DHS Invites Public Comment on Infrastructure Protection
In a noteworthy contrast with the secrecy that prevails in much of government and often within its own ranks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is soliciting public comment on revisions to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), which is the framework for defending essential infrastructure, ranging from agriculture to transportation, against attack or natural disaster.
The request for comment places DHS in the rather unfamiliar posture — for a national security agency — of actively seeking to engage public interest and to invite public feedback on a matter of broad public policy.
“We’re hoping to get inputs from across the country,” said Larry L. May of the DHS NIPP Program Management Office in an interview today, “and from everyone concerned with critical infrastructure protection.”
Some of the NIPP policies that are under review are trivial, such as changes in terminology. But others are profound, such as the relative emphasis in the Plan on “protection rather than resiliency.” Where “protection” seeks to anticipate, deter and defend against particular threats that are intrinsically uncertain, “resilience” focuses on capabilities needed for rapid response and recovery from a broad range of hazards. They imply vastly different strategies, including public information disclosure strategies.
Are there significant numbers of Americans who care enough about such issues to express their views to DHS? Apparently so.
Mr. May said that the last time DHS conducted a review of the NIPP in 2006, some 10,000 comments were submitted.
Why does DHS care what the public thinks? Basically, Mr. May said, “all of us are in this together, if you will.”
Additional information on the NIPP, including the most recent 2006 iteration, may be found here.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.
This runs counter to public opinion: 4 in 5 of all Americans, across party lines, want to see the government take stronger climate action.