About the Authors
John Rollins is the lead author of this
report. Mr. Rollins is a member of the Library
of Congress’s Congressional Research Service
(CRS), where he serves as a Specialist in Terrorism
and International Crime. Prior to joining CRS,
he was chief of staff in the Office of Intelligence
for the Department of Homeland Security. Mr.
Rollins’s career includes a variety of
analytic, legal, and management positions in
the U.S. Army, FBI, CIA, DIA, U.S. Marine Corps,
Delta Force, and United Nations. He is a licensed
attorney and a graduate of the Senior Executive
Fellowship program at Harvard University. He
also teaches national security courses at a
number of universities. The analysis and opinion
contained in this report are solely those of
the authors and do not reflect the views of
CRS.
Tim Connors is director of the Center
for Policing Terrorism (CPT) at the Manhattan
Institute. He is a graduate of West Point and
holds MBA and JD degrees from the University
of Notre Dame. Mr. Connors has helped law enforcement
agencies across the country develop sound counterterrorism
and intelligence policies and practices. He
is a career Army officer who is currently assigned
to a civil affairs unit in the Army Reserve.
Introduction
America’s radically decentralized law
enforcement system—there are more than
17,000 separate police departments in the United
States—is both a strength and a weakness.
It is a great strength because the police are
better attuned to their local communities and
are directly accountable to their concerns.
But it is also a terrible weakness in the post–September
11 world, where information sharing is key,
and the sheer number of agencies often inhibits
information sharing.
Fusion centers – state and regional intelligence
centers that pool information from multiple
jurisdictions – are the primary platforms
for improving law enforcement’s intelligence-sharing
capabilities. In recognition of the importance
of fusion centers, President Bush highlighted
the work being done in these facilities during
a recent speech in which he also called America’s
800,000 state and local police “the front
line in defeating terror.”
Federal agencies are not built to be the eyes
and ears of local communities; local law enforcement—with
the right training and support—can be.
Yet there is still much work to be done in order
to fully enlist state and local law enforcement
in the war on terror. As Los Angeles police
chief William Bratton and Manhattan Institute
senior fellow George Kelling wrote last year
in a Manhattan Institute Civic Report titled
“Policing Terrorism”:
Americans accustomed to television shows such
as 24 and CSI think that law enforcement has
all sorts of intelligence information at its
fingertips. This could not be further from the
truth. The unfortunate reality is that law enforcement—federal,
state, and local—is very far behind the
private sector in terms of the ability to use
technology to gather, analyze, and disseminate
information.… When you rent a car today
at many airports, an attendant will come out
with a handheld device that enables him to gather
all the information he needs on you and the
car, send it wirelessly to a main database,
and bill your credit card, all within a matter
of few seconds. Just imagine what might have
happened if the Maryland state trooper who had
stopped 9/11 hijacker Ziad S. Jarrah for speeding
on September 9, 2001, had had access to that
type of technology and had discovered that Jarrah
was on the CIA’s terrorist watch list.
The 9/11 murderers exploited law enforcement’s
inability to harness the information systems
that are commonly available today. Fusion centers
are central to erasing that deficiency. If properly
operated, fusion centers will enable law enforcement
to harness information and intelligence to better
identify, assess, and manage emerging threats
to public safety.
Fusion centers represent the front line in
spotting the sort of threats that went undetected
on that deadly day six years ago. And they are
having a real impact. As reporter Judith Miller
wrote in the Summer 2007 issue of City Journal
describing the Los Angeles area fusion center:
Homeland Security now has an official stationed
full-time at L.A.’s crown jewel of “jointness”:
the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, or “Jay-Rick,”
which both Bratton and Chertoff hold up as a
model for similar fusion centers soon to be
operational in more than three dozen U.S. cities…The
JRIC’s analysts don’t conduct investigations;
instead, they vet tips and leads—nearly
25 new ones per week—to identify the 1
percent that prove serious…[The Commander
of the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Criminal
Intelligence Bureau Mike] Downing says the LAPD
has arrested some 200 American citizens and
foreigners with suspected ties to terrorist
groups since September 11. At present, he adds,
his division has 54 open intelligence cases,
involving at least 250 “persons of interest.”
One of the most celebrated examples of the strategy
is the 2005 Torrance case, in which the arrest
of two men for robbing a gas station in that
city eventually unraveled a militant Islamic
plot to attack U.S. military facilities, synagogues,
and other places where Jews gather in Los Angeles
County.
In this report, the Manhattan Institute’s
Center for Policing Terrorism (CPT) offers twelve
recommendations for establishing new—or
enhancing existing—fusion centers. We base
these recommendations on a review of current
literature, an assessment of existing fusion
centers, and interviews with federal, state,
and local leaders. Since the resources available
to state and local governments are constrained,
we have attempted to provide recommendations
that we deem to be both necessary components
of a well-functioning fusion center and resource-neutral.
It is our hope that the recommendations and
information shared in this report will assist
municipalities in strengthening the operations
of their fusion centers. CPT thanks the members
of the New Jersey State Police, the leadership
and members of the New Jersey Regional Operations
and Intelligence Center (ROIC), and the New
Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness
for the opportunity to discuss these recommendations
and learn from their experiences. We would also
like to thank the leadership of the Naval Postgraduate
School Center for Homeland Defense and Security,
who greatly informed this effort.
Sincerely,
Tim Connors and John Rollins
STATE FUSION CENTERS IN THE POST-9/11 ENVIRONMENT[1]
Our goal is to have a two-way flow where
federal, state, and local officials contribute
and analyze intelligence information collected
at every level. By the end of 2008, we will
have intelligence and operations personnel at
every major fusion center in the United States.
—DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff[2]
The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center
in New York precipitated one of the most extensive
law enforcement investigations in U.S. history.
We came to learn that a small band of Islamists,
inspired by Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind
Sheikh,” were behind this despicable act.
What followed was a traditional criminal-justice
case, in which the crime was investigated and
the perpetrators prosecuted in criminal trials.
Once these individuals were sent away to prison,
the case was concluded.
Law enforcement gave little thought as to why
an Egyptian cleric and a group of his followers
would do such a thing. Why did they carry out
a terror attack here? What did it portend for
the future? Did this attack represent an emerging
and growing threat to public safety that law
enforcement would have to eventually confront?
If so, how would law enforcement have to organize
to confront these threats?
These are typical questions that an intelligence
analyst attempts to answer using the intelligence
cycle and other tools that are available in
the field. In 1993, “intelligence”
was a dirty word in law enforcement. Given a
history in the 1960s and 1970s in which police
intelligence units all too often violated citizen
groups’ First Amendment rights, there was
a widespread movement to dismantle such capabilities.
As a result, in 2001, law enforcement was not
prepared to deal with the looming threat of
terrorism. It had a very limited capability
to identify these threats, gain understanding,
and apply resources to preventing acts of terrorism.
Fusion centers are designed to help address
these shortcomings.
Defining what a fusion center is and what it
does is a seemingly easy—but increasingly
challenging—task. In varying levels of
functionality, operations centers[3]
have existed in state and local governments
since the formation of police departments and
emergency operations organizations. While the
establishment of state operations centers is
not a new concept, the permanent, physical,
and organizational meshing of numerous entities
that have each historically focused on a separate
public safety discipline is a new concept. Whether
the focus is on activities in preparation for
or in response to natural (hurricanes, floods,
etc.) or man-made (criminal, terrorist, etc.)
incidents, yesterday’s operations centers
are being subsumed into today’s fusion
centers. These new organizations are responsible
for analyzing and responding to a wide variety
of events that may threaten[4]
the public safety or the property of a state.
Historically, state leaders have received information[5]
from numerous state operations centers that
were each exclusively focused on a particular
problem area. Typically, these operations centers
were only responsible for servicing other state
agencies. Although this type of operations center
still exists in many states (and major metropolitan
cities), the trend, especially since the attacks
of 9/11, is to combine a number of these centers
into one multifaceted organization, often located
in a single facility.
Following this trend, fusion centers are evolving
into one-stop shopping organizations that are
responsible for analyzing all-hazards threat
information, tracking asset location and operational
readiness, and issuing reports related to current,
emerging, and future threats. At a minimum,
the core mission of these post-9/11 fusion centers
is to report on information that may affect
the security of a given locality. But most go
beyond this single purpose and perform other
functions as well. For example, fusion centers
have the ability to quickly analyze information
in support of the immediate and proactive deployment
of operational assets and resources, as well
as to analyze and report on long-term threats—whether
those threats result from the weather, a bird
flu, crime, or a potential terrorist attack.
Generally speaking, the future of fusion centers
will be to provide management and information
services across a full spectrum of public safety
threats.
The primary responsibility of today’s
fusion centers is still to ensure that state
and local leadership is knowledgeable about
current and emerging trends that threaten the
security of relevant jurisdictions. But this
new generation of operations centers differ
from its predecessors in serving a variety of
customers – private as well as public.
The recipients of fusion center reporting are
as vast as the sources of data received by the
center: critical infrastructure owners and operators,
private-sector entities, federal law enforcement
and homeland security partners, public and private
health organizations, international partners
that collect information on threats to the United
States, and numerous others.
Fusion centers have been slow to incorporate
private-sector partners. The reasons for this
include lack of guidance on which partners should
be included, a failure to identify partners
based on risk, and perhaps a lack of appreciation
of the importance of including the private sector.[6]
A good place to start is with a careful study
and reasoned application of the National Infrastructure
Protection Plan.[7] Fusion
center leaders can identify appropriate partners
and establish priorities based on the seventeen
Sector-Specific Plans identified in Homeland
Security Presidential Decision Directive 7 and
analyzed in a number of documents sponsored
by the Department of Homeland Security. Ideally,
this analysis will build upon ongoing efforts
in the state to align action plans with these
authorities.
The federal government has recognized fusion
centers as the information-sharing focal point
for most[8] homeland security–related
issues.[9] Current federal
government support to state fusion centers occurs
in the form of detailing of personnel, providing
technology and equipment, assisting with security
clearance processing (many state and local leaders
think that this is an area that needs to improve),
and offering training and education courses.
It is also widely expected that future DHS funding
grants will continue to support the establishment
and operation of state fusion centers.[10]
CURRENT BEST PRACTICES
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Hundreds of recommendations exist regarding
the establishment and management of fusion centers.[11]
However, many of these recommendations are resource-dependent
and focused on marginally refining current operations
rather than developing a sound organizational
foundation resulting in enhanced center capabilities.
This document focuses on the strategic organizational
issues that form the foundation of a successful
fusion center. The twelve fusion center recommendations
offered here are broken down into the following
areas: establishing, supporting, and operating.
I. Establishing the Fusion Center
Although often viewed as laborious and unexciting,
theoretical foundations and administrative functions
are crucial to the future success of a fusion
center. Therefore, responsible leaders should
devote concerted energy to establishing sound
fundamental policies. Doing so will help minimize
the inevitable friction of multi-agency undertakings,
enhance situational awareness of all stakeholders,
and ensure that the fusion center contributes
to the operational success of the member organizations.
In addition, given the numerous public and private
sector entities that the fusion center serves,
the more participation these entities have in
adopting and implementing center practices and
procedures, the greater the opportunity for
future goodwill and support of state and fusion
center mission objectives.
Step 1: Develop an Easily Understood and
Universally Recognized Mission Statement
A state fusion center must adopt a mission
statement that is linked to and supports the
goals and objectives of the state’s governor
and his or her administration. Fusion center
leaders should include partner agencies and
prospective participants in crafting a mission
statement and strategic vision for the organization.
While the center’s leadership should retain
the final decision-making authority, a participative
approach will enable partner agencies to have
a sense of ownership in the organization. The
idea is to learn about and manage the expectations
that partner agencies bring with them. It is
a safe bet that unknown, unfulfilled, or unrealized
expectations will be at the root of most disappointments
in assessing center performance.
Mission-statement clarity is the key to allowing
all parties to understand and support fusion
center activities. As such, the mission statement
should be easily understood. Given the many
competing interests, this can be a difficult
proposition. As a rule of thumb, a good place
to start is to draft a succinct mission statement
that fulfills the expectations of various state
leaders (assuming that a state agency, such
as the state police, is the lead agency in the
fusion center). The resulting draft statement
can form the baseline for discussions with partner
agencies.
It is important to keep in mind that the final
version of the fusion center’s mission
statement must be relevant for a multi-entity
organization. It will therefore be important
to avoid language that is commonly associated
with an individual agency, such as “law
enforcement” or “homeland security.”
Rather, it is better to articulate a common
functionality, such as “receipt, exchange,
analysis, and dissemination of information”
and to adopt an inclusive operational objective,
such as “public safety,” “preventing
terrorism,” or “supporting the operations
of partner agencies.”
The fusion center’s governing committees
(see Step 5, below) should review the
mission statement on a periodic basis to ensure
that it remains relevant and easily understood
and that it continues to provide the central
organizing principles that effectively mold
collective action.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fusion Center Mission-Statement Examples
New Jersey, Regional Operations and Intelligence
Center (ROIC)
“Maintain statewide situational awareness
for response to current and future security
issues concerning the State of New Jersey. The
New Jersey ROIC collects, analyzes, and disseminates
criminal intelligence and other information
(including but not limited to threat assessment,
public safety, law enforcement, public health,
social service, and public works) to support
the efforts of allied agencies.”
Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Fusion
Center
“Provide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,
statewide information sharing among local, state,
and federal public safety agencies and private
sector organizations in order to facilitate
the collection, analysis, and dissemination
of intelligence relevant to terrorism and public
safety.”[12]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 2: Develop Implementing Strategies
A well-understood mission statement enables
the development of implementing strategies,
as well as identifying those lesser tasks that
will ensure overall mission success (e.g., policies
and procedures, which are discussed in step
3, below). A comprehensive strategic document
will answer the question of how each individual
fusion center capability aligns with the center’s
mission statement. It will also outline the
center’s fundamental approach to core functional
areas such as crisis preparation and response,
maximizing the use of available assets (those
available to partner agencies as well as those
in the private sector), criminal intelligence
processes, and homeland security functions.
This strategic document should provide a big-picture
understanding of how the fusion center goes
about its business. It will enable the center
to compare its current and desired end-state
capabilities and develop a road map of the near-term,
intermediate, and long-term steps required to
reach full fusion center capability.
Like the development of the mission statement,
the development of the center’s implementing
strategies should include a broad number of
fusion center partners from as broad a level
of seniority as is feasible. While such a process
is slow, it is wise in the long run to seek
opportunities for participants from multiple
agencies to build a sense of pride and ownership
in the center.
Once the governor or other appropriate authorities
have approved the mission statement and strategy,
the center’s leadership should brief all
members.[13] Leaders should
deliver this briefing on an annual basis to
ensure that members understand the role of the
fusion center in securing the state’s safety.
Routine dissemination of this information facilitates
an understanding of such things as the overall
mission, core center functions, supporting capabilities,
process improvement plans, and organizational
roles.
Step 3: Develop Fusion Center Policies and
Procedures
Developing easily understood policies and procedures
helps fusion center leaders shape a unique culture
and make representatives from multiple participating
agencies aware of the collective organizational
expectations. As with the mission statement
and fusion center strategy, the more involved
the various participants are, the greater the
likelihood that the policies and procedures
will be understood and followed.
As issues addressed in the policies and procedures
manuals pertain to the daily operations of the
fusion center, leaders may wish to task senior
center personnel, who best know the inner workings
of the information and operations flow, to lead
the development efforts. The collaborative-based
recommendations and results should then be presented
to the fusion center governance committee (see
Step 5, below) for refinement and approval.
Policies and procedures should be routinely
reviewed and updated using the same collaborative
process.
Areas that might be addressed by a formal policy
or procedure include:
- Center objectives and goals
- Fusion center chain of command, personnel
management, and performance appraisals
- Roles, responsibilities, and authorities
of center participants and representative
organizations
- Protection of privacy and civil liberties;
the requirement as delineated in 28 CFR, part
23 should be addressed specifically[14]
- Information collection, storage, use, tracking,
and dissemination
- Operational/information security
- Physical/site security
- Individual and collective training
- Budget formulation and execution
Step 4: Develop a Multiyear Sustainable
Budget
A fusion center requires a budget that is comprehensive,
sustainable, forward-looking, and, most important,
realistic—whether the center is functional
or in development. A well-reasoned and sustainable
budget will include funds for:
- Facility establishment, maintenance, and
upgrades (including information technology
hardware, software, and communication tools)
- Current and future employees (common practice
for federal and other participating agencies
to fund their respective detailees)
- Training and exercise
- Reserves to cover extended operations and
unforeseen requirements
- Conferences and professional development
- Morale, welfare, and team building
Currently, the bulk of funding for fusion
centers comes from state and local government.
Since fusion centers are statewide assets
and not exclusive to a particular agency,
they should be funded as a separate line item
in the state’s budget. According to a
recent report by the Congressional Research
Service:
Annual budgets for the fusion centers
studied for this report appear to range from
the tens of thousands to several million (with
one outlier at over $15 million). Similarly,
the sources of funding differed significantly
from center to center—as stated, some were
entirely dependent on diverting funds from existing
state and/or local funding streams, while others
were largely funded by federal grants. Federal
funding ranged from 0% to 100% of fusion center
budgets, with the average and median percentage
of federal funding approximately 31% and 21%,
respectively. Thus, it appears that on the whole,
fusion centers are predominantly state and locally
funded.[15]
Wherever the sources of funding are derived,
the authorized budget should align with the
mission of the organization and the agreed-upon
implementing strategies. Expectations of the
state’s political and public safety leaders
and anticipated customer desires must also be
considered in the budget formulation process.
Thus, the starting point for forming a budget
is establishing or reviewing the center’s
mission, implementing strategies, and determining
leader and customer expectations. The objective
of this analysis is to identify and prioritize
what needs to be done to accomplish the mission
and meet leader and customer expectations.
Once that analysis is completed, sources of
funding must be identified. These will include
federal government grants, particularly from
DHS and DOJ, contributions from sponsoring agencies,[16]
nonmonetary contributions from partner agencies
(e.g., office space, computers, office equipment),
grants and other contributions from nongovernmental
organizations,[17] and
support from the business community. State government
is typically responsible for funding remaining
priorities. In light of the state’s sponsorship
role, budget proposals should be presented to
the state’s political leaders with funding
specifics delineated to show the cause and effect
of the budget being approved at differing levels.
It is worth noting that federal government
funding is not absolute and unending, so the
budget should not become overly reliant upon
these monies for future requirements. Federal
funds are generally provided for the period
requested with no guarantees of future grants.
Programs initiated with federal funds will present
sustainability risks if the program will not
conclude in the time frame specified in the
grant. It is prudent to develop alternative
funding plans in these cases in advance of a
crisis generated by the cessation of federal
funding.
As discussed in Steps 7 and 11, below, fusion
center budgets and underlying funding proposals
are quite often heavily laden with information
technology requests. When considering technological
purchases, decision makers should avoid the
search for silver-bullet solutions. Technology
in and of itself cannot solve problems unless
it supports the activities of human operators
and organizations. It is a general and unfortunate
trend that fusion centers have reached for technological
solutions before considering organizational
design, organizational culture, and fundamental
doctrinal approaches. The results can be disastrous—wasted
resources, organizational ineffectiveness, low
morale, damaged credibility, and even the discontinuation
of the program.[18]
In determining the true cost of a technology,
decision makers must also consider all the supporting
systems and activities that are required in
fielding and sustaining it. Examples include
end-user training, installation, ongoing maintenance
costs, upgrades, and interoperability issues.
A sound fusion center budget incorporates these
requirements in its funding planning.
II. Supporting the Fusion
Center
Step 5: Establish a Governing Structure
The fundamental purpose of a fusion center
is to bring multiple agencies together in an
environment set up to share and analyze information.
Given the multiplicity of organizations involved,
an agreed-upon method that ensures unified decision
making and oversight is indispensable. The difficulty
is in balancing the need for control of contributing
agencies with the need for efficient decision
making that guides operations. Too many controls
mire center performance in bureaucracy, whereas
too few controls increase the risk of harm to
a contributing agency.
Governance committees can fulfill the two core
management functions for the center: leadership
and decision making; and oversight and accountability.
They can be established in the form of informal
advisory panels or formal boards that have a
more directive and specified role over the conduct
of the organization. It is also worth considering
the appointment of a unified director who would
manage routine activities and implement collective
decisions and who could report to an executive
committee. Two forms of governance committees
should be considered: internal and external.
1. Internal governance committees are formed
by representatives of those entities that rely
on the fusion center for services and products.
Membership on these committees would include
leaders from state agencies and private-sector
entities and representatives of other affected
agencies that have routine interaction with
the fusion center. Examples of the types of
governance issues such committees would be well
suited to address include development and optimization
of fusion center products and services, budget
formulation and execution, fusion center mission
and vision, tasking the fusion center to analyze
specific issues, and reviewing operational processes.
2. External governance committees are composed
of individuals or organizations that do not
have a formal relationship with the fusion center,
do not typically rely on the center’s products
and services, and are not directly affected
by the committee’s recommendations or results.
These committees provide an “outsider’s”
review and advice. Membership on these committees
might include other state fusion center representatives,
recognized fusion center experts, civil rights
advocates, and individuals familiar with service-oriented
organizations. Examples of the types of governance
issues such committees would be well suited
to address include civil liberty protections,
independent review of controversial or critical
decisions, and independent oversight of compliance
issues.
Independent oversight is a valuable management
function that should be sought and welcomed.
Not to create this capacity by intelligent design
will likely lead to having an oversight structure
imposed in a crisis. While informational and
operational security are nonnegotiable priorities,
it is in the best interest of the center to
have an independent authority validate that
the center is operating within constitutional
and legal limits and that appropriate accountability
actions are taken when mistakes are discovered.
Given our traditional political values and a
history in which law enforcement’s intelligence
activities have sometimes been questionable,
it is inevitable that fusion center operations
will be challenged. Routinely stonewalling such
challenges is a mistake; rather, it is better
to build the capacity to deal with such challenges
so that the public can rest assured that the
center is doing the right things. Fusion centers
that actively build and maintain this reputation
will separate themselves from centers that do
not make the effort.
In addition to oversight, most of the recommendations
contained in this report would benefit from
the establishment of governance committees.
Depending on the issues to be addressed and
the prospect for successful near-term conclusion
of the issue, the establishment of governance
committees can be permanent or for a short duration
to discuss ad hoc issues. However, standing
committees should be designed to provide leadership,
facilitate decision making, perform oversight,
and ensure accountability
Step 6: Develop a Fusion Center Staffing
Plan
Recalling that this report provides recommendations
independent of the need to request additional
resources, these staffing-plan options assume
that the fusion center already has state employees
assigned to it. It also assumes that federal,
state, local, and private-sector partners that
detail representatives to the center will continue
to compensate those people. Therefore, adding
partner agencies does not result in additional
personnel costs.
With that in mind, it is a general rule that
more resources are usually better than less.
In this regard, the federal government has made
significant resources available to populate
fusion centers around the country.[20]
While this support remains critical, fusion
center leaders should demand that such outside
support results in staffing the fusion center
with high-quality people that possess the right
skills. It is a mistake to compromise on quality
in order to achieve other goals (e.g., obtaining
grants, ensuring participation of a partner
agency).
It is better to have fewer people with the
needed skills than to have more people who have
lesser ability to support the goals of the sponsoring
agency or enhance the operations of the center.
There are two basic questions that govern personnel
decisions: Does this person have the skills
that the center needs? Is this person a high-quality
performer? A center might look to have all the
appropriate representatives when it accepts
people with the wrong skills or who lack a solid
record of achievement. However, it might actually
be less capable than it would be with fewer
of the right people.
To avoid such a situation, it is imperative
that fusion center leaders determine what skills
and how many people are needed to staff the
center. This planning should begin with an analysis
of the center’s mission, implementing strategies,
and customer expectations. Then planners should
inventory current personnel numbers and skills
and compare these to mission requirements. This
process is undertaken to identify human-resource
gaps in mission capability. Using this fusion
center staffing assessment, center leaders can
make credible personnel requests to partner
agencies.
Required skills can vary, depending on the
mission of the fusion center and the needs of
the detailing organization. However, expertise
in the following general areas is typical for
most fusion centers:
- General leadership and management
- Crisis and emergency management
- Disaster management experience relevant
to the jurisdiction
- Terrorism and counterterrorism
- Intelligence management, collection, and
analysis
- Criminal investigation
- Fire safety and firefighting management
- Health management and food safety
- Information technology
Other planning considerations might include:
- Ratio of fusion center employees to partnering-agency
detailees
- Whether fusion center leaders are hired
as permanent center employees or drawn from
partnering agencies
- Fusion center policies and procedures
- Desire to create an inclusive environment
- Operational reliance on specific detailees
- Whether or not resources accompany the detailee
(see Step 7, below)
- Nontraditional representation: owners of
critical infrastructure, health-care professionals,
academic experts, etc.
- Staff required for routine versus crisis
operations
- Positions that require 24/7 presence during
non-crisis operations
- Positions that require extended work hours
during crisis operations
- Ability to quickly infuse operating personnel
during a crisis
- Development of secondary skills for those
individuals with attributes not called upon
during a specific type of incident
Information sharing comes down to two things:
giving you the information you need to make
judgments about protecting your communities;
and capitalizing in the force-multiplier effect
that comes when we work together.
—Robert Mueller, director, Federal Bureau
of Investigation[21]
Step 7: Develop Memorandums of Agreement
with Partnering Organizations
The model for most fusion centers is a state-led,
interagency organization. In some cases, a consortium
of agencies provides leadership, but those fusion
centers are still fundamentally interagency
affairs in which the roles, responsibilities,
and authorities of partner agencies need definition.
As with other areas, allowing this to occur
by happenstance as opposed to intelligent engineering
is a mistake. The best method to integrate partner
agencies is to use a carefully negotiated memorandum
of agreement (MOA).
It is imperative that the MOA and supporting
memorandums of understanding (MOU) explicitly
reflect the needs of the center and the responsibilities
of the partnering agencies. The fusion center
and the partnering organization should ensure
that the MOAs and MOUs contain the necessary
specificity to realize the expectations of all
parties and to allow for an environment whereby
all members of the center are properly utilized
in carrying out their duties to safeguard the
state.
For reasons of scarce resources, all too often
the organization accepts a partnering agency’s
offer to place personnel and equipment in the
fusion center without a clear understanding
of the role and contribution that these individuals
or items will make. In many cases, the resulting
effect is confusion as to individual responsibilities
and how such donated technology enhances the
current mission effectiveness.
It is important, when accepting such offers,
to articulate how the contribution will enhance
existing or planned programs. If the center
has taken the time to develop a fusion center
staffing plan (see Step 6, above), it will have
a good place to start this discussion with potential
partners. That discussion can then form the
basis of a written MOA. The bottom-line measure
of success is to ensure that: (1) people accepted
into the organization have their individual
roles, responsibilities, and authorities defined;
and (2) equipment contributions can be smoothly
integrated with existing architecture.
At a minimum, fusion center MOAs should address:
- Personnel assignment criteria; required
skill, seniority, shift work
- Specific fusion center role of the detailee
(i.e., job description)
- Liaison officer with unspecified duties
- Operations officer responsible for
directing resources and assets
- Intelligence analyst responsible for
analyz- ing information and reporting
findings
- Critical infrastructure specialist
- Emergency management specialist
- Subject matter expert (e.g., terrorism,
WMD, health care)
- Duration of assignment
- Chain of command
- Individual responsibilities to the fusion
center and to the detailing agency
- Rules for sharing information with the fusion
center and the parent agency
- Rules for safeguarding operational security
and intelligence sources and methods
- Funding requirements for the detailed individual(s)
- Salary (reimbursable versus no cost)
- Living expenses
- Transportation
- Equipment:
- Computer
- Telephone and cell phone (secure and
unsecure)
- Portable communication device
- Security clearance considerations
Step 8: Develop Fusion Center Education
and Training Programs
Molding people from a multitude of organizations
into a cohesive team is perhaps the most significant
challenge facing fusion center leaders. Detailees
from partner agencies will bring with them the
organizational culture, lingo, and practices
of that partner agency. Furthermore, detailees
will have dual loyalties—to the partner
agency and to the fusion center. A rigorous,
mission-focused training and education plan
will help overcome these potential obstacles.
In order to achieve the desired effect on fusion
center cohesiveness, collective and individual
training and education sponsored by the center
should be challenging. These events should place
a productive amount of stress and adversity
on individuals and subunits, with the intent
of creating a shared sense of purpose and the
necessity to cooperate in order to succeed.
Under this fundamental principle, analytical
training might include team projects that require
multidisciplinary reports on complex issues
given a short response time. Tabletop exercises
might include: multiple scenario shifts requiring
significant reallocation of resources; events
that are linked to a tactical training exercise
and that require communicating with units in
the field; events that are no-notice, come-as-you-are;
and events run on a 24/7 basis.
Leaders should also focus on making training
and education opportunities relevant to the
fusion center’s mission. This requires
leaders to analyze the center’s mission
statement, current and potential threats to
public safety in the operating environment,
and, given these factors, to determine what
tasks the fusion center is likely to be called
upon to perform. Having identified a task list,
leaders can then prioritize those tasks, develop
training and education strategies for each prioritized
task, and allocate resources against these priorities.
The training and education plan should outline
a formal orientation program for new detailees
and employees. This will ensure that each member
of the organization has a common understanding
of the fundamental organizational goals, capabilities,
and limitations. Additionally, fusion center
leaders can use this as an opportunity to deliver
instruction on systemic issues such as respecting
privacy rights and ensuring operational security.
As with outside offers for funding, personnel,
and equipment, fusion center leaders must ensure
that outside offers to assist with training
and education are consistent with the overall
plan and needs of the center. Conducting training
and education based on funding opportunities
without relation to a prioritized task list
that results from careful analysis is often
counterproductive and can undermine morale.
The operators who staff the fusion center know
when training and education is relevant and
realistic and tend to become disillusioned when
these fundamentals are not achieved.
The list of considerations in developing a
training and education plan includes:
Education
- Include a formal orientation program for
new members
- Initial entry and continuing education on
laws, regulations, and rules that govern the
operations of the fusion center and the conduct
of its members
- Initial entry and continuing education on
fusion center mission, goals, objectives,
functions, capabilities, and limitations
- Operating role and mission delineation between
fusion center and partner agencies
- Composition, capabilities, and disposition
of partner agencies
- Fusion center processes, products, and services
to include instruction on how these items
are requested, used, and disseminated
- Information-sharing policies and guidelines
- Facility, security, personnel, and information
policies
Training
- Fusion center after action reviews of routine
and crisis operations
- Tabletop and tactical training exercises
- Individual skill proficiency training and
assessment (e.g., analyst training)
- Cross-training to ensure resiliency by having
staff members minimally trained in second
ary functions (e.g., WMD specialist assisting
with natural-disaster response)
- Inculcation of new doctrinal concepts and
statewide programs such as intelligence-led
policing or operational initiatives focused
on safeguarding citizens and property[22]
III. Operating the Fusion Center
Step 9: Develop Templates for Fusion Center
Products and Services
Fusion center products and services are presented
in numerous forms and venues. Examples of fusion
center products include a comprehensive statewide
intelligence assessment, a white paper assessing
a particular threat to the state, a briefing
to a member of the homeland security community
outlining the response to a natural disaster,
and tactical situational-awareness reports.
With each fusion center product and service,
the true measure of effectiveness is its ability
to communicate relevant information to decision
makers in a timely manner.
A fusion center’s clients might include
political leaders, members of public safety
organizations, homeland security operators,
other government agencies (federal, local, tribal,
or regional partners), private-sector managers,
and health-care managers. The hallmark of a
professional fusion center is its ability to
anticipate client needs and to incorporate feedback
from clients into future products and services.
This effort should take into consideration not
only the content of fusion center products and
services but also the format and method of dissemination.
For example, the fusion center should avoid
bombarding key leaders with relatively insignificant
information sent via e-mail. Daily reports designed
for broad dissemination can also run the risk
of becoming mundane and nonvalue-added for the
intended audience. Similarly, some clients will
desire oral briefings, while others will desire
written products. A highly functioning fusion
center will sort through these client preferences
and deliver customized, user-friendly products
and services tailored for the needs of the client.
The bottom-line measure of success is to translate
this client knowledge into templated processes,
products, and services so that routine and recurring
situations can quickly be analyzed and reported.
The routine delivery of products to fusion center
customers should be viewed as imperative for
a number of reasons:
- Well-functioning processes for routine and
recurring situations can quickly be adapted
for use with unusual or crisis situations;
if ordinary reporting is broken, chances are
that crisis reporting will be, too
- Allows for robust assessment of client needs
and expectations
- Facilitates continuous improvement in antici-
pating client needs and meeting expectations
- Allows clients to provide further guidance,
direction, and requests for additional information
and analysis
- Helps fusion center leaders determine the
frequency to which products and services should
be provided
- Prompts the client to share relevant information
with the center, thus improving the center’s
situational awareness and enhancing the information
and analysis contained in future products
Typical products and services that fusion centers
offer include:
- Daily intelligence and operations briefings
to homeland security and law enforcement leaders
that provide updates on threats and operational
activities
- Products and briefings to support state
executive and legislative branch homeland
security–related decisions
- Situational-awareness bulletins for broad
dis- semination that describe relevant incidents,
issues of concerns, trends, indications of
re- lated activity, and requests for information[23]
- Routine briefings and products to critical
infrastructure operators
- Quarterly and annual trend-assessment reports
- Ad hoc products and services in response
to emerging or current events
Step 10: Develop Information-Sharing Policies
and Procedures
Information sharing is an all-inclusive imperative.
It is a fundamental reason that fusion centers
are being established around the country. It
involves both internal fusion center information
exchange and sharing among the fusion center’s
local, state, regional, federal, and private
partners. Information sharing can occur in many
forms, including text messages on situations
of immediate tactical importance, multi-agency
collaboration in criminal or terrorism investigations,
in-depth white papers on systemic threats to
public safety, public announcements, and routine
conversations. Given the criticality of information
sharing, developing fusion center policies and
procedures that reward sharing is an absolute
necessity.
The descriptions above were easy to develop.
But where the rubber meets the road on information
sharing, it is often an extreme challenge to
respect and adhere to the regime that governs
information protection, such as the federal
classification rules, which are designed to
protect information. While these rules permit
sharing, the incentive structure associated
with them punishes mistakes in releasing classified
information without providing a countervailing
incentive structure to reward sharing. The central
organizing principle under this approach is
to protect, compartmentalize, and control information.
Fusion center leaders would do well to consider
the underlying philosophy of the federal classification
system when adopting information-sharing policies
and procedures for their centers.
Many of these rules were developed to wage
the Cold War struggle with Communism. A relatively
small number of national leaders in the federal
government managed this effort. Since few people
needed to be “in the know,” we placed
a premium on information security. The resulting
“classification levels are based on fear:
the probability of information being disseminated
to those that can cause serious damage to national
security,” according to the Congressional
testimony of then-commander Mike Downing of
the LAPD.[24]
This approach worked well in confronting Soviet
communists in Western Europe—a very predictable
adversary compared with present-day criminals
and terrorists. These new legions can only be
uncovered and neutralized by guardians who confront
them having the highest possible level of situational
awareness. This is what led Cathy Lanier, then–acting
police chief of Washington, D.C., to “emphasize
the importance of quickly sharing information—even
if the information is not fully vetted”
in her Congressional testimony.[25]
These law enforcement leaders have identified
the central organizing principle for fusion
center information-sharing policies and procedures:
sharing information is usually more important
than protecting it. To support the implementation
of that principle, it is necessary to develop
an incentive structure that rewards sharing
enough to overcome the risk-averseness associated
with information security rule regimes. Two
strategies that will help create this incentive
structure are peer evaluations and review boards.
Peer evaluations can be designed to evaluate
partner agencies and individual detailees in
their performance as sharers. Many fusion centers
incorporate peer evaluations on fusion center
reports. These should be tracked, reviewed at
governance board meetings, and used as an accountability
mechanism. Fusion center leaders should know,
for example, who is and who is not completing
evaluations. These leaders must have visibility
on the performance of partner agencies and individual
detailees. This information can be used in a
Compstat-like process to evaluate, solve problems,
and hold partners accountable. It will also
provide hard data on which individual performance
can be evaluated.
Review boards should be designed to learn from
honest mistakes rather than punish those who
make mistakes.[26] If the
central organizing principle is going to be
information sharing, leaders will have to underwrite
some mistakes when it comes to information protection.
Assuming that information leaks are usually
the result of honest mistakes or simple negligence,
rather than purposeful acts of malfeasance,
it is better to approach incidents with the
intent to learn how the breakdown occurred and
adopt practices to prevent future mistakes of
a similar nature. Review boards can be adopted
to make those determinations. The board’s
charter would be to learn from mistakes rather
than punish those responsible. If such a board
came across a case that might involve malfeasance,
the board would refer that case to a separate
investigative agency, such as an inspector general’s
office. Other helpful tips in building a state’s
information sharing environment include:
- Cataloging all information collectors, data
providers, analyzers, and disseminators to
identify the universe of those people and
organizations that should be evaluated based
on the quantity and quality of information
that is shared
- Identification of collective (pertaining
to more than one partner agency) or critical
(may be collective or single-partner agency
issue) information requirements and gaps to
best focus intelligence and operations re-
sources against the most pressing problems
- Mapping information-flow processes to identify
crucial areas (e.g., incoming and outgoing
avenues of information, multi-connected sharing
points, and areas of vulnerability)
- Developing plans and notification protocols
to communicate routine and crisis information
to key leaders and partner agencies (including
primary, secondary, and tertiary modes of
communication)
- Training and education efforts on 28 CFR,
part 23, which governs how data contained
in federally funded intelligence systems are
safeguarded and used[27]
Step 11: Create an Information Technology
Architecture That Supports the Mission
In keeping with the theme of this document
regarding financial constraints, the following
information technology recommendations focus
on policy issues. Given the complexity of state
public safety operations, there is virtually
a limitless supply of data that may have bearing
on operational solutions.[28]
Information technology enables people and organizations
to sort quickly through those data. The reverse
equation—people as enablers of technology—is
not valid.
Leaders must guard against becoming too enamored
with technological responses, while failing
to consider human ability, organizational processes,
and fundamental doctrines. While technology
can simplify and speed up many tasks, it can
also create confusion and bottlenecks when it
is ill-suited for the available human operators
and relevant organization or is not aligned
with doctrinal approaches.
One classic example of a technological solution
that did not align with organizational structure,
mission, and culture is the FBI’s Virtual
Case File. Commissioned following the September
11 attacks, VCF was a computer program that
was designed to help agents organize and share
data related to terrorism. The FBI scrapped
the program after investing hundreds of millions
of dollars. VCF failed in its intended purpose
because the effort to understand the FBI’s
organization, culture, and processes was not
done up front. Instead, an attractive technology
was selected first, and the FBI and the service
provider went about trying to make VCF “fit”
the Bureau. “Lawmakers and the contractor
agreed that the intense pressure to get a product
out to FBI agents following the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001, contributed to the problem.”[29]
Before reaching for technological answers,
leaders must analyze the fusion center’s
mission requirements, evaluate the skills of
its members, and articulate organizational capabilities.
Technology can then be evaluated based on the
likelihood that it will enhance mission accomplishment,
be user-friendly, and be aligned with organizational
capabilities and doctrinal approaches. Additionally,
any new technology must be evaluated for how
it will connect with the existing information
technology infrastructure.
In assessing the need for the type of information
technology that the fusion center may desire
or make the best use of, the following end-state
objectives should be considered:
- Development of a common database where all
fusion center members can access:
- Catalog of fusion center members, their
areas of responsibility (e.g., center
director, shift leader, gang expertise,
WMD specialist,meteorologist, virologist)
and contact information
- Fusion center chain of command and
organizational chart
- General information on ongoing and
planned operations
- Calendar of events, training opportunities,
etc.
- Administrative announcements
- Tracking system for internal and external
support requests
- Posting of intelligence and operations briefings;
the architecture should be configured to support
the posting of briefings drafted at various
security and sensitivity levels
- A repository for the vast majority of previously
produced fusion center products (some products
may be classified or otherwise operationally
sensitive)
- Consistent with civil liberty protections
and 28 CFR, part 23, searchable databases
that contain information relating to the security
of the state
- A method to allow external partners to access
and provide information in
relevant areas
Step 12: Adopt Fusion Center Security Measures
Safeguarding the physical infrastructure, operations,
personnel, and information of the center is
necessary to ensure uninterrupted and unimpeded
delivery of products and services. Most fusion
center locations, leadership names, and responsibilities
are widely published and could be used for nefarious
purposes. Additionally, natural disasters might
affect fusion center performance. Should the
fusion center’s facilities, personnel,
information, or operations be damaged or manipulated,
the center’s effectiveness would be seriously
degraded. Avoiding or mitigating this result
becomes particularly important in a crisis situation,
when continuous and unencumbered performance
is most valuable.
To avoid and mitigate such situations, fusion
center leaders must implement appropriate security
plans. Among the issues to consider when planning
security for the fusion center are:
1. Physical Security
- Site selection that factors in survivability
and operability in a natural disaster and
has appropriate separation from known potential
hazards (e.g., chemical plants, power plants,
commercial rail lines)
- Fusion center unique identification cards
- Key codes and entry locks
- Guards and barriers
- Traffic control patterns and checking personnel
and vehicles desiring entry
- Procedures that allow key personnel who
do not routinely work at the center (e.g.,
governor, state police commander) access in
a crisis
- Lighting
- Random security patrols
- Establishment of a secondary site location
2. Operational
- Balancing the need to share information
with the need to protect operational security,
sources, and methods will be an ongoing struggle
in any interagency environment
- Operational security measures must be negotiated
in MOAs and MOUs with partner agencies and
addressed in written fusion center guidelines
- Sources and methods must be addressed
- Routine assessment of performance in completed
cases; broad dissemination of lessons learned
- Assignment of responsibility to a specific
person or sub-element to review practices
and cases from other fusion centers; broad
dissemination of lessons learned
3. Personnel
- Determine and prioritize fusion center positions
that require a security clearance
- Ensure that individuals holding security
clearances are aware of their responsibilities;
require members to routinely validate such
knowledge
- Train fusion center employees on the warning
signs of individuals attempting to gain access
to the facility or nonpublic information about
the fusion center
- Establish a reporting mechanism for such
activity
- Assist fusion center members to prepare
their families for crisis situations
- Require members to validate family care
plans to ensure that families are prepared
to manage in a crisis without the member (who
is needed—physically and mentally—in
the fusion center); members must be prepared
to operate with the knowledge that their families
will not be in danger and are prepared to
respond in emergency situations
4. Information
- Protect information infrastructure from
unauthorized access
- Monitor systems for signs of unauthorized
access; establish governance mechanisms to
respond quickly
- Establish random checks of people leaving
the facility[30]
- Provide initial entry and continuing education
on applicable laws, regulations, and rules
that govern information security and usage
- Establish oversight and inspection regimes
to ensure that information is handled properly
and purged when appropriate and that access
to fusion center databases and resources is
not abused
- Establish accountability mechanisms for
individuals who violate established guidelines
(See Step 10)
- Establish procedures for reviewing trends
and taking appropriate actions to address
systemic problems
CONCLUSIONS
The recommendations and process-oriented steps
contained in this document suggest a resource-independent
method of enhancing fusion center operations.
A fusion center can take many forms and perform
numerous functions. Whether state leadership
desires to have one organization dedicated to
analyzing and managing response to all threats
and hazards, or simply to focus on a limited
array of issues and functions, the systemic
issues to be addressed will remain the same.
Though this paper is not exhaustive, the twelve
suggested steps provide a fusion center, whether
established or planned, with a road map for
enhancing the state’s ability to prevent—and,
if necessary, to respond to—any type of
threat.
