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Missouri CIO and NASCIO president Gerry Wethington says DHS needs to support IT infrastructure efforts down to the local level.
In this report
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Program at nation’s major ports tests ways to secure containers
On Sept. 11, 2001, all terrorism became local.
State and local governments remain the front-line soldiers in the war against terror on domestic fronts. As the overseers of most first responders—firefighters, police, emergency medical personnel and public health workers—are they getting the resources, technology and support they need from the Homeland Security Department?
Although progress has been made, gaps remain in the interface between DHS and state and local governments. Three areas—IT infrastructure, funding and information sharing—are showing up as chronic holes in the home front’s war on terror.
The most important element of two critical links between DHS and the locals—interoperability and information sharing—is the technology infrastructure that supports them, said Gerry Wethington, Missouri’s CIO and president of the National Association of State CIOs. This is the element that DHS frequently misses.
Diverse IT infrastructures
State and local governments have highly diverse IT infrastructures, Wethington said. DHS needs to take a closer look at these fundamental issues. “There hasn’t been a willingness to support IT infrastructure stability and growth to meet the interoperability needs,” he said.
Wethington said it would help if DHS and other federal agencies gave the same priority to protecting IT infrastructure—through measures to bolster cybersecurity, business continuity and disaster recovery—that it does to first-responder equipment.
Federal agencies have put state and local governments in the position of having to be extremely creative in writing their applications for funding, as well as “purposely vague” to avoid using language that is not specifically referenced as an allowable expense, Wethington said. State and local governments should not be reinvigorating their infrastructure by trying to circumvent “bad language,” he said.
“Until the federal government specifically provides recognition of the need for an investment in the IT infrastructure—and makes it an allowable expense—I believe we are going to continue to struggle,” Wethington said.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just when most states began experiencing serious economic downturns, the need for homeland security spending took a sharp upturn.
Funding formula changing
Congress is set to change a formula that in 2004 distributed 40 percent of $3 billion in homeland security funds evenly to all states, and divided the remaining 60 percent among states by population density. Under this method, some rural areas wound up getting far more per capita than densely populated areas, which are more likely to be the target of a terrorist attack. For example, Wyoming had a per capita allocation of $36 for 2004, whereas Michigan received $7.12 per person.
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