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How Proverbs Damage Homeland Security
"Christopher Bellavita discusses twelve proverbs -- accepted truths -- that have characterized the homeland security narrative. He contends that in the haste to establish a homeland security enterprise and create new policies and strategies, many homeland security proverbs may be inaccurate; they 'distort the homeland security narrative in a way that inhibits the search for more effective ideas to protect the nation.' Bellavita sees an opportunity over the next ten years for academics and strategists 'to take another look at the basic assumptions underpinning our homeland security narrative, and identify evidence that supports or refutes the proverbs used to guide strategic direction.'"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2011-09
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Waiting for Homeland Security Theory
From the website description: "Where is the theory supporting the academic discipline of homeland security? Does homeland security need a single unifying theory? Does the lack of a 'grand' theory mean the discipline lacks conceptual precision? How do instructors in this discipline provide rigorous conceptual foundations for what we teach if there is no underlying theory to support academic research in this field? These are the questions posed by Christopher Bellavita in an imagined four-part conversation. The participants explore the meaning of 'theory,' the extent to which homeland security draws on theories from other disciplines, and how having a single theory might (or might not) strengthen the academic discipline. At the heart of this conversation are several important questions that need to be answered: how is 'theory' defined, who develops this theory, and how do the various disciplines involved in this field view the enterprise of homeland security? Finally, is a 'theory' of homeland security really necessary?"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2012-08
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Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?
"The failure of public safety disciplines to prevent the September 11, 2001 attack gave 'homeland security' its chance to emerge as a competing paradigm for organizing the nation's security. But the other disciplines that contribute to the homeland security enterprise have not simply waited for this new discipline to emerge. They responded to the twenty-first century's national security threats by getting better at what they do. They may be eliminating the need for homeland security as a distinct public safety/national security paradigm. At the end of 2010, we were better prepared as a nation to prevent attacks and respond to disasters than we were a decade ago. But that progress may have more to do with the work of homeland security practitioners than with homeland security intellectuals. If homeland security is to become a useful academic and professional discipline, it has to demonstrate how looking at enduring problems through a homeland security framework adds significant value not provided by other disciplines."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2011-02
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Changing Homeland Security: Teaching the Core
"This article describes how the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security selected particular elements within the uncertainty that is homeland security, constructed a teaching narrative around those elements, and used that understanding to fashion our continuously evolving homeland security curriculum and our introduction to Homeland Security course. Homeland security is in a pre-paradigm phase as a professional discipline. There are at least four dozen ways colleges, universities, agencies, and textbook publishers have conceptualized homeland security education. A review of the principal themes presented by those entities identified over fifty topics that come under the rubric of 'Homeland Security.' We do not have sufficient information about all the potential audiences for homeland security courses to say with certainty which subjects should be addressed in this field. However, we do know a lot about what is involved in homeland security. The 'discipline' of homeland security is actively working to identify core ideas with which anyone who wishes to speak intelligently about homeland security has to be conversant."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher; Gordon, Ellen M.
2006
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Changing Homeland Security: Shape Patterns, Not Programs
"What is a homeland security future worth creating? After enough discussion, the homeland security community could probably agree on the broad outlines of a desirable future. Eventually the community could develop a strategy for implementing that vision. But as the years passed, the vision would encounter reality. Homeland security strategy - defined as the pattern of consistent behavior over time - is both intentional and emergent. The homeland security community does a continually improving job identifying and enacting intended strategy. The community is less effective explicitly acknowledging and integrating emergent strategy. We can do better. Getting to a desirable homeland security future will be somewhat like driving at night. We know broadly what our destination could be. But we see only as far as our headlights shine, and we do not know what we will encounter on the road. This essay describes a framework that can help keep the homeland security community in between the white lines on the road to the next ten years. The article recommends a strategic process that incorporates the dynamic realities of complex adaptive systems. It asserts that recognizing and managing systemic patterns - rather than focusing on programs - would benefit homeland security."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2006-10
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Changing Homeland Security: An Opportunity for Competence
"Hurricane Katrina shattered belief that the nation's homeland security system was ready for a major terrorist attack. Public administrators staff that system. Katrina provides an opportunity to review the central normative premise of public administration: competence. This article briefly reviews the changing competence frameworks that have guided public administration since the 1880s. Over the last one hundred years, administrators have been seen as artisans, scientists, social reformers, and managers. The ineptness of the public sector's response to Katrina reminds us - however briefly - that for the last 30 years, government has been seen as the enemy, the problem to be solved - not the partner in finding solutions. The result is a demoralized and dysfunctional public workforce. The American homeland can never be secure until the public workforce recreates the spirit of competent service so glaringly absent in the wake of Katrina."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2005
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Changing Homeland Security: The Issue-Attention Cycle
"The July 7, 2005 attacks on London inescapably direct public attention to our own transportation system. But eventually - as happened after the Madrid bombings in 2004 - public vigilance will wane. This can be seen as an affirmation of the profound trust Americans place in their public safety professionals. It is also the natural dynamic of the Issue Attention cycle, in which certain issues follow a predictable five stage process: pre-problem, alarmed discovery, awareness of the costs of making significant progress, gradual decline of intense public interest, and a post-problem stage. Before the London attacks, Homeland Security was on the cusp of the fifth and last stage. Unless the U.S. is attacked again, we will continue into Stage Five once the waves from the London bombing recede. In the absence of an active national consensus that terrorists are a clear and present threat to the lives of average Americans, the dynamics of the Issue-Attention Cycle are as inevitable as the seasons."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2005
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Changing Homeland Security: Ten Essential Homeland Security Books
"This article presents what I consider to be ten essential homeland security books. The list is personal and provisional. The discipline is too new to have a canon. We need to continuously examine what is signal and what is background noise in homeland security's academic environment. Much has been written about homeland security. A lot more is in the publishing pipeline. My list includes books I find myself returning to as I seek to understand contemporary homeland security events. Beyond personal interest, I believe they form a foundation for a growing understanding of the parameters of what it means to study homeland security as a professional discipline. Other books-and important articles-could be added, but ten is sufficient to start."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2007-02
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Changing Homeland Security: The Year in Review 2007
"As New York City and the nation prepared to remember the sixth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the talk started about September 11th fatigue: 'a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened.' 'I may sound callous, but doesn't grieving have a shelf life?' one person asked. 'We're very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let's wind it down.' That gets my vote for 2007's most startling homeland security story. One gets startled when something happens one was not expecting. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. I spoke with a lot of thoughtful homeland security professionals last year. […] Their responses present a snapshot of Homeland Security 2007 as captured by people who work with and think about these issues all year. Their ideas remind us of the continuing debate about the meaning, scope, and effect of homeland security. Not every important topic or trend is mentioned. What is cited, however, outlines the still emerging terrain of homeland security. Intelligence-arguably the core of preventing another major attack-was a significant issue in 2007. Several national intelligence estimates and related products revealed more information about 'the threat' and about how the intelligence community does its work. Unsurprisingly, the more one knows about this element of the nation's security, the more questions are raised. Can we rely on the accuracy and objectivity of intelligence generated by government? How does intelligence actually help the nation be better prepared?"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2008-01
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Changing Homeland Security: What Should Homeland Security Leaders Be Talking About?
"There is little political will to substantially alter the organizational and programmatic system that characterizes U.S. homeland security. The system we have is the one we have to work with, at least until something significant happens: another attack, a catastrophic natural disaster, a national public health emergency, or a new political administration. If the country is not attacked again, if there are no more national traumas, then incrementalism is a cautious and appropriate way to improve homeland security. The next serious national incident will create an environment that supports, if not demands, substantial change. What should or could those changes be? Responses to this question will emerge from conversations among people who care about homeland security when it is not at the top of the nation's policy agenda -- people like those who read Homeland Security Affairs. This article invites readers to participate in an experiment to answer the question: What should future-thinking homeland security leaders be talking about now, and why? To initiate the conversation, this article offers readers a basic homeland security literacy test and outlines three big-picture perspectives that can frame conversations about the future of homeland security: strict constructionism, middle-of-the-road moderation, and radical reconstructionism."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2006-07
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Changing Homeland Security: Twelve Questions From 2009
"For our third annual Year in Review essay, Christopher Bellavita reviews and categorizes several hundred 2009 homeland security news stories. The stories suggest at least twelve questions that frame some important homeland security puzzles, with 'puzzle' used in the same way Thomas Kuhn used the word to describe what spurs progress in science. These puzzles cover risk, preparedness, immigration, FEMA, intelligence, technology, aviation and cyber security, privacy, torture, Islam, and public health. The topics discussed in the essay are not the only issues from 2009 that create puzzles for homeland security. Others could be added. Identifying core puzzles may assist the continued evolution of homeland security as a professional discipline."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2010-01
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Changing Homeland Security: The Year in Review 2008
"In December 2008, Christopher Bellavita asked members of the Naval Postgraduate School's extended homeland security network to respond to two questions: (1) From your perspective -- and using whatever criteria you'd like -- what would you say was a top homeland security-related issue or story in 2008 and why and (2) What do you consider an emerging homeland security issue? The responses highlighted the 2008 presidential election, the terrorist attack in Mumbai, the economic meltdown, the chaos on the southern border, the continued quest to define homeland security, and an expanding threat spectrum (including the cyber threat -- possibly the year's most underreported homeland security issue). Taken together, the responses from the NPS community of practitioners and academics who work in and think about homeland security everyday tell a story about the field's continuing evolution."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2009-01
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Changing Homeland Security: What is Homeland Security?
This report published in the June 2008 edition of the Homeland Security Affairs Journal, attempts to address the question of what exactly is Homeland Security and what exactly do these words mean? The report mentions that even now there is not exact definition of Homeland Security. Furthermore, the report presents "seven defensible definitions of homeland security. These definitions -- and there may be more than seven -- are "ideal types" (as that phrase was used by Max Weber) and are based on assertions about what homeland security emphasizes or ought to emphasize. In a metaphorical sense, each definition represents a set of interests that claims a niche in the homeland security ecosystem. As in a biological system, these semantic entities struggle for resources to sustain themselves, to grow, and to reproduce their point of view within the rest of the ecosystem. As the homeland security ecosystem continues to evolve and interact with its environment, one can expect variation on particular aspects of the definitions, selection by others of the pieces of the definition that confer the most survival value, and reproduction elsewhere in the ecosystem of particular homeland security definitions." More specifically, the definitions include: Terrorism, All hazards, Terrorism and Catastrophes, Jurisdictional Hazards, Meta Hazards, National Security and Security Über Alles. Finally, the report argues that "the absence of agreement can be seen as grist for the continued evolution of homeland security as a practice and as an idea. Even if people did agree to define homeland security with a single voice, there would still be the matter of behavior. What people, organizations, and jurisdictions do under the homeland security banner is as instructive as how they define the term."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2008-06
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What is Preventing Homeland Security?
"Almost four years have gone by since the United States formally joined the global war on terrorism. Yet something stops us from giving as much attention to preventing terrorism as we give to preparing to respond to the next attack. One reason is a homeland security system that is designed for response rather than prevention. Three fears hamper efforts to reconfigure that system: the fear of new behaviors; the fear of imagination; and the fear of emergence. Despite these barriers, we know more about prevention than most people in Homeland Security are aware of. The Preparedness Guidelines for Homeland Security, issued in 2003 by the DHS, identifies five elements of a cohesive prevention strategy: collaboration, information sharing, threat recognition, risk management, and intervention. These Guidelines provide a good initial framework for effective prevention. We can continuously improve the Guidelines by transforming them from a proprietary to an 'open source' project within the public safety community."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2005
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Changing Homeland Security: A Strategic Logic of Special Event Security
"Most American communities will never host a large-scale event, but the lessons learned from providing security at major events, such as the Olympics, can be scaled to other events. These lessons may also help guide homeland security preparedness, particularly in states, regions, and cities. This article distills the strategic insights of almost twenty-five years of national and international special event after-action reports and experience and offers five strategic principles that can be used as heuristics for future events: (1) start preparing from Day One, (2) understand the life cycle of a special event, (3) anticipate the threat spectrum, (4) write and live the security strategy, and (5) shape the security landscape. The strategic issues and suggestions made here are scalable to special events of practically any size, with applicability to homeland security as well. As one Utah public safety agency director is quoted, homeland security preparedness 'feels like we are preparing for the Olympics all over again, we just don't know when they are coming.'"
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Bellavita, Christopher
2007-09
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