Abstract
For decades during the Cold War, technology leadership, innovation, and the federal government could rightly be uttered in the same breath. That is far less true today. From 1960 to 2000, the federal government's share of total U.S. research and development fell from 65 percent to 26 percent. Today, the private sector drives technological innovation, and the government struggles to keep pace.
At the same time, terrorists harness technology such as the internet for operational planning, recruitment, propaganda, and training. To make the country safer, the federal government need not regain the mantle of technology leadership. The most important thing Washington can do is to learn how to leverage everyday technologies to solve some of homeland security's most intractable problems.
Take, for example, the need to provide better situational awareness in the event of a disaster. A post-Hurricane Katrina review by the Department of Homeland Security found that most mass evacuation plans are inadequate and “are an area of profound concern.” In a real-time terrorist event, such as a dirty bomb or chemical release, knowing whether to go east or west a few blocks can mean the difference between life and death. What evacuation and supply routes are open, closed, or destroyed? Where are essential supplies, utilities, and communications lines? “Where are shelters, hospitals, and churches, and are they full? To be fair, effective mapping capabilities were one of the key features of the Homeland Security Information Network established in 2003. But the Homeland Security inspector general recently found that fewer than 10 percent of officials who signed up for the network use the system on a regular basis, in part because it failed to provide information that they found useful.
By contrast, during the last decade the mass market has readily adopted proven digital solutions that provide valuable situational awareness, including online maps with satellite imagery and GPS-based systems in our phones and cars–think Map-Quest, Google Maps, and OnStar. In 2007, an estimated 63 percent of cell phones sold in North America will be equipped with GPS locators. These new technologies provide the ability to pinpoint the location of friends, family, and victims using online maps. First-rate interactive digital maps should be in the basic tool kit of homeland security professionals, and they should be readily shared with first responders and state and local officials.
Technology could be deployed much more effectively in other ways as well. According to a report commissioned by the White House after Katrina, the “Achilles' heel” of national preparedness is the ability to identify critical supplies and resources before a disaster strikes and to deliver them quickly afterward.
Future disasters will require specialized response resources, many of which the government will not be in a position to supply. Federal, state, and local governments should identify ahead of time the critical supplies and capabilities–vaccines, ventilators, generators, laboratory capacity, decontamination equipment, transport, and warehouses–that they will need in order to respond effectively.
Building a secure, eBay-style online market mechanism to match regional- and national-level disaster-response needs with companies that can pledge assistance ahead of time or help out in real time would save dollars and lives. Properly built and maintained, it would allow state, local, and federal governments to rapidly inventory available critical assets and would be much faster than relying on government bureaucrats to create disaster-resource databases on their own. Such a system would also serve as a focal point for building trust and cooperation between government, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations in advance of the next disaster.
When most people think of homeland security technology, they probably envision secret government labs building next-generation WMD sensors or predictive software that sifts through terabytes of data to discover terrorists. But the best solution to many homeland security needs might be staring us in the face, from the screens of our wireless devices and personal computers. As Washington considers security technology, its best bet is finding creative new applications for technologies that consumers already use every day.