CIP Update
June
09, 2006
This
newsletter is for cities, counties, and
communities
involved in public-private partnerships for joint emergency
preparedness,
planning and prevention.
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
/ Lewis & Clark County, MT / 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 22 communities and will work with another 22 cities, counties or
communities over the next couple of years. Of the 22 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?
A
Public-Private Partnership
Organization/National Council on Readiness and Preparedness (NCORP)
NCORP’s mission is to establish
community
level programs and public/private partnerships that strengthen homeland
security through education, training and communication between
citizens,
businesses, governments and responders/law enforcement and medical
professionals.
Former Governor Jim
Gilmore (
NCORP is seeking advisors
with a wide and deep range of
experience in threat and crisis preparedness and response, as well as
knowledge
and capability in community organization, legal and public policy,
terrorism,
national and international security and WMD and biological agents.
NCORP has launched four
programs that represent the various
stakeholders in community readiness and preparedness: ResponderCorps,
ReadyCorps, GuardianCorps
and CitizenGuardian. These programs are
developed by
an institute that NCORP has established called the Institute for
Community
Preparedness and Response (ICPR), which works with academic
and
government organizations to identify and develop on-going action plans
for each
of these programs.
To learn more about
NCORP, please visit their website at http://www.ncorp.org.
The
Protective Security Advisor –
In
the last newsletter
edition we profiled the Protective Service Division, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security. To locate a PSA you can contact your state
homeland
security advisor’s office or call the PSA Duty Disk, Risk Management
Division
at (703) 235-5724.
The
role of the Protective Security Advisor is to:
•
Support the development of the national risk
picture by assisting in identification, assessment, monitoring, and
minimizing
risk to critical assets at the local or district level
•
Facilitate, coordinate, and/or perform
vulnerability assessments for local critical infrastructures and key
resources
•
Upon request, assist with security efforts
coordinated by state homeland security agencies
Protective Security
Advisors serve as federally funded
infrastructure protection resources for communities. They provide
a number of valuable services and functions, including:
A
Public-Private Partnership
Organization/Partnership for Emergency Planning (PEP),
PEP's primary focus is two-fold,
which is the protection of
employees and
assets, along with maintaining business
continuity through mitigation, crisis
management, and
recovery following a
disaster. Crossley
stated that PEP has about 180 members who
work on business continuity,
along with emergency management issues.
They hold bi-monthly general membership meetings, which are
great networking opportunities, along with an annual
tabletop exercise.
This
partnership organization assists in the emergency/disaster planning
process,
promotes a broader understanding of the need for planning, conduct
educational
seminars, conferences, and meetings, along with fostering
cooperation between the business community and public
sector agencies.
To
learn more about the Partnership for Emergency Planning (PEP) group located in the greater
Develop a Business
Continuity/Disaster Recovery Plan
Businesses
using strategic
planning that incorporates emergency preparedness are more capable when
facing
the myriad of crisis in the nation. Over the last six months,
there has
been a resurgence of interest in business continuity and disaster
recovery
programs.
Roberta
Witty, Vice
President of research at Gartner, Inc., a research organization which
advises
executives in 75 countries, made reference to one of its recent
surveys.
They found that nearly three out of four respondents - 72% - stated
that they
did not include federal, state, and local authorities in their 2005
planning
efforts. This was an increase from 65% in 2004 (Arnone,
06/07/2006).
On
the other hand, Capital
One Financial Corporation shared guidelines for businesses along the
gulf coast
for business disaster planning. Capital One’s guidelines in how
to
develop a business continuity/disaster recovery plan are similar to
what is
taught in the CIP Program around the nation. Here are some of the
basic
components:
·
Establish
a disaster-recovery team of
employees who know your business best, and assign responsibilities for
specific
tasks.
·
Identify
your risks (kinds of disasters that
are most likely to experience).
·
Prioritize
critical business functions and how
quickly these must be recovered.
·
Establish
a disaster-recovery location where
employees may work off-site and access critical back-up systems,
records, and
supplies.
·
Obtain
temporary housing for key employees,
their families and pets.
·
Update
and test your plan annually (Continuity
Central).
Other
parts of planning
should address securing an alternative operational location, supplying
a
back-up site for equipment, safeguarding the property, create a
centralized
contact list of employee’s customers, suppliers, vendors, and insurance
companies, developing a communication plan, training employees for
emergency
preparedness, evacuation planning, cash management and most
importantly,
developing a post-disaster recovery plan (Continuity Central).
When
working with
communities around the nation in the CIP Program, we discovered that
the
recovery phase within the emergency management model of preparedness,
mitigation,
response, and recovery is the “weakest link’ between the public and
private
sectors. Traditionally, many communities work together on
preparedness,
mitigation, and more lately in the response phase. Yet, few
communities
spend as much planning, communicating and training in the recovery
phase.
We
encourage public agencies
to spend time with business communities focusing on recovery.
Security
in the Shopping Mall
Public
safety agencies and
shopping mall executives are concerned with security at shopping malls
in
communities. In communities across
The Police
Foundation project consists of four
components: (1) a survey of state legislation regarding hiring and
training of
mall security staff; (2) a survey of state homeland security advisors
to
determine their perceptions of security at large malls in their state;
(3) a
survey of security directors at the 1200 largest malls in the nation;
and (4)
visits to exemplary sites to describe what they have done and how they
have
done it.
According
to USA Today
article, some of the key points are:
·
Some
shopping centers report a 100% turn over
in security managers
·
More
than half of the security directors said
their officer received some terrorism-related training
·
High
turnover rates of security officers often
undermined the effectiveness of training programs
·
The
most significant gap in emergency
preparedness was the lack of coordination between mall security and
separate
security in anchor stores.
·
Only
one-third of mall security directors said
they rehearsed emergency plans with local law enforcement (Jones, 2006)
In
contrast to some of the
points in this article, many communities have enhanced mall security
through
effective partnerships for joint critical incident management.
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:
“Shopping Mall Security – Challenges”
“Few
Businesses are Prepared for the Bird Flu”
“Assessing
and Securing the Hospital Environment”
“Ready Business Mentoring Initiative”
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
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
Arnone, M. (June 7, 2006). Gartner Critical of Current Business Continuity Plans.
Federal
Computer Week.
Retrieved on June 7, 2006 from: http://www.fcw.com/article94817-06-07-06-Web
Continuity
Central.
(June 05,
2006). Disaster Planning Guidelines for
http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0354.htm
Jones, R. (2006). Shopping
Mall
Security.
Retrieved on June 09,
2006 from: https://angel.msu.edu/section/default.asp?id=MRG%2D060410%2D141403%2Djonesrad%5Fmsu%5Fedu
Brit Weber
Work:
(517) 355-2227 Cell: (517) 206-1640
Visit
our website at
http://www.cip.msu.edu