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NOTICE:
TIEMS Transportation Safety and Security Workshop January 28-29th 2003
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Welcome to
the
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management
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| January 2003
Volume 3 - Number 4 |
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Links:
Current events
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Developing a Command, Control, Communications
and Intelligence Architecture
Process for the Department of Homeland Security
By Dana Griffin
Abstract
Efficient, effective communications, in support of all Crisis and Emergency Management, is absolutely essential. Through all phases of Crisis and emergency management, the properly planned and executed use of varied concepts of communications is necessary to ensure that injury, death and/or property damage are minimized or eliminated. However, the operational/ system concepts, and technical standards, by which the nation’s Crisis and Emergency Management organizations communicate and coordinate their efforts, currently do not officially exist. The objective of this paper is to outline an approach, i.e., a ”Process”, to use as a guide for developing an overarching Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) Architecture Process. The definition of “architecture”, in the context of this paper is “the structure of components, their relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time.” This process in turn will be used to establish specific policies, procedures and systems capabilities and requirements that would use to identify, fund, procure and implement C4I capabilities during all phases of DHS operations. A DHS C4I Architecture Process would be used to provide guidelines that not only ensure the C4I interoperable of all Federal DHS agencies, but interoperability of all state and local DHS, law enforcement, Fire, Search and Rescue (SAR), and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) across all physical, geographic, and organizational boundaries. Recent government legislation is placing more emphasis on the need to pursue interoperable, integrated, and cost-effective business practices and capabilities within each Federal Organization, particularly with respect to information technology. Two legislative acts that will impact DHS architecture analysis and integration activities are the Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA), also known as the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). Together, the ITMRA and GPRA serve to codify the efficiency, interoperability, and leveraging goals being pursued by the Federal Departments, Services, and Agencies. The ITMRA and the GPRA require federal organizations to measure the performance of existing and planned information systems and to report performance measures on an annual basis. An Architecture Process provides a mechanism for understanding and managing C4I complexity. The purpose of C4I architectures is to establish baseline capabilities by through the systematic development of DHS C4I requirements that ultimately lead to a sound investment strategy. This strategy, in turn, should lead to: (1) The specific, rapid development and employment of new as well as improved operational and systems capabilities, thus enabling the efficient, effective use of the tax payers dollars while ultimately ensuring an overarching, standardized DHS C4I capabilities that ensures repeated mission success. (2) The ability to compare, analyze, and integrate architectures developed to support specific geographical and functional, DHS and DHS associated agencies from a cross-organizational perspective is critical to achieving these objectives.The C4I Architecture Process is intended to ensure that the architecture descriptions developed by the DHS and DHS associated Agencies are interoperable between and among each organization’s operational, systems, and technical architecture views, and are comparable and integrated across organizational and combined organizational boundaries. The intent should be to develop a C4I Architecture Process that will be accepted by the DHS community and that ultimately a memorandum will be promulgated by the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Defense designating the DHS C4I Architecture Process as the strategic direction for a DHS C4I Architecture Process development and implementation. The DHS C4I Architecture Process provides uniform methods for describing information systems and their performance in context with mission and functional effectiveness. To Full Article |