TECHNOLOGY AND STANDARDIZED COMMUNICATION CALLED CRUCIAL FORDHS
Advancements in technology and communication involving different levels of govt. play a most important role in implementing homeland security, Rep. Rogers (R-Ky.), chmn. of Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations, said at a National Chamber Foundation forum on how homeland security initiatives would affect the business world. He named the $900 million in appropriations for the Science & Technology unit of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill that just passed the House (WID June 26 p8) as an example of how important the govt. saw improving technology to further secure the country.
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Rogers said that when it came to technology activity that could help homeland security, “all of it needs to be on a short fuse to make it practical overnight… we do not have time for R&D for R&D’s sake, we need immediate results.” He also cited the $80 million in the House bill for what he called a “rapid prototyping program” that would act as a “clearinghouse” to promote new homeland security technology quickly: “The science and technology branch will hopefully be as effective as DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] for the DoD, but we've got a long way to go to staff up… Trying to stream through millions of emerging technologies is a big challenge and I don’t know if we'll ever be completely happy with the way the process works.”
On appropriations for first responders, he emphasized the difficulty of “making sure the monies go where needed and in a smart way” with 53,000 state and local public safety agencies and 32,000 fire and ambulance units to choose from. While “every state is broke and every city is desperate for money,” Rogers said “most local jobs are not toward fighting terrorism,” so the task of finding the magic number to appropriate so far had been “allusive.” He stressed that ensuring “interoperable communications from the ground up and from the top down” was necessary, but having an organized and compatible plan would be the only way anything got done: “Simply throwing dollars at the issue without research is just what it sounds like -- throwing money away.” Rogers also said another reason people weren’t seeing money appropriated on a local level lay within the local govts., as they hadn’t filled their part of the deal. He said “80% of first responder money must go to the locals, and the state must have a defense plan before we give them money, but they are having trouble getting their plans together… $20.8 billion has been appropriated for state and local first responders since 9/11, but a lot of that money is still in the pipeline” because of govts.’ inability to submit such information.
The general solution for DHS is to develop “one common infrastructure… one database, one interoperable communications system” from 22 different agencies that have their own ways of doing things, Rogers said. The difficulty of that task is “almost astounding,” he said, but one coherent system is necessary for any improvements to be made.