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Release Date: 04/12/05 00:00:00
Washington, D.C.
National Infrastructure Advisory Council Meeting
April 12, 2005
Secretary Chertoff: Thank you, Chairman Nye. It's a privilege to be here. I've heard wonderful things about the Council and your leadership and John Chambers' leadership and that of everybody who gives so much time and effort to this public service, which is obviously an important part of our Homeland Security effort.
Even in the short time that I've been involved in the Department of Homeland Security as Secretary, I've come to see that the Council actually plays a very valuable role, has done a tremendous job of sharing insights and recommendations with the Department and with the government as a whole, which are very, very much appreciated.
Infrastructure protection is a -- obviously a very large part of the responsibility of Homeland Security, and one of the perspectives I've had on the Department since I joined it is that we are unusual in this respect. Like most departments, we do have a large portion of what we do that is embodied in the equipment that we own or the people that work with us and the operations we undertake ourselves. Those are the actual boots on the ground.
But there's another part of the Department which is perhaps less widely appreciated but at least as important, and that is the network that we perform, the networking function that we perform, a lot of it with state and local partners and with the private sector, because Homeland Security, obviously, as it applies throughout the country in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of institutions and physical facilities and cyber-facilities are all bound together, not by a common ownership or a common workforce, but by a common network. And I know a lot of the people here understand the concept of the network as a way in which business organizations and other organizations operate. So it's important for us to pay as much attention to that networking function that we perform in Homeland Security as it is to the more traditional physical attributes of our job.
And I think a pivotal part of that ability to make use of this network, as it relates to our infrastructure, is this council, and the advice and perspective that you give us, based on your experience and your daily occupational perspectives.
I know you've got a couple of initiatives underway. You've got the intelligence coordination and risk management approaches to protection. Those are critical important -- important aspects of the work that we do, and I know you're going to be launching some additional initiatives today, which I look forward to hearing about and seeing the results of.
Now, I also understand that the Council's charter is up for revision, with the notion of slightly expanding its reach to broaden the range of critical infrastructure protection issues that it deals with, and I think that that's a tribute to the work the Council has done and the meaningful impact that you've had, that the consideration is begin given to broadening your perspective and your range of operation.
So again, thank you very much for hosting me. I look forward to hearing what you're going to be talking about in the meeting. I will probably have to excuse myself in about 20 minutes, but I envision this as being the first of a number of interactions I will have with you as a group, and also individually going forward.
So thank you very much.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on 04/12/05 00:00:00.
