Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this month announced the adoption of final standards for the voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program (PS-Prep) -- a major milestone in DHS' implementation of a program recommended by the 9/11 Commission to improve private sector preparedness for disasters and emergencies.

"Private organizations across the country -- from businesses to universities to non-profit organizations -- have a vital role to play in bolstering our disaster preparedness and response capabilities," said Secretary Napolitano. "These new standards will provide our private sector partners with the tools they need to enhance the readiness and resiliency of our nation."

PS-Prep is a partnership between DHS and the private sector that enables private entities to receive emergency preparedness certification from a DHS accreditation system created in coordination with the private sector.

The standards -- developed by the National Fire Protection Association, the British Standards Institution and ASIS International -- were first published for public comment in the Federal Register in October 2009. The final standards were adopted following a series of regional public meetings and the incorporation of public comments.

by Philip J. Palin

The ongoing rush of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has created drama befitting our greatest authors and playwrights: the Gulf's people and ecology will struggle to re-establish themselves; BP might disappear as a corporate entity; President Obama is struggling to demonstrate his authority; and the can-do confidence of American culture is under significant strain.

In mid-June the oil spill reached the climax of its first act. We are not sure how more this play will feature, but it promises considerable length. As the crisis approaches its second month there are three dramatic scenes worth remembering.

Scene 1: On June 16, BP leadership came to the White House for a four-hour meeting. Afterwards, a $20-billion independent claims facility was announced, including $100 million for compensating indirect costs related to the spill. The president affirmed BP as "a strong and viable company and it is in all our interests that it remains so." BP's chairman claimed that the company and the government were "fully aligned in our interests in closing this well, cleaning the beaches, and caring for those affected." It was clearly a difficult, but productive deliberation.

Scene 2: On June 17, BP CEO Tony Hayward came to Capitol Hill, where Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman accused  him of "stonewalling" the committee. For seven hours Mr. Hayward participated in an increasingly common ritual of public shaming. 

Scene 3: On June 18, Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander, gave another of his regular updates. "We're also working very closely with British Petroleum," he said. "We have given them direction to increase their redundancy and capacity of their containment operations... BP laid out and we've approved where they are headed right now to bring in needed capacity... So we continue to make progress there."

Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics, and others have found that participation, collaboration and deliberation are fundamental to resilience. Hayward's performance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee demonstrates the limitations of mere participation. The progress reported by Admiral Allen suggests the practical benefits of collaboration. Without several weeks of often troubled collaboration, it is entirely possible the White House deliberations would not have produced anything close to the same result.

Participation by itself is never enough. BP and the US government each "participated" in developing inadequate oil spill recovery plans. Once the crisis compelled the parties to actually collaborate, weeks passed before some rough semblance of an effective and shared operational approach emerged. Both the collaborative relationship and deliberative process remain fragile in face of the lack of prior investment in collaboration and deliberation. No wonder there has been so little resiliency evident in our response to the Gulf disaster.  We were not investing in it.

Fortunately, resiliency is now enshrined in the recently-published National Security Strategy: "When incidents occur, we must show resilience by maintaining critical operations and functions, returning to our normal life, and learning from disasters so that their lessons can be translated into pragmatic changes when necessary. The private sector, which owns and operates most of the nation's critical infrastructure, plays a vital role in preparing for and recovering from disasters. We must, therefore, strengthen public-private partnerships..."

Articulating the goal is helpful, but true resilience relies on action and authentic relationships. Meeting, greeting, exchanging PowerPoints and other documents are a start, but unless participation leads to collaboration, we are not cultivating resilience. Unless our assessments, plans, tactics and strategies are tried and tested in action -- by working together -- the meetings, regulations, filings and testimony are mostly meaningless.  

Looking forward from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, three specific steps should be taken to enhance resilience in the Gulf and other regions with similar challenges:

1. Oil spill response plans, required of all those awarded drilling rights by the federal government, should include a catastrophic incident annex (note: this is different from the plan's current attention to worst-case scenarios). The catastrophic incident annex should require detailed preparation for an event with a scale similar to Ixtoc I or the still emerging benchmark of Deepwater Horizon.

2. State and local stakeholders should be included in reviewing and commenting on oil spill response plans. Both public and private sector stakeholders should participate in this review and comment process. The work of the Prince William Sound Citizens' Advisory Council demonstrates the benefit and long-term effectiveness of local oversight of the most sophisticated and complex of systems. Ostrom and others have reconfirmed this time and again.

3. Federal, state, local, and private sector partners should conduct annual exercises to test and further develop oil spill response plans. Training and tabletop exercises can be part of the effort too, but annual full-scale operational exercises designed to stress -- not confirm -- the plans are the way to foster meaningful collaboration in advance of an emergency. This will also facilitate the shared deliberation that can reduce the likelihood and mitigate the consequences of an emergency.

While these three specifics focus on enhancing the resilience of our drilling operations, they are context-specific examples of the broader principles of participation, collaboration and deliberation: actively involve a broad cross-section of those who are mostly likely to be most affected by any systems failure; create opportunities for a diverse set of public and private players to work together; and work together to ensure that lessons learned are identified and put into action.

 

Shared and authentic deliberation in advance of crisis is what generates the resilience to bounce back when the unpredictable happens.

Philip J. Palin is a research fellow in the Pace University graduate program in Management for Public Safety and Homeland Security Professionals. Mr. Palin's publications include Resilience: The Grand Strategy; Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence, Risk; and Catastrophe Preparation and Prevention. He is also a regular contributor to the Homeland Security Watch blog.

ABS Consulting is seeking a talented professional to provide technical and management consulting services to the federal government, specifically in the area of homeland security risk analysis for grant allocation at FEMA. Education and experience with economics or a related field is a key requirement. An active security clearance is preferred.