To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. NAPOLITANO’S DHS A passion for training SECRETARY NAPOLITANO HAS MADE CLEAR HER DISTASTE FOR DHS’ PREVIOUS NATIONAL TRAINING EXERCISES. IN OCTOBER 2007, THE STATE OF ARIZONA PARTICIPATED IN THE TOPOFF (TOP OFFICIAL) 4 EXERCISE—ALONG WITH OREGON, GUAM AND FEDERAL AGENCIES IN WASHINGTON, DC. AS GOVERNOR OF ARIZONA, NAPOLITANO FOUND THE EXERCISE LONG, UNREALISTIC, AND EXPENSIVE, AS SHE SAID IN A LETTER TO THEN-SECRETARY CHERTOFF IN NOVEMBER 2007. “I think exercises benefit from frequency— and one of the real benefits to be gained is people learning how to work with each other, who to call, who’s going to be on the other end of a communique, who’s prepared to stand up under what circumstances, and the like,” Napolitano told the Senate during her confirmation hearing Jan. 15. “One of the problems with TOPOFF is they’re so big and gigantic and expensive that they really don’t permit that.” Joshua Filler, former director of the DHS Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, agreed. Filler, now consulting at Washington, DC-based Filler Security Strategies Inc., participated in TOPOFF exercises in 2003 and 2005 and found them to be too large to be as effective as possible. He recommended scaling them back, perhaps limiting them to one state at a time and focusing on a specific issue. “By making it smaller and more focused, you would get better participation and you can turn this thing around quicker with after-action reports in terms of what happened as opposed to cov- US AIR FORCE PHOTO/SENIOR AIRMAN JOHN HUGHEL Two Oregon Army National Guard members make notes from the edge of the blast zone after a simulated dirty bomb was exploded during the TOPOFF 4 exercise in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 16, 2007. Knox FDC Protection Program ® 800-552-5669 5" StorzGuard™ 4" StorzGuard™ SecureCap® 2.5" Female 2.5" & 1.5" FDC Plug Knox Keywrench www.knoxbox.com ering everything under the sun,” Filler told Homeland Security Today. “Because TOPOFF covers everything, after-action reports must also cover everything. Reducing the exercise would make the exercise more useful, more efficient, more effective, and quicker—and it would speed the turnaround on after-action reports, which is really what this is all about.” After-action reports are intended to inform officials what worked and what did not work during an exercise. As such, they are the truly valuable part of training scenarios because they identify areas where corrective action is necessary,Filler remarked. But Napolitano never received any feedback from Arizona’s participation in TOPOFF from the date it occurred in October 2007 until this writing. “If it takes a year or two to produce that document, people have literally moved on to other jobs. This thing has got to move more quickly. The only way to do that is to scale it back,” he commented. The Bush administration scheduled the next TOPOFF exercise, which is to test information sharing at fusion centers as well as border security measures, for this summer, but Napolitano could delay, suspend or change the exercise. Regardless of how DHS handles the next national-level exercise, it must provide more funding directly to state and local participants to facilitate their involvement in the exercise, Filler argued. “The days of telling states to use their existing grant funds are over,” he said. “The grant pool is going down; states are in a fiscal crisis. If you want these states to participate in a major full-scale exercise, you have to give them additional resources. That’s a problem that has been brewing for a couple of years and now it is reaching critical mass.” In Filler’s view, using existing funding for the exercise, DHS should identify a percentage to allocate to state and local government participants and cover their expenses for training. States would receive more direct benefit from the exercise if DHS would do so instead of spending almost all of the funds at the federal level. “Take the existing budget and carve out a portion of it for the states and locals to participate,” he suggested. Napolitano emphatically agreed, as she told a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee on Feb. 25. “[T]raining’s a passion with me, and I believe for emergency preparedness and response and for people just to know what they need to do under any different type of circumstance, training is so very key,” she declared. 32 May 2009 | Homeland Security Today Magazine This month’s issue is now available online at…