Course Welcome

The purpose of this course is to introduce the skills and tools to effectively achieve results for critical infrastructure protection and resilience through partnership and collaboration. The course is designed for critical infrastructure owners and operators from both the government and private sector as well as those with critical infrastructure duties and responsibilities at the State, local, tribal, and territorial levels.

The course provides an overview of the elements of and processes to develop and sustain successful critical infrastructure protection partnerships.

Course Objectives
At the end of this course, you should be able to:
  • Explain the value of partnerships to infrastructure protection and resilience.
  • Identify strategies to build successful critical infrastructure partnerships.
  • Describe methods to work effectively in a critical infrastructure partnership.
  • Identify processes and techniques used to sustain critical infrastructure partnerships.
  • Identify strategies and methods for achieving results through critical infrastructure partnerships.
The course is divided into five lessons.
Lesson Overview

This lesson presents an overview of critical infrastructure roles and responsibilities and the importance of partnerships to critical infrastructure protection and resilience for the whole community.

Upon completing this lesson, you should be able to:

  • Explain the importance of partnerships, such as partnerships between critical infrastructure and emergency management partners, to the protection of critical infrastructure.
  • Describe the benefits of working collaboratively in a partnership.
Why We Need Partnerships

“National preparedness is the shared responsibility of our whole community. Every member contributes, including individuals, communities, the private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations, and Federal, State, and local governments.”

Department of Homeland Security
National Preparedness Goal (September 2011)

Partnerships in Critical Infrastructure Protection

The overarching goal of the critical infrastructure mission is to protect the homeland from terrorism and other hazards so that American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive.

Critical infrastructure protection is important to the whole community. Protecting and ensuring the resilience of critical infrastructure requires a multi-tiered approach involving partnerships and horizontal and vertical collaboration across all levels of society.

In this lesson we will look at:

  • The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP).
  • The benefits of partnership or the “value proposition.”
  • What partners can bring to the table.
National Infrastructure Protection Plan

The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) provides the unifying structure and establishes an overall framework for the integration of existing and future critical infrastructure protection and resilience efforts into a single national program.

One of the objectives of the NIPP is building partnerships to share information and implement critical infrastructure protection and resilience programs.

Select this link to review the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/National-Infrastructure-Protection-Plan-2013-508.pdf).

The Sector Partnership Model

The NIPP recognizes existing infrastructure protection partnerships and formalizes and strengthens a structured approach for how government and private sector organizations and individuals will work together.

The NIPP describes a partnership model that provides a means for partners to coordinate the Nation’s critical infrastructure mission within and across defined critical infrastructure sectors.

The sectors and the sector partnership model will be described in Lesson 5: Additional Resources and Summary.

Defining Critical Infrastructure Partners

Critical infrastructure partners share responsibility for protecting and promoting the resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. These partners include:

  • Federal, State, tribal, territorial, regional, and local government entities.
  • Private-sector owners and operators and representative organizations.
  • Academic and professional entities.
  • Certain not-for-profit and private volunteer organizations.
The Value of Working Collaboratively in a Partnership

The benefits gained from building critical infrastructure protection partnerships include:

  • A common understanding of hazards, threats, and vulnerabilities.
  • Awareness of interdependencies in a community or region.
  • Risk addressed through shared responsibility.
  • Shared effective practices.
  • Opportunities to share and leverage resources.
  • Collaborative development of protection core capabilities as outlined in the National Preparedness Goal.
  • Improved operational efficiency and resilience.
  • Increased access to information and networks.
  • Broader access to planning resources, training, and exercises.
Addressing Risk Through Shared Responsibility

Risk is the potential for an unwanted outcome resulting from an incident, event, or occurrence, as determined by its likelihood and the associated consequences.

Effective partnerships enable members to assess and manage risk more efficiently and effectively. Partnerships also provide mechanisms, forums, or information that can be used to help identify interdependencies and shared responsibilities within the community or region.

Critical infrastructure partners work on shared risk reduction strategies through activities such as collaborative planning, conducting joint risk assessments, sharing information regarding threats, identifying effective practices, and participating in training and exercise opportunities.

Creating a Resilient Region Through Partnership

The loss or disruption of service in one or more critical infrastructure assets can cause problems not only in the affected community and region, but in neighboring regions as well. Building resilience helps to mitigate risk, enhance recovery capabilities, and ensure continuity of essential services and functions.

Stakeholders can improve resilience in a region by participating in partnerships and:

  • Collaborating to promote the resilience of regionally significant critical infrastructure.
  • Integrating critical infrastructure owners and operators into regional emergency response and recovery planning and operations.
  • Assessing critical infrastructure risks and identifying interdependencies.
  • Sharing information and intelligence through an existing or newly established information-sharing network.
  • Participating in education and training opportunities.
What the Private Sector Brings to Partnerships

As owners and operators of the vast majority of the Nation's critical infrastructure, the private sector plays a vital role in its protection and resilience. Private-sector partners provide:

  • Knowledge of critical assets, systems, networks, interdependencies, facilities, and other capabilities.
  • The ability to innovate and provide products, services, and technologies to quickly focus on mission needs.
  • Knowledge of critical assets, systems, networks, interdependencies, facilities, and other capabilities.
What Academia Brings to Partnerships
The academic and research center communities can play an important role. They provide:
  • The ability to establish Centers of Excellence (university-based partnerships or federally funded research and development centers) to provide analysis of critical infrastructure protection issues.
  • Support with the research, development, testing, evaluation, and deployment of critical infrastructure protection technologies.
  • The ability to establish undergraduate and graduate curricula and degree programs.
Homeland Security Centers of Excellence

Centers of Excellence work closely with academia, industry, DHS components, and first responders to analyze and develop customer-driven research solutions to homeland security challenges and to provide essential training for homeland security and emergency management personnel.

For example, research conducted by the National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER) at Johns Hopkins University includes:

  • How Internet-based surveillance systems could help emergency departments predict and plan for patient surge.
  • How police, fire, and emergency medical services personnel react when a catastrophe affects them personally.

In addition, PACER has published an Emergency Preparedness Toolkit for primary care providers.

Select this link for examples and descriptions of Centers of Excellence.

What Governments Bring to Partnerships

Engagement from all levels of government is vital to effective critical infrastructure protection. Each level brings its own assets and resources to meet protection needs. Government provides:

  • Owners and operators with threat analyses and information.
  • Industry engagement early in the development of policies and initiatives.
  • Assistance articulating to corporate leaders both the business and national security benefits of investing in security measures.
  • Encouragement and recognition of companies that voluntarily adopt security practices.
  • A forum for industry collaboration to develop and clearly prioritize the protection and/or restoration of critical infrastructure.
  • Resources for studies, training, meetings, and support of business continuity planning.
Benefits for the Private Sector
Benefits for the private sector in working with government include:
  • Guidance and assistance in conducting risk assessments and identifying interdependencies.
  • Mutual development of a common language, approaches, and understanding regarding risk assessments and analyses.
  • Timely and accurate information about threats.
  • Early private-sector involvement in new policy development and initiatives.
  • Support for research and development activities to enhance critical infrastructure protection activities.
  • Resources for exercises, symposiums, and training sessions.
  • Support for business continuity planning.
  • Reduced roadblocks with credentialing following a disaster.
  • Involvement in the development of Business Emergency Operations Centers.
Example of Benefits for the Private Sector
The Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER) Partnership Center for Disaster Resilience conducted a survey of its membership on the benefits of the partnership. Benefits identified by members through the survey include:
  • The ability to network and meet people in other sectors upon whom their businesses depend for success.
  • The opportunity to provide input into government planning and share private-sector needs.
  • The ability to provide input on recovery planning, particularly the desire of the private sector to know restoration priorities.
Benefits for Academia
The potential benefits of partnerships for academia include:
  • Access to resources for critical infrastructure-related research and development activities.
  • Involvement in policy development and initiatives.
  • Participation in exercises, symposiums, and training sessions.
  • The opportunity to participate in groundbreaking research.
Benefits for Government and Communities
Potential benefits of partnerships for governments and communities include:
  • Alignment of critical infrastructure protection efforts to a region’s common hazard or threat environment.
  • Access to a broader operating picture of critical infrastructure assets and their interdependencies.
  • Identification of effective practices that can be adopted within a region or jurisdiction.
  • Development of common protocols to govern interactions between owners and operators of critical infrastructure and State, local, tribal, and territorial governments.
  • Identification of points of contact within private-sector companies that can provide goods and services upon declaration of a natural disaster or terrorist threat.
Lesson Summary
In this lesson, you learned about:
  • The importance of partnerships in critical infrastructure protection.
  • The benefits of working collaboratively in a partnership.
In the next lesson, you will learn how to build a successful partnership.