AchievementsIn 2006, BENS-supported initiatives improved defense policy and strengthened America's homeland security. BENS members and our government partners recognize that protecting America is everybody's business. Our efforts progressed on multiple fronts during 2006:
BENS Business Force Strengthens and Expands the Nation’s Leading Model for Regional Public-Private Collaboration 2006 gave the country a welcome respite from major catastrophe, enabling the BENS Business Force to apply lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and continue building regional partnerships that improve preparedness for all security threats, whether a flu pandemic, terrorist attack or natural disaster. More than ever, business and government recognize the need to work together - and exercise – in advance to make their communities more resilient in the face of disaster. BENS strengthened Business Force operations in Georgia, MidAmerica, New Jersey and the San Francisco Bay Area by recognizing the uniqueness of each region while knitting together best practices across all regions. BENS also expanded the Business Force model by helping two new regions build their own public-private partnerships, expanding the Los Angeles/Orange County Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) in January 2006 and facilitating the launch of the Safeguard Iowa Partnership (SIP) in January 2007. Business Force initiatives maintained focus in four key areas:
BENS responded to growing requests for assistance from multiple states and urban areas by creating a new partnership development model, honed in Iowa and Los Angeles last year, where BENS acts as facilitator to help state/local business organizations and government leaders build their own self-sustaining regional partnerships. BENS will connect these partnerships on an ongoing basis by helping them create and share best practices across the country and by serving as liaison to federal government and other national initiatives.
Getting Down to Business: An Action plan for Public-Private Disaster Response Coordination In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the senior leadership of both the United States Senate and U.S. House of Representatives invited BENS to offer advice on the role business might play in response to national disasters. Building on our years of experience with public-private cooperation in homeland security, in June 2006 BENS formed a Task Force to recommend to the U.S. Government steps to systematically integrate the capabilities of the private sector - principally those of the business community - into a comprehensive national disaster response mechanism. In preparing this report, the Task Force assiduously mined the wealth of experience of its members and other executives - completing nearly 100 interviews - in developing its findings. This report’s recommendations fall into three substantive categories: public-private collaboration; surge capacity/supply chain management; and legal & regulatory environment. In addition, the report specifies priorities and sequencing for implementing its recommendations. During the late summer and fall of 2006, the report, in draft form, was circulated widely and briefed to federal and congressional agencies and staff, the White House, senior leaders at the National Governors Association and the Association of State Attorneys General, the US Northern Command, professional associations and to corporate leaders around the country. This report’s recommendations constitute the framework of an action plan to implement a new approach to public-private collaboration. Its key proposition is that Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs), which already exist on all levels of government to plan for, train and implement emergency responses to disaster, must include a seat for the private sector. The private sector, in turn, must maintain parallel Business Operation Centers (BOCs) that can plug-in to government operations and “scale up” with them in a parallel and coordinated manner as government adapts to deal with disasters from small to large. If this structural reform is adopted, it will greatly facilitate all of the other reforms recommended in our report.
Strengthening Ways to Keep WMD Away From Terrorists The numbers are astonishing: thousands of nuclear warheads deactivated and secured, and hundreds of missiles, bombers, and submarines destroyed - all at an annual cost of just one-tenth of one percent of the defense budget. That is the legacy of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which works to remove the threat posed by the vast Cold War arsenals of the Soviet Union. Yet much more remains to be done, from continuing to secure nuclear weapons to destroying millions of deadly chemical arms. That mission makes CTR a vital first line of defense against terrorists obtaining and using these deadliest of weapons. In 2006, BENS continued its long-standing support of this critical program. BENS President Chuck Boyd and Chairman Stanley Weiss, in September, urged the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to back the extension of a waiver on red-tape restrictions impeding vital work to destroy chemcial weapons. They also calling for the repeal of such burdensome restrictions on a wide range of projects. In December, Sen. Richard Lugar, a founder of the CTR program, praised BENS for 15 years of "constant encouragement, inspiration and excellent new ideas."
As America's national security challenges evolve, so do BENS' policy priorities. But one priority that has remained into BENS' third decade is to reform Pentagon spending practices using the best business practices of the private sector. BENS continued to do that with new urgency in 2006. Despite more than two decades of attempted reforms, the Defense Department’s cumbersome acquisition system still takes too long and spends too many tax dollars to develop and deploy new equipment and technologies. Many in the military, the defense industry and Congress have lost confidence in the ability of the defense acquisition system to provide U.S. forces with the equipment they need when they need it. BENS consistently championed a fundamental reform of Congress' legislative and oversight approach of the defense acquisition system, giving due consideration to the costs of complying with regulations and focusing on the need to develop and deploy new systems rapidly. Borrowing a page from successful businesses, BENS continued to press the Pentagon to transform its relationships with defense contractors with partnering agreements that stimulate innovative thinking, the free flow of information and cost consciousness. The Pentagon must also streamline the procurement process, making it harder to start a program, but once started, ensuring that there is money to finish the job.
BENS members spent 2006 in constant dialogue with military and civilian officials and their business partners on a range of issues designed to improve the overall quality of America's armed forces: In July, the Association of Defense Communities and BENS co-sponsored a forum on “Enhancing America’s Defense installations through Private Investment.” The dialogue focused on how partnerships between DoD and the real estate development community could be used to enhance America’s defense installations during this time of unprecedented change in the composition and stateside basing of the military. BENS members also continued providing their expertise to Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), the military's transformational laboratory. Members participated in JFCOM exercises designed to prepare our military for the challenges they will face in the years 2015 and beyond. |