manner themselves. It’s the age old inter- operability call but write large and in terms of genuine capability, rather than interoperability for its own sake.
Cynically, have we not seen these efforts before? Well it’s certainly true that many departments and agencies in the US have made various efforts to create and apply standards. In many cases they even talked to each other when they created them and there has been some really good work. This provides a strategy though—created by the cabinet-level National Science and Technology Council, which is the principal means within the executive branch for coordinating interagency science and technology policies— and therefore represents the federal consensus regarding the development of standards for CBRNE equipment used by federal, state, local, and tribal responders for CBRNE detection, protection, and decontamination.
So it formalises what’s been a slightly personality-led process? Absolutely. It’s no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s a must do or there will be a very upset chap in the White House asking difficult questions.
Isn’t any policy or strategy going to suffer from being out of touch with the technical reality, especially for CBRNE where the target has a tendency to move erratically? Well it would do if this process hadn’t evolved from a technical and scientific start point. The authors of the program are not just geeks and paper-pushers, but some of the longest running and most dedicated names in CBRNE. They have built this to be achievable to, and supportive of, the end user. The terminology of the strategy doesn’t necessarily convey that as well as it could: the very style and tone of Presidential directives and National strategies has a tendency to evoke lofty eyries distanced from the street. But the team includes such people as Bill Billlotte and the Office of Law Enforcement standards at NIST who have been out pounding the doors of first responders trying to understand their needs.
Yeah, but you can’t compare military and civil standards! You don’t always have to. This strategy, excitingly, doesn’t just go limp and faint at the sight of the difficult challenges of
interagency requirements. Instead, it starts from the perspective of saying that we all know that there is a lot of cross over, despite the differences, and to make the most of it. Standards do not, per se, mean painting oneself in to a corner with prescriptive definitions that defeat interoperability. See also the article from the DoD about how they are really trying to reach out and find those common points with the civilian agencies, but without forcing their own standards on them.
I take it the goals are technical challenges themselves? No, not really. Unlike many failed initiatives around the world, the language is carefully chosen to promote interplay not parochial battles over empires. The objectives are:
– Establish an interagency group for CBRNE standards to promote the coordination of such standards among federal, state, local, and tribal communities.
– Coordinate and facilitate the development and adoption of CBRNE equipment performance standards.
– Coordinate and facilitate the development and adoption of CBRNE equipment interoperability standards.
– Promote enduring CBRNE standard operating procedures.
– Establish voluntary CBRNE training and certification standards and promote policies that foster their adoption. Establish a comprehensive CBRNE equipment testing and evaluation (T&E) infrastructure and capability to support conformity assessment standards.
The language is nurturing: it is about facilitation, co-ordination and promotion; it is not about ordering, demanding, and enforcing. The first of these goals was achieved on April, 15th 2011, with the establishment of the Subcommittee on CBRNE Standards under the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Homeland and National Security. The Subcommittee has already begun to create a plan for achieving the Strategy’s remaining goals.
So where does one find out more about this strategy?
Read the National Strategy for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Standards by downloading it from
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div682/upload/C HNS-CBRNE-Standards_8-11.pdf
And it has a big, fat investment? Well that’s a bit harder to say. The strategy explains the need for CBRNE standards. In addition to specifying high- level goals, this strategy identifies lead activities to accomplish these goals, and provides the foundation to bridge current gaps. As such, it establishes a structure to facilitate the coordination of CBRNE investments and activities among agency leaders, program managers, the research and testing community, and the private sector. This isn’t really a case of pouring money in to solve a problem; it is a case of looking at how to work smarter with the money in the system.
Will everyone be represented on the subcommittee?
‘Everyone’ is a bit of a tricky term. The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Homeland & National Security chartered the Subcommittee on Standards (SOS) to serve as an interagency forum to gather CBRNE federal stakeholders. The interagency group is co-chaired by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Participants include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, and Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
So when will the results be published? Or will this be lots more talk and meetings with no output?
The results are already rolling in. As can be seen in the articles in this issue, both civil and military work is rolling out of the door with almost unprecedented liaison and consultation between agencies and stakeholders, including the dreaded industry. The support of consensus standards bodies such as ASTM has also lead to great progress being made on an ASTM standard on handheld chemical detectors, which is due out soon around the publishing of this issue. There is a whole lot more to follow through and CBRNe World will, of course, keep you abreast of it.
www.cbrneworld.com CBRNe South America 2012, 13-14 March, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. More information on
www.icbrnevents.com
February 2012 CBRNe WORLD
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