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U.S. Homeland Security Department Eyes “Resilience” Focus for Infrastructure; Key Mayor Balks By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — An anticipated new U.S. Homeland Security Department focus on critical-infrastructure “resilience,” as opposed to “protection,” drew fire from a key mayor this morning (see GSN, June 24, 2005). The Homeland Security Advisory Council’s 10-month old Critical Infrastructure Task Force will within weeks publish a report stressing resilience as the new watchword in that area, council emergency-response head Jeff Gaynor said at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting. The council of state, local and private sector officials is the main advisory body to the Homeland Security secretary. “We have got to be able to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’ regardless of the cost,” Gaynor told the mayors. In a Jan. 10 presentation, Critical Infrastructure Task Force Chairwoman Ruth David offered two definitions of resilience: “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change,” and “the capability of a system to maintain its functions and structure in the face of internal and external change and to degrade gracefully when it must.” As defined by Homeland Security, critical infrastructure includes water systems, public-health networks, locations housing hazardous materials, the food supply, telecommunications equipment and a host of other facilities. The policy of stressing resilience in preparing that infrastructure for terrorism is so far largely conceptual. Some critics worry, however, that the approach could shift needed funding away from efforts to defend against an attack and provide it instead to those planning for continuity after an incident. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, chairman of the mayors’ Homeland Security Task Force, appeared to take exception today to Gaynor’s assertion that a focus on resilience is justified in part by the impossibility of determining “how much protection is enough.” “We can tell you how much protection is too little,” O’Malley said in closing a meeting that had opened with mayors’ appeals to Homeland Security officials for more federal funds. “We look forward,” O’Malley said, “to stopping the constant onslaught of cuts in Homeland Security dollars that flow to cities.” David, who is also president of national security research group Analytic Services, said in the Jan. 10 presentation that her task force’s first recommendation would be to “promulgate critical-infrastructure resilience as the top-level strategic objective — the desired outcome — to drive national policy and planning.” Homeland Security should focus on resiliency, she said, because it implies a “quantifiable target” — defined by the “time required to restore full functionality” — and because it is “aligned with private-sector interests” such as “continuity of business.” The department’s goal for critical infrastructure, she said, should change from “protection against intentional acts” to “resilience to all hazards.”
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