Recent terrorist events such as the attempted bomb attacks in New York's Times Square and aboard an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 are reminders that national security challenges have expanded beyond the traditional threats of the Cold War Era. Today's threats are diffuse and ambiguous, making it difficult for any single fed. agency to address them alone. Effective collaboration among multiple agencies and across fed., state, and local governments is critical. This testimony highlights opportunities to strengthen interagency collaboration by focusing on four key areas: (1) developing overarching strategies; (2) creating collaborative org.; (3) developing a well-trained workforce; and (4) improving info. sharing. Figures.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.
DoD's combatant commands, such as U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), play key roles in interagency collaboration. Both aim to build partner nation capacity and perform humanitarian assistance, while standing ready to perform military operations. SOUTHCOM supports U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Americas and Caribbean in disrupting illicit trafficking and narco-terrorism. As DoD's newest command, AFRICOM works with U.S. diplomacy and development agencies on activities such as maritime security and pandemic response efforts. This testimony provides observations from ongoing work on U.S. counter-piracy efforts by focusing on 3 key areas essential for interagency collaboration.
A "sustainable society," according to one definition, "is one that can persist over generations; one that is far-seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social system of support." As the government sector works hard to ensure sufficient fresh water, food, energy, housing, health, and education for the nation without limiting resources for the future generations, it's clear that there is no sufficient organization to deal with sustainability issues. Each federal agency appears to have a single mandate or a single area of expertise making it difficult to tackle issues such as managing the ecosystem. Key resource domains, which include water, land, energy, and nonrenewable resources, for example, are nearly-completely connected yet different agencies exist to address only one aspect of these domains. The legendary ecologist John Muir wrote in 1911 that "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Thus, in order for the nation to be successful in sustaining its resources, "linkages" will need to be built among federal, state, and local governments; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and the private sector. The National Research Council (NRC) was asked by several federal agencies, foundations, and the private sector to provide guidance to the federal government on issues related to sustainability linkages. The NRC assigned the task to as committee with a wide range of expertise in government, academia, and business. The committee held public fact-finding meetings to hear from agencies and stakeholder groups; examined sustainability management examples; conducted extensive literature reviews; and more to address the issue. Sustainability for the Nation: Resource Connection and Governance Linkages is the committee's report on the issue. The report includes insight into high-priority areas for governance linkages, the challenges of managing connected systems, impediments to successful government linkages, and more. The report also features examples of government linkages which include Adaptive Management on the Platte River, Philadelphia's Green Stormwater Infrastructure, and Managing Land Use in the Mojave.
This book is devoted primarily to papers prepared by American and Russian specialists on cyber terrorism and urban terrorism. It also includes papers on biological and radiological terrorism from the American and Russian perspectives. Of particular interest are the discussions of the hostage situation at Dubrovko in Moscow, the damge inflicted in New York during the attacks on 9/11, and Russian priorities in addressing cyber terrorism.
"Recent terrorist events such as the attempted bomb attacks in New York's Times Square and aboard an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 are reminders that national security challenges have expanded beyond the traditional threats of the Cold War Era to include unconventional threats from nonstate actors. Today's threats are diffuse and ambiguous, making it difficult-if not impossible-for any single federal agency to address them alone. Effective collaboration among multiple agencies and across federal, state, and local governments is critical.This testimony highlights opportunities to strengthen interagency collaboration by focusing on four key areas: (1) developing overarching strategies, (2) creating collaborative organizations, (3) developing a well-trained workforce, and (4) improving information sharing. It is based on GAO's body of work on interagency collaboration. "
