways. For example, I received six e-mails on the 

same piece of information just prior to coming here from DHS. It 

would be my hope that if we have a National Operations Center, 

as I thought it was designed, that that would really be the conduit 

for information— 

Mr. ROGERS. Exactly. 

Mr. DARNELL. —that would come out of DHS into our fusion centers and our EOCs. But instead, we have a myriad of offices out 

at DHS sending us the same information, and you are almost 

forced to open all of it for fear that you will miss something. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. 

And now the chair will recognize the gentleman from Louisiana, 

Mr. Jindal, for 5 minutes of questions. 

Mr. JINDAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you also for allowing me to participate. I apologize. I have been in and out due to 

other committee responsibilities. 

I have several questions. I am only going to ask one because the 

hour is late. It is, I would thank Terry, the colonel, for coming up 

here to testify. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, it was 

obvious the response wasn’t as coordinated and as organized as it 

could have been. The White House issued its own assessment in 

the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, lessons learned, identifying critical flaws, including an absence of regional planning and 

coordination. 

As the colonel noted, perhaps the problem is not just a lack of 

coordination, but a lack of direction. According to the administration’s own report, the Department of Homeland Security did not 

maintain the needed personnel or resources in its regional offices. 

This led to reduced communications and understanding of on-site 

needs, further delaying an effective response. 

Better planning at a regional level should not just consist of forward-leaning coordination between different levels of government, 

but an integrated partnership fostering clear communication that 

would define the point of contact with the Department of Homeland 

Security, the Department of Defense, and others states. 

One of the things that was evident to us on the ground was that 

the Coast Guard, which has a robust regional and local presence, 

was very proactive in responding to those storms. One of the things 

I have asked consistently, even before the storms, is about the department’s plans for implementing its regional structure to improve 

the flow of communications between Washington and local emergency management offices. 

I would like the colonel to start with his perspectives on how a 

more robust implementation of the department’s regional office 

strategy could be helpful going forward, with future storms, future 

disasters. And if some of the other witnesses would like to comment as well, but I would like to give the colonel a chance to talk 

about how a more robust regional implementation can be helpful 

moving forward. 

Colonel EBBERT. I think it is very difficult for the Federal Government to have a span of control that is capable of dealing with 

an incident anywhere in the Nation today, because basically you 

48 

have incident command at the lowest level and you may have a 

unified command, an area command, working with the state, but 

when you move to that next level, you get into a coordination agency, and coordination to catastrophic response, I don’t believe, is 

adequate. 

I think one of the things that is needed is the capability to have 

a presence in the planning, exercising of emergency plans across 

this country, and it cannot be done direct from Washington reaching all the way down to a local level, passing through the state. 

I believe an analogy I would draw is that when an emergency 

happens, the flow of the Federal Government’s response in a command and control capacity is to a pickup game with contractors 

and multiple people designated to arrive on the scene, introduce 

themselves to each other, and then try to introduce themselves to 

the local and state agencies. At the same time, you are dealing 

with saving lives, stabilizing infrastructure, and trying to provide 

security. 

So I think we have to create a capacity and capability to regionalize at least so you are playing the game with people who you 

know who is their number, and you can’t play the Super Bowl and 

draw people out of a hat. Even though they are professionals, they 

have never played together and they don’t know the game plan. 

So I think the regional approach to regional transportation planning, regional sheltering, regional command and control are absolutely necessary if we are going to be able to exercise in an emergency, a catastrophic one, which by my definition is when it is 

greater than the capacity to respond, you have a catastrophic situation and you have to have somebody in charge and know how to 

execute it. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. We will take one more pass. I have a question 

for Ms. Larence. 

Your testimony says that the operations directorate has not 

issued guidance to other operations centers to improve collaboration. DHS maintains that the operations directorate does not have 

the authority to do so. Who within the department has the authority to issue such guidance, if you know? 

Ms. LARENCE. The centers within the components themselves are 

owned by their parent companies. We understand that. They have 

the unique mission to serve their parent company, a tactical mission. But all these centers share a common mission with the National Operations Center. The National Operations Center depends 

on the information they are providing for their situational awareness. 

So we think that they have an incentive, in fact, to try to ensure 

that these other centers have a standardized way to approach communication and information sharing. So all our recommendations 

asked them to do was voluntarily issue guidance that the other 

centers could use to try to ensure this consistency. So we disagree 

that there is really an issue about jurisdiction here or controller 

authority. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. OK. The ability that the Office of Operations 

and Coordination should have the authority to kind of— 

Ms. LARENCE. Yes, we were kind of perplexed by their response 

because if they are the Office of Operations and Coordination and 

49 

they are not coordinating the operations centers within DHS themselves, then what are they coordinating. So, yes. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. OK. Colonel, you said something when you 

were talking about you have two roles. You have the mission role 

to act and to move, and then there is always the follow up, which 

is the compliance side, to get everybody to dot the i’s and cross the 

t’s. Both parts play an important role in the government. 

Then you said this is a logistics war and we have no system in 

place. Did I hear you wrong? 

Colonel EBBERT. We don’t have, that I am aware of, any national 

logistics system where I, at the lowest level, would enter data that 

would be available at the time I entered it for the Federal Government to know that it exists, and a status, and we are talking a 

common operating picture. I believe in responding to emergencies. 

This is a war of logistics. It is men and materiel and the movement thereof. You don’t have a common operating picture, if you 

don’t understand all this equipment and resources that you are 

moving around. We need to have a system that I have to enter data 

into, the state has to enter data into, and it is consolidated so anybody up the chain or down the chain of command knows what is 

happening in every locale based upon their logistic request. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. And we don’t have that. 

Colonel EBBERT. We don’t have that. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. It doesn’t work with this National Operations 

Center or COP? 

Colonel EBBERT. It doesn’t exist today. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. OK. Last question. We talked about the Virtual Alabama. I used to think it was Sweet Home Alabama. Sorry. 

That is bad. 

[Laughter.] 

I was, as part of a DHS field trip or something, I saw this virtual 

map and you could use it for parade routes and try to figure out 

line of sight, if the president were having his inaugural parade, 

things like that. Is it something that is also computer-driven and 

can give almost a 3–D exposure? I was just curious what that was. 

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir. That is actually a new component that has 

come along. We are partnering with Google with it. There are some 

really smart folks out there now and they are able to have us look 

at this topographic data from an oblique angle, and also routes, we 

can do pluming data. 

One of the other fascinating parts of the Virtual Alabama is we 

have cameras. I know Mr. Rogers is a big fan of cameras. We have 

cameras around the state through the Alabama Department of 

Transportation and some of our private sector partners that have 

manufacturing entities and others. If they will allow us access to 

these cameras, we can use Virtual Alabama to access cameras with 

real-time information. 

So the tunnel going into the harbor at Mobile, if you were a decision maker, you can be in Montgomery and watch what is unfolding. So you can do route planning. You can do plume data if there 

were an explosion. You could take a look at the temperature and 

the wind direction, and know where it is going to go. That would 

give firefighters and police officers the ability to know where the 

evacuation areas are ahead of time. 

50 

These are things that we practice and rehearse. With respect to 

my friend’s comment about logistics, in Alabama, it is 72-hours. We 

preposition supplies and we plan for 72 hours. We know that the 

Federal Government is a big battleship, and by the time you get 

it turned in our direction, it is going to take a little while. So we 

plan on being self-sustaining for 72 hours. We have learned 

through four hurricanes over the last 3 years, we have I don’t know 

how many thousands of cots, meals ready to eat, ice contracts let, 

water on standby, warehouses full right now. 

So I don’t know how ready we are for hurricane season this year, 

but we are pretty doggone ready, but you can’t anticipate the unforeseen. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. My time has expired. 

Mr. Rogers for any further questions? 

I would like to thank the panel for their testimony and for responding to our questions. The testimony has been valuable for us 

today and gives us some food for thought. 

Members of the subcommittee, if they have any additional questions for the witnesses, will present those to you in writing. We ask 

that you respond to those as expeditiously as possible. 

Hearing no further business, the subcommittee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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