| "We want to ensure that essential NOAA products and services will continue to be produced in the wake of a catastrophe affecting a NOAA facility." | |
| Capt. Ted Lillestolen, NOAA Ocean Service |
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Looking out the windows of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the morning of September 11, 2001, employees could see a plume of smoke rising in the distance. It was a sign of the destruction done to the Pentagon by a terrorist attack.
"It was a wake-up call," says Capt. Ted Lillestolen, associate deputy assistant administrator for NOAA's Ocean Service.
While NOAA had an effective incident response plan in place and was able to rapidly deploy support for the response and recovery efforts in both Washington and New York, Lillestolen says seeing the smoke from the Pentagon was a visual reminder that "we had to do a better job."
"We realized that we had to look internally in terms of the safety and security of our own personnel, as well as looking externally to identify all the capabilities we have to offer our nation in the event of another tragic event."
NOAA quickly formed a Homeland Security Coordination Team that includes representatives from across the agency. Led by Lillestolen, the team established four working groups to look at infrastructure, continuity of operations, capabilities, and information technology.
The infrastructure group is determining the safety and security measures necessary to ensure the well being of staff and facilities, which include evaluating the sensitivity of information available on NOAA Web sites. For instance, addresses for staff are no longer listed on the employee locator link on NOAA's home page.
The continuity of operations group is identifying critical agency operations and developing backup plans for headquarters and all field offices. "We want to ensure that essential NOAA products and services will continue to be produced in the wake of a catastrophe affecting a NOAA facility," Lillestolen explains.
The capabilities group is identifying "all of what NOAA can bring to the table, whether it's weather forecasting, dispersion models, tide and current information, or navigation services," to help with national homeland security efforts. The group compiled a capabilities, assets, and skills inventory, which is being used to produce an enhanced incident response plan.
The information technology (IT) group is a crosscutting team. "IT is one of those things that runs throughout everything we do and must be considered in everything we do," Lillestolen notes.
Dan Farrow, chief of the Coastal Assessment and Planning Branch of Special Projects at NOAA Ocean Service, says the Homeland Security Coordination Team is aware that some of its actions may ultimately affect coastal resource managers.
"We see ourselves working in phases," explains Farrow, who is assisting Lillestolen in organizing NOAA's homeland security efforts. "We are almost done with the first phase, which is getting NOAA's house in order. Once we have that complete, we are considering how we might take that out and see how it might relate to our clients and constituents."
"I personally think the end user is going to end up getting better products and services as a result of what we're doing," Lillestolen says. "What's nice about this is that it is a comprehensive effort throughout all of NOAA. I think that there will be better communication and that we will be able to provide more enhanced capabilities that will ultimately benefit coastal managers."
For more information on NOAA's homeland security efforts, point your browser to homeland.noaa.gov/welcome.html. You may also contact Dan Farrow at (301) 713-3000, ext. 156, or Dan.Farrow@noaa.gov.
