June 2003 · Volume 85 · Number 5

Homeland Security Collaborative Planning in 
Readiness Enhancement

Henry Mayer 
The horrific events of September 11, 2001, sent shock waves throughout the nation. While it has frequently been declared that the world changed dramatically on that day, the truth of the matter is that little in the world actually changed. The underlying conditions and issues that led to the terrorist attacks on the American homeland existed long before September 11, and it is quite likely that these same conditions and problems will continue into the foreseeable future. 
So if the world did not change, what did change on September 11? The most dramatic change was the way in which the average American viewed the world. In addition to the terrible loss of life, we had to face the stunning realization that we were vulnerable to attack by an enemy who was armed with little more than the desire to kill. In our high-tech world of smart bombs and guided missiles, we were stunned that people armed with nothing more than box-cutters could have caused such devastation. 
As America searches for ways to bolster its homeland security infrastructure, planning has become an essential element of our comprehensive readiness strategy. By engaging broad and diverse groups of planners/responders in the planning process, we tap into their unique knowledge and skills. The planning process builds coalitions, establishes common terminology, standardizes operating procedures, and provides a venue for brokering mutual-aid agreements. 
Planning for planning’s sake, however, can be an exhaustive exercise that produces little in the way of quantifiable results. The planning process must culminate in a final, tangible product, an emergency plan that can be tested and validated. By validating an emergency plan through a combination of tabletop and functional exercises, leaders can test the decision-making abilities of field commanders, as well as identify training and logistic shortfalls. Validated emergency plans can then become the foundations of unit-level training and can ultimately lead to the development of tools that quantifiably assess readiness levels. 
The Nature of Homeland Security
The attacks of September 11 brought to light our vulnerabilities, both as a society and as a nation. With this epiphany came the need to affix accountability. The public’s hue and cry went forth, and our political actors responded. The challenge we faced can be simply stated: Can a society that reveres individualism, cherishes freedom, and values diversity combat a foe that lurks in the shadows and preys on the unaware?” How can we as a nation increase our domestic security while preserving our freedom? 
This dilemma is worsened by the fact that there appears to be an inverse relationship between freedom and security: the more secure we wish to become, the more freedom we must relinquish. As in most complex situations, there are no easy approaches to this impasse. 
An understanding of the nature of “homeland security” must therefore be a prerequisite for moving forward with any serious planning effort. Homeland security is not a science; it cannot be reduced to a series of mathematical equations for which we will find one solution. The nature of homeland security is essentially a feeling. It is a feeling that will be achieved by implementing those goals, policies, and procedures that we hope will make us feel safe once again. 
In this sense, homeland security is more of an art than a science. To succeed in achieving a reasonable feeling of safety, however, planners must take full advantage of science and technology. Science and technology will produce the tools that, when judiciously applied, will help alleviate the anxiety caused by terrorism and will restore the public’s confidence in government’s ability to protect us—where it’s at the federal, state, or local level.
Emergency operations plans must be written with sufficient flexibility to respond to the dynamic changes that can occur during an operation. 
To be sure, science and technology have permanent roles in our newfound war on terrorism, but they are only part of the answer. Another part is the discipline of planning. It is through the planning process that we can bring together the unlikely bedfellows of federal agencies, state and local health departments, state and local emergency management agencies, hospital associations, nonprofit agencies, and law enforcement communities. 
The Nature of Planning
“Planning” is a generic term that means different things to different people. In fact, frequently it is not in the plan but rather in the process of planning that the true value lies, for those agencies that seek to achieve homeland security. 
Author John M. Levy, in his 1988 book Contemporary Urban Planning, makes the distinction between “substantive” and “procedural” theories in planning. According to Levy, “substantive theory” pertains to theory in planning, whereas “procedural theory” is about the “act of planning” or the “planning process.” Planning, as referred to in this article, will focus on this procedural theory or act of planning. The article also attempts to identify some of the obstacles that may be encountered when conducting and implementing an actual plan. 
More specifically, concern here is with the act of developing emergency operation plans that can be used in emergency response operations. Most response planning committees tend to use the “rational model” of planning and to follow the steps defined by Levy. Outlined in Levy’s book are these steps of rational planning: 
1.	Define the problem. 
2.	Clarify the values. 
3.	Select the goals. 
4.	Formulate alternative plans or programs. 
5.	Forecast the consequences of the alternatives. 
6.	Evaluate and select one or more courses of action. 
7.	Develop detailed plans. 
Some Considerations for the Planning Process
Organizations gearing up for emergency responses to attacks on our homeland many profit from examining the following reflections and guidelines, among other principles: 
Plan with a vision. While this point may seem obvious, the planning process must begin with a vision. Frequently, protocols are developed and policies promulgated without consideration of the ultimate objective. All policies and procedures need to be developed so that they specifically complement the goal of achieving homeland security.
Measures of effectiveness also should be considered before the plan is written. If the ultimate goals of homeland security are to create an environment that makes us feel safer and at the same time to respect individual freedoms, then outcome performance measures should be developed both up-front and concurrently with the planning process. 
Map out an initial, rough plan. It also is important that the planning team produce a development plan that will serve as a blueprint for the final product, an outline of what the final emergency plan will look like. It should address the vision, goals, and objectives of the elected officials. Likewise, it should lay out the format of the plan and its associated sections, tabs, and annexes. It should include goals, objectives, and a timeline with explicit deliverables; affix responsibilities to specific members of the team; determine appropriate outcome performance measures; and provide a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating the final plan.
Expect the unexpected. Military planners have a saying: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” This does not imply that a plan was flawed because an operation did not unfold in the expected way. Rather, it means that even the most thorough and detailed plans will always be subject to chance. Author Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic 1832 study, On War, referred to this phenomenon as the “fog of war.” He recognized that all operations are vulnerable to “chance” and that there will always be an element of risk in any operation.
Officials who develop emergency operations plans need to anticipate the unexpected. No plan is perfect, and all plans undoubtedly will be written according to imperfect information and largely based on assumptions. Plans must be written with sufficient flexibility to respond to the dynamic changes that can occur during an operation. 
In his article “How to Think With Your Gut,” Thomas Stewart makes the point that in fluid and dynamic situations, intuitive decision making tends to be more appropriate than analytic decision making.[1] He backs up his claim by citing work by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein, who studied firefighters and their decision-making processes.[2] 
Stewart also cites work by David Snowden, director of IBM’s Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity in Wales.[3] Snowden suggests that all problems fall into one of four levels of complexity: 
1.	The problem is covered by rules. 
2.	The situation is complicated. 
3.	The situation is complex. 
4.	The situation is chaotic. 
Snowden asserts that, in the first situation, when “the problem is covered by rules,” legal structures and standard operating procedures tend to work extremely well. When “the situation is complicated,” groups can usually work toward rational and satisfactory resolution. However, when “the situation is complex” or “chaotic,” informed and intuitive decisions tend to be more effective than analytical ones. 
Toward this end, we engage a cohort group of responders with diverse backgrounds (police, fire, emergency medical services, public health) in the planning process and thus we create an environment that promotes group learning. Each participant learns the major issues confronting another’s organization. This allows each response organization to develop better standard operating procedures to support the overall emergency operations plan, even in the face of unexpected circumstances. 
By increasing the knowledge base of participant/responders through the planning process, we can assume they will be better prepared to make tactical decisions—particularly when they are confronted with the complex or chaotic situations that often are encountered in the field. 
Balance threat assessment with risk analysis. At this point, it is important to distinguish between threat assessment and risk analysis. While the terms often are used interchangeably, they are in fact quite different. Risk is defined by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard 1250 as “a measure of [the] probability and severity of [the] adverse events that result from exposure to a hazard.”[4] Threat is defined by Webster as “the intent to hurt, destroy, or punish.”[5]
Since risk deals with probability, it lends itself to a variety of analytic tools and models. The fire service, for instance, has invested heavily in developing analytic methods to measure and analyze risk. Risk analysis typically involves measuring the severity and frequency of past events. This approach is useful in developing risk ratings, which can be used to forecast the needed personnel levels and capital expenditures, as well as training and educational programs.[6] 
However, if this logic is applied to a possible attack with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), things become problematic. Most localities cannot turn to recent history to collect data points on the frequency and severity of such attacks. But since the potential effect of a WMD event is so catastrophic, this potential cannot be ignored. 
Presidential Directive 3 established the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) to examine the correlation between threat (hostile intent) and risk (probability of attack). Factors considered in making threat warnings include the credibility of a threat, its specificity, its immediacy, the gravity or potential consequences of such an attack, and whether the threat can be corroborated by multiple sources. 
Flexibility is written into the system so that warnings may be issued for the entire nation, a specific geographic region, or a certain industry. The warnings are graduated, with each level corresponding to a set of predefined protective measures. The rationale is that, if we harden our domestic security posture, we may be able to deter an attack. If we cannot deter an attack, however, we will be better positioned to respond to its consequences. 
Since threat assessments deal with possible or probable future attacks, it is difficult to determine the level of readiness that should be maintained. While most local jurisdictions agree that local readiness needs to be increased, few have the resources to protect against all threats. In most areas, the likelihood of an attack is low, but the potential consequences are grave. Because of this dynamic, planners should look at developing cost-effective methods to create emergency “surge capabilities.” 
One innovative method, the Regional Incident Support Coordination (RISC) team, was pioneered by Pennsylvania’s Antiterrorism Task Force Region 13. It was developed as a demonstration project for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as a cost-effective method to enhance the region’s emergency response capacity. Essentially, RISC is a trained manpower pool that classifies individuals by specialty. 
Members are volunteers drawn from each of the 13 jurisdictions that make up the antiterrorism region. If an event occurs that overwhelms a single jurisdiction’s capacity, the incident commander has the option of calling on additional resources from the RISC manpower pool. In concept, the “augmentees” blend seamlessly into the incident command system to support the operation. 
If we accept that the ultimate measure of effectiveness for efforts toward homeland security is a feeling of safety, then planners must look at both threat assessments and traditional risk analyses when developing emergency operations plans. A deterrence and all-hazard approach to planning will most likely remain the best option in the future. 
Local planners should become familiar both with the various tools used in risk analysis and with the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). By structuring emergency response plans along the lines of the HSAS, planners will begin to create a common lexicon and methodology that can be understood at all levels of government (local, state, and federal). Planners also should examine local vulnerabilities and develop response models for responding to them. These models may be useful in developing future staffing, equipment, and training requirements. 
  
What Planning Tasks to Consider	
Emergency planners should consider both the nature of homeland security and the nature of planning itself. Some key factors they should consider while engaged in the planning process are the need to establish a shared vision, to write a development plan, and to anticipate the unexpected. Planners should also understand and appreciate the difference between threat (hostile intent) and risk (probability of harm), as well as the value of building relationships and engaging diverse perspectives during the planning process.
This process will likely meet with various roadblocks and barriers. Some of these are the problems of using imperfect information, defining the threat, keeping the process from stalling, dealing with bureaucratic stovepipes and rice bowls, bridging the differences in organizational cultures, and planning in a politically charged environment.	
 
Build relationships. Almost any emergency manager will attest to the fact that emergency management is a relationship-based profession. The smoothest operations are the ones in which responders have developed preexisting relationships. When firefighters, police officers, and paramedics come together at incident scenes, they develop a professional respect for each other’s abilities. While this respect is sometimes disguised by professional rivalries, there remains an unspoken admiration for each community’s unique capabilities.
Likewise, an emergency manager must develop good working relationships with elected officials, with the emergency managers of neighboring jurisdictions, and with his/her counterparts at the local, state, and federal levels. By establishing these complex relationships, a manager can expect to be more effective in orchestrating a multifaceted response operation. 
Build diversity into the planning team. The planning process, if properly conducted, brings together a multidisciplinary team of professionals. Each representative on the planning team should be vested with the authority to speak for his/her agency. Planning meetings are an excellent forum for communication and a means of addressing each individual agency’s concerns. They are venues for assessing needs and identifying budgetary shortfalls. Additionally, they provide a forum for discussing the development and implementation of mutual-aid compacts and memorandums of understanding between and among member organizations. Planning meetings also are useful tools toward developing standardized interjurisdictional response procedures, examining equipment interoperability problems, and discussing policy issues.
Remember that a team must have a captain. If clear lines of authority are not delineated at the outset, a planning team may lose its effectiveness. Care should be taken in selecting an appropriate governance committee and/or project director because it will be important that this committee and/or director be able to keep planning meetings on target, ensure that deliverables are met in a timely fashion, and make the critical decisions needed to move the project forward. 
When we tap into the collective energies of a diverse planning team, we can expect superior results. By the time the final plan is published, the planning committee will have gained considerable insight not only into its own agency but also into the capabilities and limitations of its partners. 
Some Barriers to Planning and Implementation
Any planning effort will be fraught with pitfalls and roadblocks. The biggest challenge the planning team will face will be devising strategies that will yield breakthroughs to keep the planning and implementation process moving forward. 
Overriding need to achieve a product. While the benefits of the planning process are numerous, planners should never lose sight of the fact that ultimately they must come up with a product. In emergency operations planning, the final product should be an emergency plan that can be run and validated through tabletop and functional exercises.
Because developing a plan is a daunting and complex endeavor, it often is difficult to keep the process moving, particularly with large and diverse planning committees. If the planning committee is structured so that decisions must be made with the concurrence of all of its members, there is an increased likelihood that the process will stall. In these situations, a smaller governance committee should be considered—one that could be empowered to make critical decisions. 
Imperfect information. As previously mentioned, planners almost always are forced to do their work with incomplete or imperfect information. One way to minimize this problem is by gathering intelligence. An incredible amount of intelligence can be gleaned from open sources. Many federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, and CDC, produce unclassified reports that give detailed information that can be useful in making local threat assessments.[7]
Planners need to make a realistic evaluation not only of threats but also of the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities that face their communities. Strategic business planners refer to this kind of analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a SWOT analysis.[8] A SWOT analysis is just as relevant to the emergency management community as it is to the business community. Once such an analysis has been conducted, appropriate response strategies can be developed. 
Regardless of the source of an intelligence report, emergency planners should exercise caution when using its content. Planners always should view intelligence reports with a certain skepticism. They should garner whatever gems of wisdom they can from these reports, but they must accept that ultimately an operational plan will be largely assumption-based. 
Difficulty of defining the scope of the threat. A significant challenge facing an emergency planner is accurately defining the threat. Elected officials and emergency managers will undoubtedly want to know the answers to a number of serious questions. At the top of their list will be these: “What is the actual threat facing our community? How serious is it? How do we plan a response to the unknown? Defining the threat becomes pivotal in driving budgets, equipment, personnel, and training.
As already discussed, the fact that a threat deals with a hostile intent (a future event) makes the use of traditional analytical tools difficult. Probably, an emergency planner will not have a crystal ball that can reveal the future. However, the planner can conduct research, gather intelligence, and make informed assumptions about the threat. He or she also can develop response models based on assessments about the likelihood and vulnerability of certain high-profile targets. 
While it may not be possible actually to define the scope of the threat, by taking an “all-hazards” approach, a planner can define the essential elements of a response. This strategy has served the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) well in disaster response operations. FEMA has long recognized that the skills needed to respond to a disaster are basically the same regardless of the situation. In fact, part of the genius of the Federal Response Plan (FRP) is its flexibility. It allows the federal government to employ the appropriate federal assets in any type of disaster. 
Obviously, not all ESFs are required on all incidents; only those ESFs that are needed will be activated in a given event. By taking an all-hazards approach to planning and developing extensive mutual-aid agreements with neighboring jurisdictions, emergency managers can rapidly expand their response organizations. 
Another question that emergency planners should consider in defining the threat they face is whether a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) incident will fundamentally change the way they need to respond. What is unique about a chemical attack? What makes it different from a toxic-chemical spill? Why is a bioterrorism attack different from an infectious disease outbreak? 
For the most part, a WMD response will employ the same tools, training, and tactics as a traditional hazmat (hazardous materials), radhaz (radiation hazard), or public health emergency response. The fact that a WMD attack is an intentional act of violence on a catastrophic scale, however, absolutely changes its complexion. This variable creates a unique psychological dimension. Today’s emergency planners need to plan for psychological casualties to a much greater extent than they have had to in the past. 
Stovepipes and rice bowls. A “stovepipe” in this context refers to the silo organizational structures that exist in most government agencies. A “rice bowl” refers to a government executive’s need to protect his/her own budget. An emergency planner should be aware that bureaucracies by their very nature are often protectionist.
In business, competition is based on gaining economic advantage over one’s rivals; in government, however, an executive’s desire to increase power and autonomy and to protect his/her budgets drives competition. This interagency competition can create systemic roadblocks and barriers when planning integrated response operations. As we have seen in the recent establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, however, public outcry can persuade elected officials to break through barriers that in the past may have seemed impenetrable. 
Differences in organizational cultures. Emergency planners must recognize the fact that the organizational cultures of response entities can differ greatly. The public health community’s concept of response will contrast notably with that of a police or fire department. It is important, therefore, to set up a standard organizational structure that is understood by all response organizations.
The incident command system (ICS) that has been endorsed by a number of federal and state agencies, as well as most local response organizations, provides such a framework.[9] Public health officials, until the recent threats of bioterrorism became more prominent, had never seen themselves as first responders in the conventional sense. Today, we are seeing this paradigm shift. More and more health departments and hospitals are realizing that they could be on the front lines of a biological attack. For this reason, we are beginning to see them organize along the lines of the incident command system. 
Note that the ICS also can be expanded into a unified command system (UCS), capable of coordinating a multijurisdictional and multiagency response. The fire department of Arlington County, Virginia, made a response to the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on September 11 that proved the effectiveness of the UCS.[10] By employing a UCS system, the on-scene commander was able to coordinate not just the actions of the local first responders but also the incredible number of state and federal agencies that were involved as well. 
Political environment. An emergency planner would be remiss if he/she were not aware of the political issues that surround emergency management and the barriers they can create. If we accept the premise that homeland security is essentially a feeling, we must agree that achieving this feeling will carry a substantial price tag.
At some point, the public will undoubtedly question the cost of security. Just as there appears to be an inverse relationship between freedom and security, there also seems to be one between the need to achieve security and the willingness to pay for it. 
For example, if we are 100 percent successful in thwarting terrorist attacks, the public will feel safer. The safer that people feel, the more they will question the seriousness of the threat. This could create a situation in which the threat still exists but the public does not perceive it. In this event, political factions will likely demand reprogramming of the funds earmarked for domestic preparedness. Apparently, the more successful we are at homeland security, the more difficult it will be to justify domestic preparedness budgets in the “out” years. 
In the future, sustaining domestic support for homeland security will become just as important as fighting the war on terrorism. Planners would be well advised to devise a public relations strategy aimed at sustaining public support for their domestic preparedness programs. Without sustained public support, we could start down the slippery slope of complacency and become unprepared to respond to a major incident. 
In Summary
By engaging a diverse group of responders and planners in a collaborative planning effort, we can enhance our domestic readiness. One way of increasing our readiness posture is to conduct planning aggressively. It is important to keep in mind, however, that a process must culminate in a final product, an emergency operations plan that is validated through tabletop and functional exercises. 
Regardless of how the federal and state governments are structured, first response always will be a local government responsibility. Emergency managers should therefore ensure that a comprehensive planning process is established to address the multitude of interjurisdictional, legal, operational, and logistic issues that surround response operations. 
[1]Thomas A. Stewart, "Business 2.0: How to Think with Your Gut" (November 2002), published at http://www.business2.com/. 
[2]Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, 2nd printing (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988). 
[3]http://www-1.ibm.com/services/cynefin/history.html 
[4]National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standard 1250, Recommended Practice in Emergency Service Organization Risk Management (2000 edition). 
[5]Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (Nashville: Southwestern Company, 1972). 
[6]Murrey E. Loflin and Russel E. Sanders, Managing Fire and Rescue Services (Washington, D.C.: ICMA, 2002), as explained in Chapter 2, Evaluating Local Risks and Planning for the Necessary Resources. 
[7]Central Intelligence Agency, http://www.cia.gov/; Federal Bureau of Investigation, http://www.fbi.gov/; Centers for Disease Control, http://www.cdc.gov/. 
[8]Philip Kotler, Marketing Management, Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control, Ninth Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1997), p. 80. 
[9]NACCHO, CDC, and FEMA, The Public Health Agency Role in Incident Command Systems (ICS): Pilot Training Course. 
[10]Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Department. Pentagon After-Action Report. Found at http://www.co.arlington.va.us/fire/edu/about/docs/aar.htm. 

Harry Mayer is regional emergency coordinator of Region III for the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Emergency Response, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This article is adapted from Strengthening Our Homeland Security: A Collaborative Planning Approach to Readiness Enhancement, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Fels Institute of Government, Journal of City and State Public Affairs, Fall 2003, 
Volume 4.