Improving Homeland Security
Continuing Challenges and Opportunities
Paula D. Gordon
March 24, 2004

RECOMMENDATIONS

  1. Developing and implementing in-service education and training initiatives for those in major roles of responsibility for homeland security;

  2. Recognizing and addressing organizational culture challenges;

  3. Greatly increasing critical infrastructure stability and reliability while also enhancing critical infrastructure protection and continuity efforts and stabilizing the economy;

  4. Launching a comprehensive strategy focusing on cybersecurity, the internet, and complex digital systems;

  5. Focusing on the development of disaster resistant communities, states, and regions;

  6. Fostering an all hazards approach to emergency preparedness;

  7. Recognizing the most obvious vulnerabilities that could involve the greatest loss of life and destruction and taking steps to protect against and minimize the results of possible attacks and disruptions involving these aspects of the nation's critical infrastructure;

  8. Giving adequate attention and resources to interim, less than perfect, "make-do" plans and strategies as well as plans and strategies that can be ready in the near term;

  9. Establishing at the highest levels of the Department of Homeland Security an internal thinktank, strategic planning, proactive, problemsolving, troubleshooting arm that would, among other things, identify and address problems that no one presently "owns";

  10. Organizing and implementing clearinghouse efforts that incorporate technical assistance support services; and

  11. Fostering the use of the Homeland Security Impact Scale as a means of providing a common context for understanding the continuing impacts of 9/11 and the impacts of possible future attacks or tactics.