CIP Update

April 10, 2006

This newsletter is for cities, counties and communities involved in public-private partnerships for joint emergency preparedness, planning and prevention. 

Michigan State University produces the newsletter through the Critical Incident Protocol (CIP)-Community Facilitation Program under a grant awarded by the Office of Grants & Training, Preparedness Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  This newsletter provides ideas, suggestions, best practices and lessons learned to establish critical incident protocols using public-private partnerships.

Please go to: www.cip.msu.edu for more information about the program.

Participating Communities

Allentown, PA / Annapolis, MD / Bethlehem, PA / Brooklyn, OH / Carroll County, MD / Casa Grande, AZ / Clark County, NV / Evansville, IN / Hoover, AL / Libertyville, IL / Marquette County, MI / Milwaukee, WI / Monroe County, MI / Northampton County, PA / Oakland County, MI / Perkiomen Valley, PA / Redmond, WA / Racine, WI / Richmond, VA / Rockville, MD / Sandy City, UT

We are currently working with 21 communities and will work with another 23 cities, counties or communities over the next couple of years.  Of the 23 available CIP Programs, we are in contact with 10 communities.  Is there a location in the nation that you think may be interested in building a public-private partnership for joint emergency preparedness?

            Libertyville, IL Joins the CIP Program 

On April 4th Michigan State University started a CIP Program for Libertyville, which is less than an hour north of Chicago.  The program was sponsored by the Libertyville Fire Department, Volkswagen of America and Volkswagen Credit Inc.  The 50 participants represented the majority of the departments within the city of Libertyville, along with Mundelein Fire and Police, Libertyville and Vernon high schools, Volkswagen, Motorola, departments from Lake County, ComEd, Great Lakes Record Management, The Garrett McKenzie Environmental Group, MK Business Solutions, Condell Medical Center, Allscripts, and STERIS Isomedix Services.

By the end of the workshop the group identified 17 next step ideas/recommendations. They wanted to meet on a regular basis, initiate marketing to other agencies and businesses, create joint exercising opportunities for businesses and agencies, bring in key stakeholders to future meetings, send out a press release to the media on what was accomplished during the workshop, inform various local organizations of the group’s existence, look at creating a regional training/meeting forum, encourage participating businesses to spread the value of public-private partnerships throughout their organizations and networks, expand safety training by public safety agencies to businesses, and provide a list of threats/risks to businesses that are unique to the Libertyville area.  The group discussed other ideas, as well, and is off to a strong start.

Please welcome Libertyville, Illinois!

Credentialing – Public & Private Integration

 

Here is a scenario that happens in communities across the nation.  A business is evacuated by the local authorities and told that it may be eight to twelve hours before employees are allowed back in.  Yet, there are business processes crucial to the company to maintain, which include payroll, legal processes, computer work, equipment operation, and much more.  The cause for the evacuation is not immediate life-threatening.  The inability of the member employees to enter their facility affects the bottom line, which eventually could lead to a loss of customers and related problems, including a reduction in tax revenues to the local authority.

 

Communities are responding to this challenge by instituting a credentialing system that allows pre-approved employees under certain circumstances to pass through a police/fire line to enter the business to handle critical business functions.  Moreover, communities are using this system to help businesses recover faster in the event of an emergency or disaster, including damage assessments.

 

The Milwaukee CIP group, along with the Southeast Wisconsin Homeland Security Partnership group are working together to introduce credentialing in the Milwaukee area.  They are using a credentialing model developed by Business Network of Emergency Resources, Inc., (BNet) which is a non-profit organization located at: www.bnetinc.org BNet created the Corporate Emergency Access System (CEAS) in conjunction with local governments that permits businesses, through a written agreement with their local municipality, to enroll their most critical employees to receive a secure identification card recognized by local law enforcement officers for access into restricted areas following a severe emergency or disaster.  To learn more about CEAS, please go to: https://ceas.com.

 

A community who initiated their own system is the city of St. Louis, MO, which created the Business Emergency Access Program.  The St. Louis Emergency Management Agency and police department instituted this program.  They have a database of participating businesses, which is maintained at the city’s emergency operations center. 

 

According to their website the credentialing of businesses will provide planned response, relief, recovery, and restoration activities (http://www.stlouiscityema.com/BusinessEmergencyAccessProgram.html).

 

 

Free Video on Creating a Public-Private Partnership for Joint Critical Incident Management

 

Here is a reminder for those who could use a resource that illustrates how to create partnerships.  MSU developed a video that is used in the CIP Program, which profiles a community in Michigan that created a partnership group for crisis management, along with information on the development of the CIP Program.

 

The video is available free of charge and can be downloaded from our website.  Enter the “CIP Information Exchange” website, which is located at: https://angel.msu.edu/home.asp  and submit your user Net ID and password.  If you do not have them, please use ours.  Enter msu.msu@angel in the user Net ID box and the word partnership in the password box and log in.  On the next web page, click on CIP and it will take you to the main menu where the different folders are located.  Open the folder titled “CIP Video” which contains two (2) videos.  One is 14 minutes and the other is a cut-down version that is 11 minutes long.

 

Feel free to utilize these video’s in your CIP Program.

 

 

Midwest Summit Conference for Public/Private Partnerships

A Midwest Summit titled “Economics of Disaster”, which will enhance critical incident preparedness through public/private partnerships, is scheduled for May 3-4, 2006 in LaCrosse, WI.  For more on the conference, please go to: www.midwestsummit2006.com

Creating successful public-private partnerships is an essential key in identifying, addressing, and resolving issues concerning preparedness and continuity in today’s business world.  The Midwest Summit will provide opportunities for innovation and investment in resilience and economic sustainability for both private businesses and government infrastructure.  This two-day seminar will focus on establishing formal coordinated agreements, networking, information sharing, crime prevention, resource sharing, training, legislation, operations, establishing regional information command centers and coordinating the flow of information regarding infrastructure in an effort to promote crisis preparedness and homeland security.

             MSU staff from the CIP Program will be presenting at this conference.

            Profiling a Public-Private Partnership on Sharing Information

Through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is the Secure Homeland Access and Reporting Environment program, which was developed to share potential terrorist incidents, including information between the public and private sectors.  The state of Alabama provides an on-line system called the PUSH Terrorism Incident Reporting Portal, which is located at: https://pushweb.alacop.gov.

The PUSH program encourages private sector security officers to report potential terrorism-related incidents.  Additionally, the PUSH portal provides critical infrastructure directory, emergency response directory, sample emergency plans, research tools and the Daily Open Source Update.

A Guide to Emergency Preparedness and Response

Recently, the CIP staff came across a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that discussed emergency preparedness and response.  The report states that government entities try to answer four basic questions (GAO-06-467T), which includes:

 

1.      What is important or what are our priorities?

2.      How do we know what is important (e.g., risk assessments, performance standards)?

3.      How do we measure, attain, and sustain success?

4.      On what basis do we make necessary trade-offs, given finite resources?

 

When reviewing these questions, one can see that they have universal application too both the public and private sectors.  Further, one could use the same questions as a guide in his/her own department, unit, or division.  How do you address these questions?  By instituting the following measures:

 

1.      Develop a strategic plan with clear goals, objectives, and milestones;

2.      Develop performance goals that can be used to set desired performance baselines;

3.      Collect and analyze relevant and reliable data;

4.      Assess the results of analyzing those data against performance goals to guide priority setting;

5.      Take action based on those results; and

6.      Monitor the effectiveness of actions taken to achieve designated performance goals.

 

Recent Postings to CIP Information Exchange Website

To enter the "CIP Information Exchange" website, please go to https://angel.msu.edu and enter your user/password ID (or use msu.msu@angel in the User/NetID and "partnership" as the password to log in).  Click on CIP, which launches to the main menu.

Located in the folder "Bulletin Board - Information for all Communities" are just a few of the following postings:

 

            “The CIA World Fact Book is Online”

            “Morgan Stanley and Others Offer Testimonials”

            “Power in Numbers – Building More Effective Teams through Training”

            “Hurricane Katrina Task Force - American Bar Association

 

There are numerous other resources located on the website.  To locate a specific topic, use the "search" function, which can be found on the main menu page on the right-hand side in the green task bar.

Starting a CIP Program

Feel free to make a referral to the MSU staff about possibly starting a CIP Program elsewhere in the United States.  We can use your assistance! 

Past Newsletters

If you are interested in viewing past CIP Update newsletters, please go to www.cip.msu.edu and select “Newsletters” from the main menu.   

Closing

If you have any topics and/or ideas for a future CIP Update newsletter, please contact Brit Weber at weberbr@msu.edu or (517) 355-2227 or other MSU staff members.  About every three weeks you will receive this newsletter via email.  If you no longer want to be on this list, please reply to this email.

 

Sources

 

Government Accountability Office.  (February 23, 2006).  Emergency Preparedness and Response – Some Issues and Challenges Associated with Major

          Emergency Incidents.  GAO-06-467T. Retrieved on April 8, 2006 from: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06467t.pdf

City of St. Louis, Emergency Management Agency.   Retrieved on April 10, 2006 from:

          http://www.stlouiscityema.com/BusinessEmergencyAccessProgram.html

                      

 

 

Brit Weber

School of Criminal Justice

Michigan State University

1407 S. Harrison Rd., 335 Nisbet Bldg.

East Lansing, MI 48823

Work:  (517) 355-2227   Cell:  (517) 206-1640

Visit our website at http://www.cip.msu.edu