Interagency Collaboration and Homeland Security

Review FEMA’s State and Urban Area Homeland Security Strategy Guidance on Aligning Strategies with the National Preparedness Goal, July 22, 2005. To access the document, click on the following link, and then click on the document link with the same title as above. It is located near the bottom of the page:

FEMA’s Good Guidance Documents

Although this document is intended to guide states and selected urban areas in developing and/or revising their homeland security strategies, it provides any reader with information on national goals and standards. This provision is important because it helps other sovereignties place their localities in a larger context and serves to help align strategies to a degree, across the state and the country. To compel compliance, DHS grant dollars are often tied to the inclusion of certain elements of such guidance, especially the National Preparedness Goal (found in this document).

As you review this guidance, notice how many ways collaboration, coordination, cooperation, sharing, and similar terms and concepts are used or implied. These references will serve well as you complete the final project for the course, which is the following:

• Prepare a paper of 7–9 pages that analyzes the relationship between various agencies involved in homeland security, and develop at least 3 specific strategies to improve collaboration and cooperation between the agencies.
• You may select any agencies that you’d like to approach as you build your three strategies, but consider carefully how certain methods and techniques might work better for certain types of entities, government levels, sectors, or bodies. For example, if you are a state’s emergency manager who is working on a strategy for improved collaboration with transportation partners, might your approach to elicit cooperation from corporate partners be different that those used by a state to a city?
• Your strategies should make clear the advantages of coordination plus the tools to achieve it. As you are asked to draft three strategies, determine how you will separate these: by function (example, information sharing); targeting entity or type of organizations (example: private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure); governmental level (example: county-to-county peer-level agreements for mutual support), etc. (You may use any of these examples in your assignment.)
• To aid you in completing this assignment, revisit activities and materials covered during the term. You may also choose to locate real-world state, community, or corporate strategies, many of which are available through open-source avenues.
  • For a tip, you may elect to represent a real or hypothetical agency or governmental body as you approach this assignment; it may help you maintain focus as you progress.
• Ensure that each strategy is well organized, clearly delivered, mechanically sound, and comprehensive in content. Although strategies generally do not include citations, remembering that this is an academic product, you should properly reference the source of any material or ideas that are not original.