Hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security - The Resilient Homeland: Broadening the Homeland Security Strategy
Statement
REP. THOMPSON: The Committee on Homeland Security will come to order. I'd like to thank Ms. Jackson-Lee for agreeing to tentatively step in place of the chair in case my flight didn't get in, but believe it or not, we got in on time. Thank you very much, Ms. Jackson-Lee, for agreeing.
The committee is meeting today to receive testimony from the Department of Homeland Security and key stakeholders to better understand their efforts to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate on resilience as a critical part of their mission and operation.
I'd like to welcome this panel of esteemed individuals who are here to testify before the Committee on Homeland Security about resiliency. As the world becomes increasingly more flat, a primary distinction between a competitive nation and those nations left behind will be a nation's resilience. Resilience is commonly defined as the ability to recover or adjust easily to misfortune or change.
As it relates to the Department and its functions, resilience is a practice which will allow a quick return to effective, if not 100 percent normal, operations in the wake of an attack or disaster.
Today, we will hear from key partners on this issue; the private sector, one of the country's busiest airports, and a leading expert on resilience.
Our nation's success is in the hands of all critical partners and we have a role to play. Of the nation's critical infrastructure, 85 percent is owned or operated by the private sector. The business community must have cutting edge technology in order to effectively bounce back.
Colleges and universities must provide sound research on the latest technologies and develop curricula to train the next generation of homeland security experts.
Under my leadership, the committee has taken steps to further the resilience of our nation's critical infrastructure. Understanding that we all have a role to play, this committee has taken the lead on making the necessary legislative changes.
Earlier this year, the committee adopted and reported out the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2008, which included the promotion of inherently safer technology to lower the possible consequences of an attack or accident at a facility.
Last year, H.R. 1, or the 9-11 Bill, was signed into law and included a title that promotes the Private Sector Preparedness Voluntary Certification Program, which encourages stakeholders to adopt standards that ensure effective continuity.
And just last week, the Subcommittee on Emergency Communication, Preparedness and Response marked up H.R. 5890, the Citizens Community Preparedness Act of 2008, a bill that supports citizen preparedness, which is a cornerstone of a resilient homeland.
On the other hand, since 9-11 this administration has focused solely on preventing the next attack as opposed to how best to recover should an incident occur.
That, of course, is not the best approach. We must ensure that the Department is properly communicating, collaborating, and coordinating with key stakeholders and critical partners to make sure that we as a nation are prepared for what to do after an attack.
Resilience offers an effective metric: time. We know that companies can measure how long they will be down in the wake of a particular disaster and can work to minimize that time. So it makes sense that the ability to measure down time makes resilience a good security policy.
Simply put, the longer our economic sector is down, the more the terrorists will brag that they are successful. I know that resilience is not universally applicable, but where it's relevant the Department must promote resilience.
In closing, promoting resilience requires honesty with the American people. It is through that honesty that we can provide this nation's citizens with freedom from fear. It also ensures the involvement of critical stakeholders in keeping America strong.
The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from New York, Mr. King, from an opening statement.
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REP. THOMPSON: Thank you very much, and I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony. I remind each member that he or she will have five minutes to question the panel. I'll now recognize myself for questions.
Mr. Baker, you talked a little bit about how your office promotes resiliency in your opening statement. Can you identify a particular department or component in a department which you think is an example of resilience, one that you would consider a successful, a model?
MR. BAKER: I'd be glad to. I think that in terms of allowing resiliency, one effort that I'd point to, which is a joint effort by the Coast Guard and CBP, is preparing for the possibility that our ports would be disrupted by an act of terrorism or a natural disaster. CBP and the Coast Guard have set up mechanisms by which people who are coming to a port can learn what the status of the port is and then can report back to CBP and the Coast Guard about what alternate ports they intend to use. This allows the trade a lot of flexibility in deciding where they're going to go based on what the market calls for. But because they are in constant communication with the Coast Guard and CBP, it allows the Coast Guard and CBP to move their assets quickly to new ports of entry to handle the new load that would come as a result of the shift.
REP. THOMPSON: Thank you. Are there some things you think Congress as a body could do to promote resiliency other than what we're doing now?
MR. BAKER: I think that these hearings are a very good start. Resilience is something that has to be part of all of disaster planning, all of the planning for an event. And it's something that requires that you ask in the emergency how can we help individuals and businesses make good decisions on their own? And there's no one solution to that, but I think drawing attention to the importance of resilience does help all of our planners address that issue.
REP. THOMPSON: Thank you. Dr. Sheffi, your testimony clearly states that a resilience-based approach to disruptions, including intentional, human made attacks is in a company's best interest. Do you have a guesstimate of where the private sector as a whole is in preparing for incidents like this?
MR. SHEFFI: The quick answer is no, but there's such a wide range of preparedness among companies. Even today there are companies -- let me mention the good examples (laughs), not so good. There are companies like Intel, for example, who became a model of preparedness, drilling, resiliency. They even go -- every month there's a team from Intel that goes to somewhere in the world, to some plant and say do you know, you know, manufacture of whatchamacallit part? (They're not out of business ?), and they run the whole plant through 48 hours of exercise in trying to qualify new suppliers, qualify new transportation routes, and plant managers' bonuses are based on it.
They do a lot of other stuff, but that's a, you know, very good example. There are companies that say we'll cast our lot with the rest of them. So there's such a wide variety in what you see. I can say that the good news here -- that most large corporations are taking resilience seriously and are preparing and are drilling.
REP. THOMPSON: Well, we heard the AT&T example of --
MR. SHEFFI: Exactly.
REP. THOMPSON: -- what they do. Is there something you think Congress could do to encourage resiliency outside of government to say we think it's good for you to create a component for resiliency?
MR. SHEFFI: There are two elements, as I said. There's a redundancy element. Redundancy costs a lot of money. For example, I've been -- just happen to have -- it's dangerous to be around me because I was in London and in Madrid during the attack. The first thing that happens is the cell phone network goes down. You cannot communicate. And the lines outside the, you know, public phones, the few that are there, are, you know, enormous.
Can there be some mechanism for the public sector to help the private sector invest in significant redundant capacity? Because this costs money. The part where companies know and help themselves is creating flexibility, because if one creates flexibility to be able to respond to disruption, by the same token one creates flexibility to respond to the marketplace, to demand.
And there is one thing that is clear in all market today, is that demand is fluctuating more and more. There's more and more uncertainty in demand, and companies that can respond better to demand, to competitive pressures, to all kind of changes, are better off in the marketplace and can increase market share. And there have been quite a few examples of companies that are doing disruptions actually, increased market share because they were better prepared.
REP. THOMPSON: Thank you. My time is expired. I yield to the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from New York for questions.
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