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Release Date: January 3, 2007
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: (202) 282-8010
Secretary Chertoff: Happy New Year, happy 2007. We all hope for a healthy and safe 2007. I also, of course, want to take a moment to observe again how the nation mourns the passing of Gerald Ford, and recognizes his service and his leadership.
As we begin 2007, this is a good opportunity to talk about interoperability, which is a major concern for homeland security. I'm joined today by George Foresman, the Under Secretary for Preparedness, and by Gerry Connolly, the chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. We had hoped Mayor Fenty could attend, but he had to express his regrets, he's going through the rather important matter of getting sworn in, and so of course he's got to attend to that. But I do welcome his support, as well as the support of his predecessor, Mayor Williams, who was very active in working with us on emergency preparedness.
What is interoperability? Well, simply put, it's the ability of first response agencies — whether they be fire, police or emergency medical services — to communicate with each other during an emergency or a disaster. This means having radios that can talk to each other. But it also means having established operating procedures for communication and clear lines of authority.
This is an issue in which we've been focused on for the last couple of years and, in fact, it's an issue which the 9/11 commission identified in its final report as one of the priority "must dos" for all levels of government.
Interoperability, though, is more than just a matter of technology. People tend to think about it as, we've just got to find the right radio or the right communications device, and then everybody can talk to everybody else. But, in fact, true interoperability also involves matters of governance; policy making; standard operating procedures; such as knowing where you get your radios and who is entitled to talk to who; training, so that people know how to use the equipment; and exercising, so that we can evaluate where performance continues to need work.
And interoperability is a challenge not only within a particular city or even a single urban area or region, but often across multiple counties and even multiple states that are part of a single region for emergency purposes — such as that here in the national capital region.
Now, a lot of progress has been made since September 11th moving in the direction of achieving tactical command level interoperability in our major high threat urban areas. And over the past 18 months, building on some of this progress, DHS has assisted 75 of the largest urban metropolitan areas in developing and exercising their own tactical interoperable communications plans. Our interoperable communications technical assistance program has been instrumental in this process. I'm also pleased to say that we've provided almost $3 billion — that's billion with a "b" — to state and local governments to help them develop interoperable communications.
A great example of what a region can do with effective interoperable communications is right here in the national capital region. Today, as we speak, all first responders in the NCR — whether they're from Maryland, D.C. or Virginia — can communicate with each other either directly or through the use of bridging or gateway technology. What this means in real life is that firefighters and police can talk to each other not only within the same political jurisdiction, but across jurisdictions.
In addition, the National Capital region has a backup system of over 1,200 interoperable radios that are pre-positioned across the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. These radios can be brought to a disaster scene within two hours or less. And the various entities in the region have also established a series of regional mutual aid agreements that allow first responders to operate on each other's radio channels. This region uses a common data platform that allows its communications centers and emergency operations centers to plug into the same system so they can all have greater situational awareness, a common operating picture, during a crisis or an event. In fact, this system was used just yesterday to provide seamless communication during the ceremonies that surrounded President Ford's funeral.
But in other parts of the country, although we've made progress, we are not yet where we need to be on the issue of interoperability. Now, about a month ago, we released the findings of our national baseline survey, which was the first-ever nationwide assessment of interoperability across our country. We engaged with more than 22,000 state and local law enforcement, fire response and emergency medical services agencies to develop this baseline.
We found that roughly two-thirds of the emergency response agencies across the nation reported that they do, in fact, use interoperable communications in varying degrees. Specifically, response agencies tend to be more developed in their use of technology. Interoperability at local levels tends to be more advanced than it is between the state and local agencies. And law enforcement, fire response and EMS agencies report similar levels of development in most areas of interoperability. So this baseline survey gave us kind of a snapshot on a national level of what the picture is with respect to interoperability.
But we needed to go a step further. And today we're taking that step by issuing reports to 75 urban and metropolitan areas with specific assessments of where they stand in relation to the goal of command level communications interoperability. I ordered that these scorecards be developed last May, and that they be completed by the end of the year, and we met this goal and delivered on that pledge.
Before I get into the overall findings, I want to briefly talk about what the process was, how we developed the scorecards and why we wanted to do it. Back as part of our 2005 Homeland Security Grant program we mandated that major urban areas develop tactical interoperable communications plans. These are basically plans for achieving command level interoperability within a single hour of an incident or emergency. Every one of the 75 urban and metropolitan areas did successfully develop plans for their regions, and those plans were then subjected to validation through full-scale exercise, and that's what's gone on through this past year.
We used these plans and additional validations, site visits and self assessments to drill down and identify exactly what the capabilities were for each individual urban and metropolitan area, to look to see what were the barriers to achieving full command level interoperability and to make some specific recommendations to each urban area or municipality about the way ahead.
Now let me say that the purpose of doing score cards is not to rank one urban area against another. In fact, although there will be a temptation, I'm sure, for some to do that, you really can't make that comparison. Every urban area and metropolitan area faces its own particular challenges, whether that's the geographic environment, or the number of municipalities, or the density of the population. And therefore, it's not really fair to compare one with another and say one did better than another one did, because they face unique challenges.
The purpose of the score cards is to help every community assess with objectivity the progress that they've made using their existing equipment, to assess the remaining obstacles to getting full interoperability and to create a common framework under which federal, state and local officials can work together over the next two years to get everybody to full command level interoperability in each of these 75 urban or metropolitan areas.
And now we divide the score card findings into three elements. The first is governance. This really asks the question, how mature is an urban or metropolitan area’s strategic plan in terms of getting interoperable communications.
What do I mean by a strategic plan? I mean things like, how do we agree on how we spend the money, what are the major policy decisions that have to be made about, for example, using 10 code for communications as opposed to plain English. These are the kinds of strategic policy-making decisions that have to be made by the command leadership, the political leadership of regions or jurisdictions.
The second element is standard operating procedures. This is the nitty gritty operational detail that an urban and metropolitan area has to have in place to be able to use the equipment effectively. It needs things like what — where do you get the radios, how do you train on the radios, who actually holds the radios, who communicates with whom. These are specific and operational in focus.
And the final category we've looked at is usage, which is the capability and the ability to use the various communications equipment that is located within a particular urban or metropolitan area. This is what measures the quality of the equipment and the training on the equipment, which is the basis for all communication.
Each of these three elements is a necessary ingredient of getting interoperable communications. So when we look at today's results, you've got to look at each of these elements as part of a total package, and not as separate and distinct items to be evaluated in isolation.
So what are the findings? Overall, the scorecard findings show that urban and metropolitan areas have made significant progress improving their interoperable communications capabilities. And that particularly is measured against where we were five years ago at the time of the September 11 attacks.
The findings also will identify some real gaps in areas for continued advancement. Among the key findings are the following: There are now policies in place for interoperable communications and plans for all the 75 urban and metropolitan areas. But regular testing and exercising continue to be necessary in order to effectively link the various individual systems within a particular region to allow communications between multi jurisdictional responders.
And finally, although cooperation is very strong among the first responders themselves, the leadership and strategic plan at a political or policy-making level is a little bit uneven and needs addition improvement.
Now, I will talk about a few urban areas, but I do this, again, not to suggest that you can compare one with another, but just to give you some set of a wide range of examples that we've seen as we've evaluated communities of all different sizes. Four urban areas achieved advance in all the three elements I've described, which is governance, procedures, and usage of equipment. Those four were the Nation Capital Region, the region in San Diego, the Twin Cities region in Minnesota, and the region around Columbus, Ohio.
Three urban or metropolitan areas are still in early stage in one category of the three, at least, and those would be the Cook County, Chicago urban metropolitan area, the Cleveland metropolitan area, and the Baton Rouge metropolitan area.
And let me pause here to emphasize we're talking about regional evaluations. I do that because as part of our RapidCom initiative, which was focused on 10 cities themselves, we actually did achieve, a couple of years ago, a reasonably good degree of interoperability in cities, for example, like Chicago.
So what you see in this snapshot is not an evaluation of Chicago as a stand alone, because as a stand alone, Chicago actually does have good interoperability, but rather the region in which Chicago is located, the region of Cook County, which includes 128 municipalities in addition to Chicago.
And so what you see when you look at the scorecard for that urban area is there is gapping as one tries to merge or integrate all of those surrounding communities with Chicago in a county-wide or region-wide approach to interoperability.
And that's where governance becomes so critically important. If you would look at the city Chicago itself, it has interoperable communications. In fact, I've been out there, and they do an excellent job harnessing technology and getting a terrific — common operating picture for the city itself. Cook County also has done an awful lot among its communities to establish interoperability. But what the scorecard identified was, these two entities, the city and the county, needed to come together and work more effectively as a unified whole to build interoperability across the entire region.
Now, these score card findings were reviewed by five panels of subject matter experts in state and local safety operations, as well as communications technology experts, including former fire chiefs and police chiefs. These are professional experts, and they work for some of the experts that we employ in our SAFECOM office and our wireless management office to make sure we were bringing the best skill set to doing these evaluations. State and urban areas had an opportunity to review the scorecards and to provide comments.
So where do we go from here? Well, the scorecard findings are designed to give us, and more important, to give local communities a decision about where they need to work in order to get to advanced agent interoperability among all the elements we've described. And while we're not going to punish people or reward people in terms of grant funding based on the findings, we do expect the grant recipients will use this scorecard information to target their investment justifications to their interoperable communications capability.
What this means is we are determined to get this job done over the next two years. And what I mean by "done" is advanced level interoperability across all three elements for every single one of these 75 urban and metropolitan areas. We are well on the way to getting it done, but we're not completed yet.
In order to make this effort work, we're going to need to provide the money, and we will provide the money; we're going to need to have accountability, and we're going to demand accountability; and we're going to have to have metrics that enable us to measure performance. And that's precisely what this scorecard allows us to do, build a set of metrics we can track and follow to make sure we get this job done.
Let me also say that we have some longer-term issues in interoperability we have to talk about. For years the communications sector has wrestled with technology standards under the P-25 suite of standards that would give communities a set of specific requirements that they can insist upon as they buy their next generation of equipment. We ought to get the job — I encourage the industry people who are working on this project to get this job done this year, so that new acquisitions can be undertaken with an understanding of what is going to be the generally accepted industry standard for P25 interoperability over the next several years.
But we also have to recognize that even when we get those standards done, there's going to have to be a transition period where communities migrate to this new set of standards. Fortunately, we have technology that allows us to bridge the gap between the current technology and the new technology that we are looking forward to having ratified by the industry. And that's going to mean that communities won't have to simply junk their entire investment, but we will work with them to give them a path to migrate, over time, so they have interoperability immediately and can build towards next generation systems.
The short — bottom line here is that interoperability is a priority for DHS; it's a priority for the President; it's a priority for Congress. For the reasons that were made abundantly clear in the September 11 Commission Report, we are — there's nothing that's more important than getting this job of communications done, so we can do response as effectively and as safely as possible.
We've given communities now the tools to get the job done, we will work with them to get — finish the journey over the next couple of years. And I want to acknowledge the progress that's been made, but to me this is really more of an impetuous to accelerating completion of the job, rather than patting ourselves on the back.
I thought I might ask Gerry Connolly, who actually has been a leader in emergency response for the entire National Capital Region community, as well as the Chairman of Fairfax County, to give us a couple of words, in terms of his perspective as a local official.
Mr. Connolly: Thank you, Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and thank you for your leadership. Good afternoon. It's good to be here today. You know, when I was — when my daughter was in the fourth grade, I was in my fourth year in public life as a local supervisor, and I was invited to come and talk to her fourth grade class. And I gave a stemwinder of a speech to that fourth grade, and I talked about the difference between state, federal and local governments and wound up with great panache, and got very polite applause. One little girl in the corner, however, who didn't applaud, and kept her arms like this and a big scowl on her face, and I went up to her and said, you didn't like my speech? She said, "No, I thought it was boring." And my daughter could see the look on my face, and to comfort me, she came running up and said, "Oh, Dad, don't listen to her, she just repeats what everyone else says."
Being in local government keeps you humble, but if we have two sacred responsibilities in local government, it is to educate our children and it is to protect public safety. And in this region, in the nation's capital region, we have tragically learned all too well how important that latter responsibility is. And we've been tested. We were tested, as the Secretary said, certainly on 9/11, on an attack on the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. We had the sniper attacks. We had anthrax attacks. We had Hurricane Isabel. We even had an earthquake, albeit a minor one, in the region.
So we've had lots of opportunities in real life, frankly, to test our skills. And it's difficult, because this is not a homogenous region. This region encompasses two very different states plus the city of Washington. That's 17 sovereign governments that constitute the National Capital Region, each of which is different, each of which has a different political culture. And so getting them together — their police chiefs, their fire chiefs, their elected officials — to agree on common goals, to agree on priorities for the region, to agree on an investment strategy, as the Secretary said, that we believe will be efficacious, that will protect the public — both the public that lives here, the 4.5 million people who live in this region, and the tens of millions of Americans and others who come to visit the nation's capital every year, is a sacred duty. And we take that very seriously.
And as the Secretary indicated, interoperability of communications is one of the most important ingredients in making sure whatever strategy you've got, whatever plans you've got that you're going to be testing, works. We have to be able to communicate with one another.
The Secretary was noting before the press conference that back in 1982, in the tragedy of the Air Florida flight that crashed into the Potomac River on a very snowy, cold day — which for those of us who were here is an image always etched in our minds — frankly a lot of the rescue forces in the region could not talk to one another, even on the bridge, as they were attempting rescue — rescue attempts.
So we have corrected that, and we've made a lot of progress, as a region, in trying to foster cooperation and testing the plan constantly, whether it be tabletop exercises or real live exercises in the field, on a regional basis, on a more local basis, to try to make sure this region is safe and secure. We're proud of that effort. We've involved the private sector, we've involved our non-profit partners, and we've involved all of those 17 governments. And we're partnered with the Department of Homeland Security. They've been a good partner to this region, and indeed we even have a special position in the Department of Homeland Security. We worked with them, the original funding legislation, to make sure there was a special person devoted to the Nation's Capital, because we know that so long as there is terrorism, and so long as this is the seat of our government, unfortunately, we're always going to get special attention from people who are up to no good. And we need to be prepared to meet that threat.
Thank you so much for having us here today, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your leadership.
Secretary Chertoff: All right, we'll take some questions. Pete.
Question: Mr. Secretary, what do you make of the fact that this far after 9/11, less than 10 percent of these areas that were surveyed were judged successful in all these three areas?
Secretary Chertoff: I think it reflects a couple things. First of all, I think we began before 9/11 with a circumstance, particularly when you're looking at regions, in which there wasn't a lot of attention being paid to the issue of interoperability. Communities tended to buy their own systems, they tended to create their own rules. Some regions were better than others, but I don't think it was an issue for national focus.
So we began, I think, from a position where there was remarkably little interoperability, and we've built quite a bit since then. But I would say — I think Chairman Connolly kind of made the point, even with respect to the National Capital Region — the most difficult element of interoperability is reaching agreement on standards and protocols. And you have a lot of different people who, some of whom made some substantial investments over time, and they have to come together and reach agreement about the way forward. And that has been a little bit of a time consuming process.
What we did do after 9/11 is we focused, first of all, on the 10 biggest urban areas, that the most urgent need. And that was our RapidCom program. And we did achieve tactical, command-level interoperability at the 10 largest cities. But in 2005, having gotten that job done, or substantially done, it became clear we had to broaden this out. This is a larger set of issues than just 10 cities, and that's why we went into this systematic effort to first build the 75 regional plans, which we did get done, then train and exercise the plans, which we did through last year, and identify the gaps, and then the next two years are a period in which we can, as long as we're diligent about it and efficient about it, plug all those remaining gaps and get everybody to where they need to be.
And, Pete, the one thing I want to emphasize is this: even those communities which are less than fully advanced in every respect have still made very significant progress, and are capable of functioning with command-level interoperability in an emergency. So we've achieved a substantial amount of basic competence all across the board.
What we're talking about now is getting to a level beyond basic competence, of what I would call advanced competence. And that's where we do have some work to do, but we've laid the groundwork, we've got the money, and now we have to get it by doing it.
Yes.
Question: Secretary Chertoff, one of the entities that scored well in the assessment, the National Capital Region, public safety officials there and around the country are on record at the FCC as saying interoperability, as important as it is, is an aspect of a bigger problem, and that's being able to have a bigger pipe, a broadband pipe. And the FCC recently rejected a proposal there, as you're probably aware, because they say legislation is needed to give public safety entities around the country more radio spectrum. Would you support legislation that would take radio spectrum that is due to be auctioned basically by this time next year for public safety? Because they say interoperability is fine, but for the files and the video they need to send among themselves, the pipes aren't big enough right now.
Secretary Chertoff: And let me for the public try to make clear that the discussion that's being had about this greater bandwidth reflects the fact that people are talking not only now about voice communication, which is, of course, what was the issue on 9/11, but video communication and data communication, which requires much more bandwidth.
Obviously, the question of how one achieves that greater capability affects our department. It also affects other agencies of the executive branch, and we're very interested obviously with working with Congress if there is a proposed piece of legislation to look at that and evaluate what makes the most sense. I can't give you an answer in the abstract based on a theoretical piece of legislation. But, of course, we're always interested in specific proposals that Congress may have to move forward on this very important issue.
Question: Sir, to what extent is it a good idea for municipalities to pay attention to this when they're giving in their Homeland Security grant proposals?
Secretary Chertoff: I think it's a great idea because, in my experience, when the decision maker says, or the decision-making agency says, this is important to us, that's a pretty good cue that you ought to focus on that when you're making a request to get money from the decision makers.
So this is one of the challenges that has been discussed publicly for five years. What we now have with these plans, and with the score card, is a very clear understanding of what we've achieved and what we have to achieve. And we have clarity about the way forward in order to get this job completely done in terms of reaching advanced level in the next couple of years.
Obviously, requests for grants that are tailored to filling gaps and that are supported by a sensible plan are going to get a positive response. Because the way the process should work is, we evaluate, we figure out what needs to be done to improve, and then we put the money very specifically to build the capabilities to achieve that improvement.
Yes.
Question: Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. How will this begin to integrate with the integrated wireless network plan to build out a system for federal interoperability over time, and to also fill in blanks in the border, especially along Canada and the mountainous regions? How will this technology be migrated as it evolves?
Secretary Chertoff: This focuses — this set of scorecards, of course, focused on local, regional interoperability. The federal government has its own obligation to be interoperable, and then we have to plug into the local system. But let's remember that the model in this country is a very sensible model. It's still that the first response always begins at the local level and at the regional level. And therefore, we've got to, on the federal level and the state level, plug into the system that the state and locals have, or the region and locals have, as opposed to having them fit our system.
Now part of that means we have to have common protocols. We have our national incident management system. Part of our requirements in terms of the national response plan and our various national preparedness — elements of the National Preparedness Goal require adoption of this integrated incident management system so we have a common set of protocols. We have gateway technology that allows us to patch into local communities.
So we're going to be looking to — building our interoperability in such a way that it is able to insert itself into the local and regional interoperability. I don't know if you want to add anything.
QUESTION: Some of these cities, when you get a technological overview — and I'm using here an example, Houston. Even five years after 9/11, they haven't upgraded their radio systems. You say here, for example, for Houston, the current system is more than 16 years old. It must be replaced.
Can you talk a little bit about why that hasn't been done in some cities? Is it a lack of political leadership, or the technological issues that lay people don't understand? Houston is in that 10 largest cities category you talked about, and yet, you're noting they have a radio system that's 16 years old and needs to be replaced.
Secretary Chertoff: I'm not going to single out a particular city. And I don't know that I'm in a position to evaluate all the various decisions that have gone into communications policy in particular cities over the last 10 years.
Obviously, the investment in communications equipment is a very, very costly and different investment. I have to say it's similar to something that we face in our own lives. If I could use a homespun example to make the point, maybe it will. I remember 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, they came out with video cassette recorders, and you had to make a choice between beta and VHS. I'm one of those people who made the mistake of getting beta. It was a substantial investment. I think a lot of people made that investment. And then they had to wrestle with the point at which they were going make the transition to VHS. And then probably there were some farsighted people who said, let's hold off and wait until they come up with DVD players and CD players and that will be even better.
I use that example because I think for all communities there's a challenge between making the investments you need to communicate now with existing technology, as opposed to holding back, hoping that there is going to be a breakthrough in the future and then making the investment at that point in time. And that's why I emphasize this issue of transition planning. I don't think when the industry ultimately sets agreement on these P-25 standards, that we're going to flip a switch and all of a sudden everybody is going to scrap what they have and go to something new. Not only would that be unconscionably expensive, but it would be almost impossible to do instantaneously. And it would result in actually creating a huge vulnerability.
So part of the key is to find ways to bridge between existing technologies to the new technologies and to the new standards so that people can migrate over time. We want to tell them where they have to go, but we want to give them some choice among the paths that they can take, so they can manage their budgets and their training and their own day-to-day needs in a way that's not very disruptive.
There are, no doubt, 75 different stories about why every city finds itself where it is. These are enormously complicated questions. And that's why I emphasize the point of the score cards is not to say this person did well or this city did well and this city didn't do well. It's to recognize widely different challenges and to suggest areas where those challenges need to be overcome to get everybody to an advanced stage of interoperability.
Question: I want to ask you on a different issue, the House Democrats are going to do their hundred hours of legislation. One of them is the 9/11 recommendations. There are indications they're not going to do every one of the outstanding recommendations that hasn't been enacted. Are there any recommendations of that commission that you oppose, that you wouldn't want to see in legislation?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, I will tell you that the 9/11 Commission recommendation — I think the President at the time that the report came out endorsed all but one having to do with intelligence budget, if memory serves me.
Certainly, as to the recommendations that affect our department, we have been well along in implementing those recommendations. I welcome having congressional endorsement of the recommendations that affect our department. And let me give you some specific examples.
The 9/11 Commission recommended having secure travel documentation. We have put that into effect through the Western Hemisphere Travel initiative. The air rule is going to be effective this month. The land and sea rule should be effective early in next year, in January of 2008. With respect to the automated targeting system, which is our system that we use in order to judge who we ought to put into secondary examination at the border, that was a specific recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. They endorsed the expansion of that program. Now some people are questioning whether it's a good idea. Well, that's a 9/11 Commission recommendation which we've implemented and which I would love to have Congress endorse.
So I think as it relates to our department, the Department of Homeland Security, these recommendations are things we have adopted and we have either fully implemented or have substantially implemented. And I think it's a bipartisan issue, not an issue that's Democrats or Republicans — it's an issue that has to do with protecting Americans. And so any additional momentum we can get in that direction is great.
Question: You mentioned the 9/11 Commission report. One of the things in that report was a reference to the so-called battle of the badges. I'm curious, in your review of all these different cities, how much institutional or cultural resistance to this kind of cooperation did you find and what effect has that had on the pace of these improvements?
Secretary Chertoff: I think that is — again, for the public, I think it reflects the fact that in some communities, not all, there are some longstanding cultural differences between different kinds of responders, police, fire and EMS that have caused resistance to working together.
I think that is a challenge. That culture has been a challenge. And I think in response to it, I think Pete's earlier question about why it's taking so long to get where we have gotten now, let alone where we need to be, I think one has been a tendency on the part of some very proud organizations to be reluctant to compromise or adopt the protocols of another agency that are different than what they're used to.
We had discussion about this with respect to the 10 code, for example. Nevertheless, I think over time our observation has been that everybody is recognizing we can't afford to have turf consciousness or a cultural clash get in the way of performing service for the American public.
The fact is whether you be a policeman, a fireman, an emergency technician, you're putting your life on the line to save Americans. And we ought to be able to have a set of tools — the leaders of these organizations ought to be able to agree on a set of tools that will give those responders the maximum safety and the maximum efficiency when they do the job.
So I guess I've done a systematic study. But by my lights, I think there has been a coming around on that issue. And I think there have been significant improvements.
Question: Can you comment on the New York City region and the New Jersey region area? Because that area faces threats no less than the Capital region, but has scores less than acceptable on all three fronts. So what are the additional challenges that region has compared to —
Secretary Chertoff: I think that region was in the top quarter, if I'm not mistaken. So they've made an awful lot of progress. But I think that's a great example — take Chicago — of the fact that in some ways, the cities that have the most complicated challenges are the ones that you're going to see have the hardest time achieving advanced at all level.
The New York, New Jersey metropolitan area, you have two states. You have multiple counties. You have multiple cities. I can tell you coming from New Jersey, there are literally hundreds of little municipalities. Everybody has their own police chief. Everybody has their own fire chief. All of these folks have to get together and agree on, for example, common governance or common protocols. So in some ways, what you're seeing in communities in that area are the difficulty that they've had because of the sheer number of different jurisdictions that have to come together and agree.
And frankly, the good news story is that because of a lot of leadership and effort by leaders in the New York, New Jersey community, they've actually made a very, very substantial amount of progress compared to where they were on 9/11. They are actually in the top quarter, and that reflects, I think, a concerted effort to overcome some of these cultural differences that might have been legacies of the past.
So again, my concluding observation on this is, I'm not going to be able to stop people from making comparisons as to who did better and who did worse. All I can tell you is I think it's a misleading comparison. The number of municipalities, the difficulties of geography, the fact that, for example, in some cities because you have a lot of tall buildings, there are special communications challenges — all of these things tend to make every urban and metropolitan area different than every other one. And so trying to say one is better than the other, or in terms of having done a better job is like saying an apple is better than an orange.
What one can say is we've given everybody now a snapshot of what they've done, what they need to do. And we want to work with them because in the end, we all do better if every single one of these cities has the kind of interoperability that the highest performing communities have.
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This page was last modified on January 3, 2007