CIP Update
May 18, 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 / 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?
Six Steps to Building a Public-Private Partnership Organization
Michigan State University’s (MSU) CIP Program, otherwise known as the Critical Incident Protocol (CIP) – Community Facilitation is the model we use to create public-private partnerships for joint crisis management, which began in 2002 with our pilot communities. The CIP Program actually started in 1998 with research on the value of these partnerships, then led to a publication “Critical Incident Protocol – A Public and Private Partnership” which came out in 2001. It’s available for free on our website. In 2002, we were asked to take the best practices and lessons learned to create a program with MSU facilitating partnerships around the nation, which is the CIP Program.
Over the years we have refined the process in creating or enhancing partnerships between the business community and public sector agencies. Yet, there are a number of challenges faced by communities, organizations or individuals in creating a partnership that reflects emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery using an all-hazards approach. Most partnerships focus on joint exercising, training, and planning. Some of the challenges that hamper or negate a partnership are a lack of commitment, turf issues, political concerns, apathy, and a lack of understanding.
Successful partnerships are beneficial to not only the organization, but to the community as a whole. That is, stakeholders who participate in public-private partnerships see the value and ensure commitment. We use a six-step model when working with communities and each community subsequently modifies the process to their needs. Here is the model we use:
1. Identify public and private sector leaders
2. Ask leaders to bring others to the table
3. Identify common issues in emergency preparedness
4. Identify potential resources in the community
5. Determine the challenges that organizations encounter
6.
Create sustainability in the partnership through a needs
assessment,
setting goals and task
performance
The Protective Security Advisor – U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Staff attended the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) Chapter 120 meeting hosted by Robyn Mace, Ph.D., Michigan State University where Protective Security Advisor Michael Moll gave a presentation on his roles and responsibilities in DHS.
Moll shared with attendees that DHS is placing a cadre of highly-experienced security specialists in neighborhoods throughout the country to assist local efforts to protect critical assets and provide a local perspective to the national risk picture.
With an average of 20 years of anti-terrorism and security experience, these dedicated critical infrastructure and vulnerability assessment experts, or Protective Security Advisors, are recruited from, live, and work in the communities. They provide a federally funded resource to communities and businesses to assist in the protection of critical assets
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:
Comments from the Midwest Summit on Creating Public-Private Partnerships
In early May 2006 over 250 people participated in the Midwest Summit “Economics of Disaster” conference on enhancing critical incident preparedness through public-private partnerships, which was held in LaCrosse, WI. Professionals from public and private sector organizations attended breakout sessions on public health challenges, food supply chain security, all hazards planning, surge capacity planning, human networks, communications, policy on public-private partnerships, and best practices on public-private partnerships.
The sessions were well-attended and the networking was valuable. There were a number of excellent presentations and speakers. Here are some comments from a few speakers:
Former Virginia Governor James Gilmore, Chairman of the National Council on Readiness and Preparedness stated, “The truth is if you think ‘they’ are going to come and bail us out in the first 72 hours, that’s wrong. There is no ‘they’ – we are the ‘they.” Governor Gilmore kept the crowd interested as he is shared his beliefs on public-private partnerships. Gilmore stated that, “We are better prepared than we’ve been before, but we are not ready, and we will not be ready until we have a national plan that fold in local and state input.”
A security director for an international food manufacturer and distributor with over 100 leading U.S. national brands shared with the audience what their suppliers, distributors and client companies expect of his corporation in crisis management. He stated, “customers are demanding from us that we have strong business continuity planning.”
Police Chief Kim Wadding, Dubuque, Iowa in one of the break-out sessions was discussing the value of partnerships and indicated, “If we are going to work together, we need to train together. We are becoming transparent to each other. We all have some very basic needs and we are meeting them through training together.”
Ideas for Meetings in CIP Communities
When scheduling meetings, please remember that the diversity of attendees from public and private sectors is the greatest strength offering expertise, experience, knowledge, and professionalism to your CIP group. There are two over all goals in these meetings, which are identifying the challenges we face in our own organization and what are the resources we can bring to the table. Using an all-hazards approach, look at joint exercising, training and planning focusing on the needs of the organizations and community as a whole. Here are some ideas for your next meeting:
à Schedule a tabletop exercise (yes, the public sector are hit repeatedly with these, but the private sector is not)
à Have the FBI in for a presentation
à Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) presentation
à Pandemic flu
à Bomb threats
à Workplace violence
à Large scale event planning
à HAZMAT - capability, roles and responsibilities
à Create a centralized database of resources in the community
à Develop a point-of-contact database
à Look at credentialing (an excellent resource is at https://ceas.com, which is Corporate Emergency Access System)
à Identify critical infrastructure in your community, based on the 17 sectors in the National Infrastructure Protection Plan
à Provide training on risk assessment
à How to create exercises
à Best practices in business continuity
à Critical incident management
à Have private sector do a program on recovery from a disaster for the public sector
à Review public sector emergency disasters plans for the community
à Severe weather workshop
à Internal auditing
à Media and PIO’s – roles and responsibilities
DHS Launches Interoperability Survey
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the launch of a survey designed to assess communications interoperability capacity among law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services agencies across the country. The National Interoperability Baseline Survey is being conducted via SAFECOM, the communications program of the DHS Office for Interoperability and Compatibility.
During the month of May, SAFECOM is seeking responses from more than 22,000 randomly selected agencies from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Questions focus on five areas that DHS feels are critical to determining an organization’s capacity for interoperability: governance through administration and decision-making, standard operating procedures, technology, training and exercises, and use of interoperable communications.
In an effort to coordinate various federal initiatives, the SAFECOM program was established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). SAFECOM is a communications program that provides research, development, testing and evaluation, guidance, tools, and templates for local, tribal, state, and federal public safety agencies working to improve public safety response through more effective and efficient interoperable wireless communications.
Internet Resources for Public and Private Sector Organizations
If you would like a resource that is applicable to the business community, non-profit organizations and public sector agencies containing federal, state and local sources, please go to the CIP Information Exchange website (directions on how to access the website are below). There is a document that you can download called “List of Internet Resources”.
After you enter the website got to the main menu and scroll down to “Acronyms, Glossary and Internet Websites”” and open the folder. Then click on Internet Websites and it will take you there.
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:
“Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) Training Series – 2006 IACP”
“Ready Campus: Prepared to Help when Disaster Strikes”
“Business Partners Disaster Preparedness and Business Continuity Guide”
“Seven (7) Steps to Employee Preparedness”
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.
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