CIP Update

June 12, 2009

This newsletter is for public agencies, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders involved or interested in public-private partnerships for joint emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

 

Michigan State University (MSU) produces the newsletter through the Critical Incident Protocol (CIP)-Community Facilitation Program under a grant awarded by the Training & Exercise Integration/Training Operations, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 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.

 

Michigan State University through the CIP Program will “enhance cities, counties, and region’s capabilities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from man-made and natural disasters through public and private sector collaboration, communication, and cooperation.”  MSU facilitates public-private partnerships and the CIP Program is free of charge to participating communities.

 

Please visit our website at www.cip.msu.edu for more information about the program.

 

Participating Communities in the CIP Program
The CIP Program has been initiated in 46 communities in 24 states with over 3,900 participants establishing community public-private partnerships for joint management of critical incidents. We are looking to work with other cities, counties and regions. Is there a location in the nation that you think may be interested in developing a public-private partnership? If so, please let us know.

 

Currently, we are working with the following communities:
Alabama:  Hoover
Arizona:  Casa Grande
California:  Mountain View
Colorado:  Littleton
Connecticut:  Norwalk

Florida:  Western Panhandle
Illinois:  Lake-Cook Regional, Libertyville, Naperville
Indiana:  Evansville
Kansas:  Douglas County
Maryland:  Annapolis, Carroll County, Rockville
Michigan:  Detroit, Marquette County, Monroe, Oakland County
Missouri/Illinois:  Gateway Citizen Corps Coalition, St. Louis
Montana:  Lewis & Clark County
Nevada:  Clark County, Northern Nevada
North Carolina:  Buncombe County, Greensboro
Ohio:  Brooklyn
Pennsylvania:  Allentown, Bethlehem, Northampton County, Perkiomen Valley

South Carolina:  Columbia, Horry County
Texas:  Dallas
Utah:  Layton, Sandy City
Virginia:  Arlington County, Richmond
Washington:  Redmond

West Virginia:  Beckley/Raleigh County
Wisconsin:  Brown County, Dane County, Eau Claire County, Milwaukee, Outagamie County, Racine County, Superior, Winnebago County


Status of CIP Program

On March 17, 2009, we notified the readers of the CIP Update newsletter and other stakeholders that the CIP Program will not receive continuation funding; therefore, the program and staff will be terminated around September 2009.  In the meantime, we will continue to provide program services and if anything changes, we will notify you.

 

We encourage you who have participated in the CIP Program or are familiar with it to contact your legislators indicating your support in continuing funding for the program.  Thank you.

 

CIP Program Calendar

June 18, 2009 – Reno, NV (Facilitating Tabletop Exercise)

June 23, 2009 – Naperville, IL (Facilitating Tabletop Exercise)

July 29, 2009 – Pensacola, FL (Facilitating Tabletop Exercise)

August 18, 2009 – Dearborn, MI (Initiating the CIP Partnership Program)

September 20, 2009 – Anaheim, CA (Facilitating Tabletop Exercise for ASIS Conference)

 

Reminder: On 9/11, Drill Down For Safety Campaign

Join agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, and citizens in demonstrating emergency preparedness by participating in the On 9/11, Drill Down for Safety campaign led by the Safe American Foundation.  There are a number of public and private sector organizations that are members of the taskforce promoting this national unity event.  Also partnering with Safe America as the lead public sector entity is Region V (Chicago) FEMA, which will brief their national and fellow regional leadership.

 

On September 11, 2009, you and members of your organization can participate in emergency preparedness initiatives by conducting a drill, such as an evacuation or shelter-in-place.  If drill activities do not fit your plan, then implement another event which profiles preparedness and the organization’s commitment.  To learn about the Safe American Foundation, please go to http://www.safeamerica.org.  Please note this event on your calendar – “On 09/11, Drill Down for Safety Campaign” and share with others about them participating.  All Americans can participate to celebrate our commitment in securing our homes, communities, and the nation.

 

If you are a member of a corporation or another group that wants to play an active part in this, please contact me and we can discuss it.

 

Building and Sustaining Community Resiliency

Through the CIP Program, participating communities in our public/private partnership program discuss and work on both short-term and long-term concepts, such as sustainability and resiliency. Today, these terms are being discussed in many organizations across the nation, which was not the case a few years ago.  Recently, there was a conference in Charleston, South Carolina that focused on these principles.  The Community and Regional Resilience Institute housed in the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee facilitated this discussion.  They have been working with three communities: Charleston, SC; Memphis/Shelby County, TN; and, Gulfport, MS on enhancing resiliency.  Here are some of the comments from the community stakeholders.

 

·        Community resilience includes all-hazards planning – also links with other community issues, such as poverty and more.

·        A key step to resiliency is tracing out a host of interdependencies – infrastructure, resources, information, authorizations, etc.

·        Resiliency implies that stakeholders need to know each other ‘before’ an event, not meet during it.

·        Resiliency must embrace diversity; integrating NGO’s, faith-based, and similar organizations into planning process.

·        Communities can do a lot independently, in fact, resiliency means taking responsibility for one’s future.

·        It is critically important to care about the lives of the responders and their families (CARRI News, 2009, pp. 1-2).

 

For more information on the Community and Regional Resilience Institute, please go to their website at www.ResilientUS.org.  Also, they have a newsletter that focuses on community resiliency.

 

Building the Partnership Through Tabletop Exercising

In the CIP Program, the MSU staff was tasked with developing workshops that build mutual understanding and commitment that would engage very diverse public and private sector professions representing executives and managers.  For example, members of police, fire, emergency management, and health typically work together.  Additionally, public sector libraries, port administration, facility management, public transportation, information technology, parks, economic development, schools, airports, and others attend our workshops, as well.  Equally, from the private sector, security, safety, business continuity, and facility management work together.  Additionally, human resources, inventory, fleet management, health, operations, and others from the 18 critical infrastructure sectors collaborate on preparedness in the CIP workshops too.

 

Therefore, the CIP workshops are designed to engage ‘both’ public and private sector professionals and disciplines to create a common dialogue as they work through specific activities.  Our tabletop exercises incorporate public and private sector collaboration; public-private sector tabletops are seldom conducted across the nation.  For example, we recently facilitated a tabletop exercise for the city of Detroit, which included a national health insurance carrier at their regional headquarters.  Among the group was the crisis management team from the business, as well as the public sector first responder community.  Other observers from public agencies, businesses, and non-governmental organizations also participated.  We designed a crisis scenario for the business which incorporated the public first responder community.  Business employees observed how this corporate crisis management team collaborated for response and recovery from the impact of the event.  During the exercise, we encouraged both public and private sector groups to share information and intelligence, as if they were participating in a joint EOC.  There were several comments by the participants and observers, which are listed below.

 

Public sector recommended that they establish CERT training for the targeted business:

·        to obtain the digital facility maps of the targeted business

·        to establish MOU’s with other businesses in the downtown area

·        to include the targeted business in city exercises in the future

·        to identify alternative methods to communicate with other agencies/business

·        to initiate more contact between public and private sectors ‘prior’ to incidents

 

Private sector needs to establish continual contact with city first responder agencies:

·        to identify other community resources that can assist in emergencies

·        to recognize the value of considering issues that go beyond our own organizations

·        to establish procedure to have business representative in city EOC whenever activated

·        to have the city first responder community detail our their exact response actions

·        to establish preparedness dialogue with neighboring businesses adjacent to campus/facility

·        to recommend that monthly public-private sector meetings be held on joint crisis management

 

Other observations included:

·        Seeing each team (public and private sectors) discover the weaknesses in their plans and working through them

·        We will follow-up with continual training within our organization

·        Learning the roles of the public sector and how they would assist us during an emergency

·        It was valuable meeting the public sector community

·        Understanding the roles and responsibilities of our private sector and those of the public sector

·        Understanding the ‘need” to foster a relationship with the public sector

 

Free Webinars on Business Continuity

BC Management Inc., Huntington Beach, CA is an executive search firm that specializes in business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, risk management, and information security that is well-known in the industry.  They are partnering with Norwich University’s Master of Science In Business Continuity Management program in presenting the three following webinars:

 

Integrating Business Continuity Criteria into Your Supply Chain

June 23rd/Tuesday, 1:00pm-2:00pm EST

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/611334378

 

Ethical Issues in Business Continuity Management

June 24th/Wednesday, 1:00pm-2:00pm EST

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/395087010 

 

Putting the ‘Business’ Back into Business Continuity Management

June 25th/Thursday, 2:30pm-3:30pm EST

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/525762979

 

Additionally, BC Management’s website is comprehensive and includes a newsletter for either employers or candidates located at http://www.bcmanagement.com.

 

You can learn more Norwich University’s business continuity program and their online Master’s Degree at http://www.bcmanagement.com/index.php.

 

Is Your Organization and Community Focused on Capabilities

Public and private sector organizations provide a safe environment for employees, vendors, customers, and other stakeholders.  The challenge of safety falls upon various groups, such as police, fire, health, and emergency management in the public sector and security, safety, business continuity, risk management, and facility management in the private sector.  Equally important is that ‘all’ departments within the local government, business, and non-governmental organizations are responsible for creating that safe environment.  In working with small to large cities, counties, and regions, we have learned that all decision-makers have a stake in preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

 

The Department of Homeland Security created a list of capabilities that all communities across the nation should be aware of and incorporate into their planning.  The capabilities list is important to the private sector because, they too, provide that safe environment.  Therefore, businesses are encouraged to collaborate with their public sector partners to ensure that businesses, agencies and the community at-large are working together.  Currently, there are 37 capabilities that the public sector first responder community has incorporated into their plans.  Here is the DHS Target Capabilities List:

 

Common Mission

Planning / Interoperable Communications / Risk Management / Community Preparedness and Participation

 

Prevention Mission

Information Gathering / Intelligence Analysis & Production / Intelligence-Information Sharing & Dissemination / Law Enforcement Investigation-Operations / CBRNE Detection

 

Protection Mission

Critical Infrastructure Protection / Food and Agriculture Safety & Defense / Public Health Laboratory Testing / Epidemiological Surveillance & Investigation

 

Response Mission

Onsite Incident Management / Emergency Operations Center Management / Critical Resource Logistics & Distribution / Volunteer Management & Donations / Responder Safety & Health / Public Safety & Security Response / Animal Health Emergency Support / Environmental Health & Vector Control / Explosive Device Response Operations / Firefighting Operations & Support / WMD & HazMat Response & Decontamination / Citizen Protection: Evacuation or In-Place Shelter / Isolation & Quarantine / Urban Search & Rescue / Emergency Public Information & Warning / Triage & Pre-Hospital Treatment / Medical Surge / Medical Suppliers Management & Distribution / Mass Prophylaxis / Mass Care / Fatality Management

 

Recovery Mission

Structural Damage & Mitigation / Restoration of Lifelines / Economic & Community Recovery

 

Which areas of the DHS Target Capabilities List should your agency, business, or non-governmental organization improve upon?

 

Recent Postings to the CIP Information Exchange Website
The CIP Information Exchange website is a large database for public and private sector professionals interested in homeland security, emergency preparedness, business continuity, disaster recovery, and emergency management.  It also contains research publications, government documents, news items, and more.

 

To enter the ‘CIP Information Exchange’ database, please go to https://angel.msu.edu and using the drop-down menu, select Angel Guest Account.  Click on ‘proceed’, and on the next webpage, enter “msu.msu” in the Angel Guest User box and “partnership” (both without quotation marks) as the password to log on.  On the next page, click on Critical Incident Protocol (CIP) – Community Facilitation, which launches to the main menu.

 

Located in the folder "Bulletin Board - Information for all Communities" are a variety of recent postings, including:

·        Business Continuity Survey by iJet International (2009)

·        Public Role Engagement in Counterterrorism: Israeli Practices for the U.S.

·        Disaster Plans Crucial in Good Times and Bad (Miami)

 

There are numerous other resources located on the website. To locate a specific topic, utilize the "search" function on the left side.  On top left side click on “guide” and when the sidebar box opens, go to the bottom in the box and click on “search” and follow the directions. 

 

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 wish to be on this list, please reply to this email.

 

Disclaimer
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or Michigan State University.

 

Sources

Community & Regional Resilience Institute.  (May 29, 2009).  CARRI News newsletter – The CARRI Community Forum.

 

Brit Weber
Program Director
CIP-Community Facilitation Program
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
weberbr@msu.edu
Please visit our website:  http://www.cip.msu.edu