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Governmetal Affairs Committee |
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GAC Resources
In Other News The FAMA / FEMSA GAC would like to thank all the members who participated in the 2006 Home Day Program. Many of you had incredible results, and we encourage you to share those experiences with your fellow members. The GAC has posted a small website with information about some of the Home Day activities by FAMA and FEMSA member companies. Remember - Every Day is Home Day! Please click here to see the site.
Upcoming Events CFSI Annual Dinner. March 28-29, 2007. Washington, DC Hilton. Get your tickets early! Click here for more information.
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Awards for Fiscal Year 2006 Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) Announced Reserve Your Hotel Room for the Dinner Before March 6, 2007 to Qualify for the group rate of $209 Report: DHS must do more to protect personal info Local Disaster Plans Still Have Major Gaps, Experts Say Texas School Bus Drivers Learn Emergency Procedures
Awards for Fiscal Year 2006 Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) Announced The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today $19,211,451 in direct assistance grants to 211 fire departments and first responder organizations through the department's Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program. Additional phases will soon be announced that will total $485 million in AFG grant awards to approximately 5,000 fire-related organizations nationwide. To view the latest round of AFG award annoucements, please visit: http://www.firegrantsupport.com/awards Source: USFA Reserve Your Hotel Room for the Dinner Before March 6, 2007 to Qualify for the group rate of $209 The cut off date to get your rooms at the Hilton Washington is fast approaching. You must book your rooms by Tuesday, March 6, 2007 in order to get the $209 group rate. After this date the group rate will no longer be available and you will have to pay the rack rate which will be decided by the hotel. There are approximately 70 rooms left for the night of the dinner, March 29th. So, if you need a room, please call now. To make reservations at the Hilton Washington please call: CFSI Group Rates for 2006: Single $209 Double $209 To make your reservations on line by credit card please click here. To get the CFSI Group rates for your stay, you will need to enter the code “CFS” into the Group/Convention Code area on the second page after entering your desired dates on the first page. The Hilton Washington is sold out for the nights of Tuesday March 27th and Wednesday March 28th. If you do needs rooms for these nights please try the following hotels: Churchill Hotel 1914 Connecticut Ave, NW 202-797-2000 775 12th Street, NW 202-737-2200 Source: CFSI 02/19/07 War on terror takes toll on large networking programs Based on President Bush’s fiscal 2008 budget request, experts predict funding and progress on programs such as the IT components of Future Combat Systems, the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical and the Joint Tactical Radio System will be hampered by DOD’s more immediate need to fund the war on terror. “I think the big cuts in these systems-of-systems networking initiatives are probably a harbinger of things to come,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a public-policy think tank based in Arlington, Va. “First, [former secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is gone. Second, these programs don’t deliver capabilities for years to come. And third, we need the money right now.” Overall, the Bush administration submitted a record-setting budget request for the Defense Department for 2008—$481.4 billion, 62 percent higher than the request for 2001, just seven years ago. DOD received an 11 percent increase over the 2007 request, the largest in the federal government. DOD comptroller Tina Jonas, at a Feb. 5 press briefing, broke down the budget request: This figure does not include any embedded IT projects, such as systems included in armaments, weapons, and communications programs in the research, de- velopment, test and evaluation budget. Examples of embedded systems requested include $2.8 billion for elements of the Army’s FCS, $854 million for the Navy’s JTRS project and $964 million for the Air Force’s Transformational Satellite program. Those are lower than in previous years, Thompson said. The budget for FCS shows $3 billion in cuts over the next six years, while the date for the initial operating capacity for T-SAT shows a slip of at least a year, to 2016, he said. And Thompson questioned whether JTRS, which is intended as a battlefield communications system, will ever be deployed as it is currently planned. Another indication of change: DOD decided to end the Land Warrior program. After spending 10 years and $2 billion on developing network-centric capabilities all the way down to the individual soldier, the Army zeroed out funding in the 2008 budget and ended the program. Overall, the actual DOD request is even higher than $481 billion; the president submitted a second supplemental amount of $93.4 billion for 2007, and an “emergency” $141.7 billion for 2008 to cover the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Including those, the DOD request actually totals $716.5 billion. The 2008 budget also provides funds for fielding more unmanned aerial vehicles, increasing the number of Predators to 170, and adds $310 million to deploy a missile defense site in Europe. In the budget, the Defense Information Systems Agency would get a big bump in its procurement budget, to $287 million, up 45 percent over the 2007 request, but its budget request for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) drops to $366 million, down more than 12 percent from this year’s request. Spending on the Defense Information System Network would jump sharply to $49 million, up 67 percent over the previous request, following DISA’s award in October of a new, 10-year, $3 billion contract to upgrade DISN. Research and development on information security looms large, scattered through the budget as line item programs, both departmentwide and within individual agencies such as the National Security Agency, which is requesting $394 million for its information systems security program. “The military services have become increasingly concerned that their information systems could be compromised by enemy agents, by hackers or by other threats,” Thompson said. “So they’re putting quite a bit of money into information security and into system redundancy.” There are numerous joint programs geared to improving interoperability and communications with coalition partners. A new line item in the RDT&E budget, for instance, requests more than $26 million for “joint/allied coalition information sharing,” and the Office of the Secretary of Defense is requesting another $16 million for the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System. In keeping with past practice, the request does not provide specific numbers for funding the intelligence community, but it “supports improved sharing of intelligence information through the Information Sharing Environment, a governmentwide effort to share terrorist information among interested parties in federal, state and local governments,” the budget summary states. © 1996-2007 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Source: GCN Report: DHS must do more to protect personal info 02/23/07 -- 01:31 PM Personal identifying information is any information that can be used to identify a person. It includes, for example, full name, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card numbers and date of birth. While the department has performed draft assessments of privacy impacts and risks to most of its 699 systems, the final validations and approvals by the DHS Privacy Office are not yet complete, the report said. Of the 699 computer systems within the department, 95 percent or more had been subjected to a security plan, security categorization and draft privacy threshold assessment as of September 2006, the report said. Eighty-five percent had completed a risk assessment. But only 155 systems, or 23 percent, of those assessments and plans were validated by the privacy office as of that date. Of the 52 systems required to be covered by a Privacy Impact Assessment, only 20 of those assessments were approved as of September 2006, the inspector general said. “Until DHS completes and validates the security documentation, privacy threshold assessments and privacy impact assessments for its systems and programs, the department lacks assurance that the risks associated with sensitive data and personal identifying information have been determined and appropriate security controls have been identified,” the report said. DHS also needs to complete encryptions of data on laptop computers and to strengthen protections of data during storage, and in transit, the 26-page report concludes. Alice Lipowicz is a staff writer for Government Computer News’ affiliate publication, Washington Technology. © 1996-2007 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Source: GCN Local Disaster Plans Still Have Major Gaps, Experts Say Homeland security experts say communities across the United States still have major, serious gaps in their disaster plans. Will our communities ever get a handle on emergency planning? According to an article on the Yahoo Finance website, the experts were assembled last week at American Military University’s “Homeland Security: The Ripple Effect” symposium. The conference focused on the issues faced by outlying and smaller communities after disaster. Part of the preparedness issue lies in incomplete plans, according to symposium speaker Lt. Gen. Russel Honore’, former commander of Joint Task Force-Katrina. “Did you take your understanding of the disaster to failure?” Honore’asked. He was referring to disaster plans that miss critical elements. For example, he said many disaster plans end without addressing mass casualties. Other conference speakers, including US House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director R. David Paulison, said many communities remain unprepared to handle evacuees and need to develop partnerships with private industry. Others addressed the necessity of personal preparedness and regional approaches to response and recovery. Patrick McCrory, mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, and a member of President Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, discussed the need for evacuation agreements with communities that may be hundreds of miles away. His city, for example, housed hundreds of victims from Hurricane Katrina. McCrory also addressed the difficulties of gathering information and deploying assistance in the first hours. “Many (people) put unrealistic expectations on government, especially in the first 48 hours,” McCrory told attendees. To read the full article, click here: http://ca.us.biz.yahoo.com/pz/070222/114279.html Source: DHS Texas School Bus Drivers Learn Emergency Procedures School bus drivers in Texas now have the tools they need to identify haz-mat and emergency situations and get their charges out safely thanks to a crash course in emergency procedures. Does your child’s bus driver know what to do? According to an article by Adam J. Holland in the Longview, Texas News-Journal, about 20 area transportation supervisors were trained on the dangers of chemical spills and leaks last week at Eastman Chemical’s Texas operations. Safety experts were on hand to train the representatives on everything from reading and deciphering hazardous material markings on a rail car to what to do if they suspect a chemical spill. Organizers told Holland there were no local spills recently that prompted such a specialized training; rather they thought it was necessary because of the network of area railways and highways on which hazardous materials are regularly transported. Each participant in the training received a bright orange Emergency Response Guidebook, published by the US Department of Transportation. Holland says first responders typically use the 375-page manual when they arrive at a hazardous materials incident. It is intended to help them quickly identify specific hazards of materials involved in an incident so they can better protect themselves and the public. To read the full article, click here: http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/02222007_bus_training.html Source: Disaster Resource Guide The United States Fire Administration (USFA) has received notice of the following firefighter fatalities: Name: Steven Eric Vanderpool Jr. Fire Department: White Oak Volunteer Fire DepartmentAddress: 450 Prestonburg St., West Liberty, KY 41472-1165 Incident Description: Firefighter Vanderpool passed away from injuries received in a motor vehicle accident while he was responding to another motor vehicle accident call. Vanderpool reportedly was ejected from his privately owned vehicle when he failed to yield right of way at an intersection and was struck by another vehicle. Funeral Arrangements: Visitation will be Tuesday February 27, beginning at 6:00 p.m. at Herald & Stewart Funeral Home located at 367 West Main Street in West Liberty, KY. Funeral will be Wednesday February 28, at 2:00 p.m. at the Funeral Home. Memorial Fund Contact and Address: Pending Tribute is being paid to Firefighter Vanderpool at http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/fireservice/fatalities/ The United States Fire Administration (USFA) has received notice of the following firefighter fatality: Name: John Broom-Smith Fire Department: Seaside Heights Fire Department Incident Description: On Sunday February 4, 2007 at 1115 hours, the Seaside Heights Fire Department was dispatched to the Coty Marina located on Highway 37 East for a fire alarm activation. Upon arrival, SSH Firefighters entered the building and conducted an investigation. Firefighters determined this to be a false alarm due to a faulty detector. Firefighters secured the alarm and notified the owner. Firefighters cleared the scene and arrived back at the station at 1127 hours. Firefighter Broom-Smith responded to this alarm and later passed away from an apparent heart attack at approximately 2315 hours the same day. Funeral Arrangements: 02/11/2007 Tribute is being paid to Firefighter John Broom-Smith at |
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