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NIMS Integration Center (NIC)
December 6, 2004
FY 2005 Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP)

The Department of Homeland Security's FY 2005 Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) Guidelines and Application Kit are now available online at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/fundopps.htm. The FY05 HSGP provides a single application kit and program guidance for the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP), the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program (LETPP), the Citizen Corps Program (CCP), the Emergency Management Performance Grants (EMPG) and the Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) Program Grants.

Helping everybody get along
New homeland security system will create the framework for emergency response
BY Diane Frank
Published on Dec. 6, 2004

Cooperation during emergencies is as fundamental as the need for quick action. Increasingly, first responders are prepared to work together in the event of an emergency, and now Homeland Security Department officials are working to develop an infrastructure that will ensure that such cooperation is a cornerstone of emergency response.

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) being developed by DHS' Federal Emergency Management Agency will integrate response practices into a comprehensive framework for managing emergencies nationwide.

NIMS could — and some officials believe it should — enable first responders at the federal, state and local levels to work together more effectively to manage domestic incidents regardless of their cause, size or complexity.

Under a federal directive, NIMS will be in place nationwide by the end of fiscal 2007. But actually getting NIMS operational is going to be far from simple, experts say.

"It's one thing to take the awareness course and it's quite another to go out as a firefighter or an EMT and put it into play, and you need to do that," said Gil Jamieson, acting director of the NIMS Integration Center at DHS.

The idea that multiple jurisdictions and disciplines must come together during an incident is moving out of isolated successes into practice in every state and at all levels of government as officials are "embracing the idea of unified command," Jamieson said. "[But] now that we've got them there, we need to get them to really work together."

DHS officials will incorporate NIMS into all of the exercises they sponsor, he said, noting that the system was part of the TopOff 2 exercises in the Seattle and Chicago areas in 2003. Many government officials involved in those exercises have said NIMS provided an important first step toward coordination in such situations.

NIMS also needs to be incorporated into training, exercises, acquisition practices, management policies and every aspect of first responders' daily lives — to become as much a part of their operations as rescuing a cat stranded in a tree. But neither NIMS nor first responders are quite ready for that, officials said.

When blue is not blue

One of the fundamental challenges that officials face in implementing NIMS is that the term "first responders" refers to many groups and few of those groups speak the same language. Even within a single discipline, terms such as "law enforcement" change from city to city and state to state.

NIMS is supposed to use common terminology for first responders nationwide, but that requires changing not only emergency response language but the way entire disciplines think about emergency response, said Joseph Barbera, co-director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University and a consultant on managing public health emergencies.

The Incident Command System that serves as the heart of NIMS is an effective tool, but it still reflects its genesis in the fire services, particularly in the communities that fight wildfires. "That's not all wrong. It's just that it makes it very, very difficult for medical professionals using NIMS to understand the concepts and the inherent value," Barbera said.

It's not that health officials would respond in bad ways. It's that they simply aren't approaching a situation in the same way a firefighter would, he said, and the basic language of how they talk about the situation is different.

Officials at the NIMS Integration Center have created an advisory committee under the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council. That committee will specifically address the terminology issue and also tackle all of the challenges that arise as multiple disciplines come together, Jamieson said.

"It's going to be a way to create a means to continually communicate with these folks, so that we have their thoughts in terms of where we should go," he said.

Medical workers are not the only ones who will need to adapt to NIMS and who will be working to adapt the system to their own language. Even within the fire community, there are areas that have not adopted the Incident Command System and that still see it as something that applies only to wildfires, not to daily incident management, said Michael Freeman, chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department and chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs' Terrorism and Homeland Security Committee.

But the first responder role is an unusual one for law enforcement personnel to be in, as well. Local police departments have not traditionally been involved in incident command. They usually come in after the fact or as part of a separate effort, said Steve Lenkart, national director for legislative affairs for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers.

"We've been at the same incidents for years as the other first responders, and we work well alongside each other, but we don't typically work well with each other," Lenkart said. "In order to do that, you have to reverse years and years and years of traditional thinking. You have to teach a couple of old dogs some new tricks and build some policies that are actually going to integrate them, not just force them to be there."

A necessary deadline

Officials must solve as many of these cultural issues as they can, as quickly as they can — and the urgency is not only because of ongoing concerns about another significant terrorist attack. The system will also help public officials deal with natural disasters such as the hurricanes that ravaged the Southeast this year.

Beyond that, DHS' fiscal 2007 deadline carries serious penalties should it be missed. If state and local officials have not met minimum requirements set out in a September 2004 letter from Secretary Tom Ridge by the end of fiscal 2006, those state and local agencies will not be eligible to receive federal emergency preparedness funding.

That deadline has caused concerns in Congress. Some local officials say fiscal 2006 is too soon to link compliance to funding. Some officials argue, however, that the deadline is necessary.

What may help overcome the cultural and practical challenges is experience, Freeman said. Although the NIMS Integration Center has put together an online course and other computer-based training resources are available, it's going to come down to real-life training, he said.

"Much of the online training that's proposed and that's available is similar to trying to teach someone to ride a bicycle online. There has to be the hands-on practicum associated with that," he said.

Training will also have to move beyond tactical responses and into management, especially for the public and private medical providers who make up the country's health system, Barbera said.

"There hasn't been a lot of training at the level of management systems for mass casualties," he said. "The processes are there. They're just not very well-defined" as part of a national system.

Sharing lessons learned from training and exercises are also critical if first responders are to move quickly, because it will help them not waste time by repeating mistakes that could have been avoided, said one official from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department who asked not to be named.

The Lessons Learned Information Sharing solution that the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City developed with funding from DHS could help in that effort, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. There will always be a challenge in getting participants in exercises to be honest about what did and didn't work, but with this particular solution, a degree of anonymity is built in and all of the information is available online, Cilluffo said.

However, what is often lacking is the after-action information from the people on the street who were involved in the exercises, not just the managers and executives, the D.C. official said. "That's where the disconnect is," he said.

And that is where the NIMS Integration Center can help — by finding best practices, identifying areas across the country where additional guidance is needed or experiences can be shared, and serving as a group that can continually adapt and update NIMS to meet the needs of the people in the field, Jamieson said.

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DHS: Help is on the way

The Homeland Security Department's National Incident Management System (NIMS) aims to help public officials prevent, prepare for and respond to natural and man-made disasters. Its primary purpose is to establish common practices, capabilities and resources — including information and communications systems — so that officials can easily coordinate efforts.

NIMS covers six areas:

1. Command and management
• The Incident Command System, which firefighters use nationwide and which forms the basis for NIMS.
• Multiple-agency coordinating systems, covering everything from common policies to common terminology.
• Public information systems, to be used to communicate with the public during an incident.

2. Preparedness
• Planning and strategies.
• Training through standard courses.
• Exercises that local, regional and national agency officials conduct regularly.
• Personnel qualification and certification.
• Equipment acquisition and certification.
• Mutual aid agreements.
• Publications management, including standardization of forms and policies for handling sensitive documents.

3. Resource management
• The ability to describe, inventory, mobilize, dispatch, track and recover resources throughout the duration of an incident.

4. Communications and information management
• Incident command communications.
• Information management to ensure that information is getting to the people who need it, when they need it.

5. Supporting technologies
• Voice and data communications, information and resource management systems, and other equipment.

6. Policy management
• Ongoing management and maintenance of the system's policies at DHS.

Source: Homeland Security Department

For the National Incident Management System (NIMS) to be a success, the Homeland Security Department's information technology officials must know what local jurisdictions need.

Although NIMS is not an IT system, IT plays a critical part in enabling the common command and control structure and providing thorough tracking of resources and expertise. But that's the high-level goal. To reach it, DHS officials must know specifics, particularly about what works and doesn't work in local environments, said Steve Cooper, chief information officer at DHS, addressing a group of first responders at a technology demonstration in Washington, D.C., last month.

Officials need feedback on the National Response Plan, an important part of NIMS, Cooper said. "We need folks to read that and to tell us, is it correct, does it make sense at the local level, at the county level, at the state level?" he said. "Partnership means we need to talk to each other."

State and local officials, however, are focusing on the basics right now, said John Markey, director of the Office of Emergency Management's Fire and Rescue Service Division in Frederick County, Md. They need to know what federal officials expect from them if federal funding is going to be hanging in the balance — as it will be starting in fiscal 2007 — and general guidance won't do, he said.

Whether the money comes from the federal government or from state or local budgets, public officials must decide how to use it, experts at the demonstration said. Connectivity and interoperability have gotten a lot of attention at all levels, but the infrastructure is still not getting the money it needs to support applications such as NIMS, said one local government official who asked not to be identified.

Cooper said his office is contributing money to some infrastructure initiatives in the Washington, D.C., region, including the district's wireless data network. But officials at all government levels must focus on infrastructure if NIMS or any other homeland security efforts are to succeed, he said.

— Diane Frank

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NIMS Alert
NIMS Integration Center
DHS/FEMA
Dec. 2, 2004

NIMS INTEGRATION CENTER DISCUSSES NIMS INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM (ICS) in new paper online at fema.gov/nims

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Integration Center have issued a paper on NIMS and the Incident Command System. The paper, "NIMS and the Incident Management System," reviews the development of the various versions of the ICS and discusses the characteristics of the NIMS ICS as the "standardized incident organizational structure for the management of all [domestic] incidents."

"The National Incident Management System incorporates best practices that have been developed over the years and one of the most valuable of these practices is the Incident Command System," said Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response.

The ICS provides a common organizational structure for the immediate response to emergencies and involves the coordination of personnel and equipment on-site at an incident. One of the FY 2005 NIMS implementation requirements is that federal, state, local and tribal governments institutionalize the use of ICS across their entire response systems. Although many agencies now use various forms of ICS, the intent of this paper is to explain how these systems can be integrated into a common ICS system as taught by DHS.

"While the principles and concepts of the NIMS ICS are the same as the FIRESCOPE and NIIMS ICS, it's important to note that the NIMS ICS pulls the most effective elements from the range of existing incident command systems," said Gil Jamieson, Acting Director of the NIMS Integration Center. "From this point forward, there will be one single ICS - the NIMS ICS."

The concept for an incident command system was developed in the aftermath of a devastating wild fire in California in 1970. The FIRESCOPE (Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies) ICS was the result of that effort.

Although FIRESCOPE ICS was developed for wildland fire response, many in the incident management community recognized that it could be used by other public safety responders for a wide range of situations including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters as well as hazardous materials accidents. In 1982, as a result of collaboration between FIRESCOPE and the National Wildfire Coordinating Group to establish a national application for ICS, all FIRESCOPE ICS documentation was revised and adopted as the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS).

The paper may be downloaded from the NIMS Web page at www.fema.gov/nims. Questions about the issues raised may be e-mailed to the NIMS-Integration-Center@dhs.gov or by calling the NIMS Integration Center at 202-646-3850.

On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. ###

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Ridge Leaves 'Good Foundation' at DHS
Pat West, Senior Editor
Dec 2, 2004

Tom Ridge, who officially announced his resignation Tuesday as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, “laid a good foundation,” according to a fire chief who has worked closely with DHS during the last two years on several initiatives.

Chief John Buckman of German Township (Ind.) Volunteer Fire Department was the president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs on Sept. 11, 2001, and has been the voice for fire chiefs as the delegate for the IAFC on DHS committees working on the National Response Plan, the National Incident Management System and several other DHS efforts impacting the fire service.

“I think he’s laid a good foundation and good groundwork,” said Buckman after hearing of Ridge’s resignation. “There will always be people who have not played the game who will have opinions about what needs to be done or what should have been done, but ‘woulda,’ ‘shoulda,’ ‘coulda’ doesn’t get things done. Playing the game every day, trying to make things better – that’s the person you have to look up to and respect for their efforts.”

Ridge is the first secretary of the far-reaching department, a new agency President George W. Bush formed on March 1, 2002 in the wake of Sept. 11 to better focus and coordinate federal assets involved in the safety and security of our nation -- then spread out among 22 separate agencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and its divisions, including the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy, were brought under the DHS umbrella – along with the Office for Domestic Preparedness, a terrorism preparedness division under the Department of Justice.

Buckman said Ridge "set a tone for cooperation and collaboration" with state, local and tribal leaders involved in emergency response and was sensitive to their needs. “I believe through his leadership he was successful in developing the National Incident Management System, with significant input from state, tribal and local governments.”

Under Ridge’s tenure, DHS also released the Interim National Response Plan, and is reported to be preparing to release the National Response Plan in December. The NRP, a single all-discipline, all-hazards plan unifying all Federal domestic prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery plans into one plan, is another major milestone for the agency. The plan has been vetted by federal, state, city, county, and local leaders and first responders

As the former governor of Pennsylvania, Buckman said, Ridge knew all too well the challenges faced at that level when the federal government “stuffed something down the state or local governments’ throats without asking.”

Ridge said he planned to continue to serve until Feb. 1, 2005 or until the Senate confirms his successor. “After more than twenty-two consecutive years of public service, it is time to give personal and family matters a higher priority,” he wrote in his formal letter of resignation to the president.

Although “there will always be more to do,” Ridge said that as he left the post, he believed the nation was more secure than it was before Sept. 11. “As we have merged the many legacy units within the Department, we have made significant progress in strengthening the security of our nation. Working with governors, mayors, police and fire chiefs, the private sector, academic community and all Americans, we have built relationships that will permanently sustain the national effort to protect our country.”

According to a report posted by The Washington Post, Administration officials said Bush is seeking to replace Ridge with a tough manager who can set clear lines of authority and untangle overlapping responsibilities in the department.

A source in the Administration told the Post DHS could experience the most widespread changes of any of the seven Cabinet departments where the heads have resigned since the election. "This is a chance for a fresh start and a different approach," said the official.

Possible successors being mentioned by administration officials and homeland defense experts are White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances Fragos Townsend; White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Joseph Hagin; Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for Transportation and Border Security; and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Environmental Protection Agency head Michael Leavitt are also candidates, according to the Post.

In a press conference after submitting his letter of resignation to the President, Ridge was asked what he might say to his successor about the demands of the job. Be prepared to work “as long as it takes on a day-to-day basis to get the job done,” Ridge advised. “And I think I would say to my successor that the opportunity to continue on a day-by-day basis to make your country safer and more secure, within the constitutional framework, is an enormous challenge and a great opportunity for leadership, and to engage, frankly, our partners not only within the federal government but at the state level, the local level and in our international partners as well.”

Ridge added that Homeland Security has never been “just a Department” to him. “It's about the integration of a country and taking the resources and the capabilities and the capacities we have in the federal government, the state level, the local level, the private sector, the academic community, you name it, and making sure that they are all engaged in a fundamental way, in a certain way that collectively that we, as a country, are safer and more secure.”