f Yo! Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike Chertoff! at Stephenson blogs on homeland security 2.0 et al.

« National Preparedness Month tips: ok, but sooo 20th-century | Home | Another bin Laden tag cloud visualization »

Yo! Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike Chertoff!

By WDavidStephenson | September 20, 2007

Will wonders never cease?

One of my best tipsters let me know Mike Chertoff has joined the blogosphere, with the edgy-titled Leadership Journal (OK, readers: who’s gonna supply me with suggested alternative titles?).

I wish I could remember the secret handshake to welcome him to the clan….

The jury’s out on whether this “journal” (guess blog is a little to scary a term to use in officialdom) will pan out over time and have new content: long-time readers will remember that I was in high dudgeon during and after Katrina when the DHS and FEMA web sites remained static, right when the flow of information was vital.

Having said that, welcome, Mr. Secretary, to our snarky little universe (hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t add you to my blogroll right away, although I’ll definitely subscribe to your RSS feed)!

It was interesting to see that in one of his first posts, Chertoff used the bully pulpit to go after the NYT with a tad of bile for its less-than-complimentary editorial about the draft National Response Framework, which the Times, referring to the Congressional post-mortems that had recommended restoring FEMA’s autonomy said:

“The new homeland security policy — the already overdue ‘national response framework’ — amounts to fresh disaster on paper. It not only ignores Congress’s vital mandate, but it breezes past a range of valuable proposals from state and local disaster managers and first responders. It threatens to compound bureaucratic inertia by creating 15 regional disaster areas with separate operational and strategic plans.”

To which Mike the Blogger responded:

“It’s [referring to “something deeper going on” in terms of a hidden agenda by the Times that Chertoff thinks was behind the editorial] revealed by a parting shot in the editorial, where it charges that DHS will feed ‘bureaucratic inertia’ by creating ‘15 regional disaster areas with separate operational and strategic plans.’ This just misreads the new policy. The national response framework, in fact, does not create 15 new geographic regions with separate plans. What we are doing is creating 15 different nationwide plans to deal with 15 very different types of disaster scenarios that are concrete threats to our country. This planning effort includes not only upgrading plans for traditional disasters, such as major earthquakes and major hurricanes. It embraces planning to address newly emerging risks, such as multiple attacks by improvised explosive devices; an attack by radiological (’dirty’) bombs; food contamination; cyber attack; and pandemic influenza.

“Developing, training to, and exercising plans for multiple threats and very different threat scenarios isn’t a recipe for ‘bureaucratic inertia’ as the Times asserts. It’s simple common sense. The plan for mass evacuation from an approaching major hurricane must be very different from the plan to shelter in place and minimize human contact during a biological attack. And both of these plans would be very different from the plan to mitigate a cyber attack. It would be reckless indeed to believe that one plan can fit all these varied threats.”

I happen to be closer to Chertoff on the regional plan issue — the NRF is pretty clear that these are plans rather than new offices, etc. (although, as I’ve pointed out, I want to see some recognition on their part that both terror attacks and disasters don’t respect planners’ neat scenarios in the 3-ring binders: there also has to be on-the-spot, ad hoc planning that responds to the actual situation, not planners’ wannabe ones. And, of course, there’s zero mention in the NRF of substantive public involvement.).

However, the bigger picture here, I hope, is that the “journal” indicates more willingness on DHS’ part to take part in public debate about its programs.

BTW: I submitted a comment to the DHS Blog Comment Gods on his entry about personal preparedness, with my usual riposte that they ignore 21st-century communications. Since I’ve NEVER ONCE had the courtesy of even a drop-dead response when submitting a comment to the DHS website comment form (even when I’ve been on my best Uriah Heep subservient, cloying behavior). I’m not holding my breath in hopes that my comment will actually be posted on the blog site….

Tell a friend:

Technorati tags:

Sphere: Related Content

Topics: technology, empowering public, policy and politics, collaboration, e-gov transformation | |