Vol. 1, Issue 3, June 2007

What is the impact on your business of new guidelines for transportation security and national infrastructure planning?

What is the impact on your business of new guidelines for transportation security and national infrastructure planning?

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued new guidelines for the nation’s Transportation Systems Sector. The Sector Specific Plan’s (SSP) primary goals are to prevent and deter acts of terrorism using or against the transportation system; enhance the resilience of the transportation system and improve the cost-effective use of resources for transportation security.

There are many security acronyms and government terms in this 157 page report such as SBRM (systems-based risk management), SRO (strategic risk objectives) and NIPP (National Infrastructure Protection Plan) and more.  The private sector, consisting of modal carriers and other transportation stakeholders, will participate via SCC’s (Sector Coordinating Councils) and interface with Government Coordinating Councils (GCC’s). How do you find out about the SCC’s? Their membership is made up of associations, owner-operators and private sector transportation entities organized by mode. If you are engaged directly in transportation or are a third party logistics firm, your industry association is a good way to find out about the SCC’s. If you use transportation services, you should contact your carriers.

What challenges does TSA anticipate in securing transportation systems? How will these multi-modal SCC’s, composed of traditional adversaries, collaborate with each other? How will the SCC’s deploy effective research and development initiatives? How will their success be measured?

For information, check out www.tsa.gov.

The impact of Telework on Energy Conservation, Transportation Congestion and securing your workforce.

The impact of Telework on Energy Conservation, Transportation Congestion and securing your workforce.

In 2000, a year before the tragedy of 9/11 and before gasoline hit $2/gal ($3/gal could never happen!), Cong Tom Davis, from Fairfax, VA authored legislation to require the Federal Government to promote telework. The basis of telework is to conduct and interface with business colleagues from your home or other non-traditional office location. The promise it offers is to save energy by reducing the use of personal automobiles to and from workplaces; reduce transportation congestion which saps productivity and increases pollution; and offer improved business continuity by mitigating the risk of disruption of an enterprise by decentralizing work centers, moving away from a core office.

For the federal government, Davis’ legislation intended for telework to improve homeland security by dissipating vulnerabilities through decentralizing office concentration as well as to keep the federal government running. If a major mass-casualty incident happened in Washington, D.C. – a chemical or biological attack, for example, or a dirty bomb, a natural disaster, an outbreak of a contagious disease, or any other event that threatened to shut down the city and the federal government – federal employees who could work from home instantaneously would become the bulwark of the government.

Moreover, anyone who was in Washington on September 11, 2001, knows the value of measures that significantly reduce traffic on area roads. On that day, local leaders and others called for an evacuation of the city. All over D.C., workers were sent home about 10:00 a.m. Many of them did not make it until early evening because of the crush of traffic, the inability of Metro to handle the surge in passengers, and the general confusion that gripped the city, and the nation, after the attack. If another attack had occurred on Washington that day, tens of thousands of citizens, if not more, could have died while waiting in traffic.

Does your business rely on all workers to come to a central office? How would your business work if your workers could not make it to the central office?

For more information on becoming prepared via telework, see Domestic Preparedness.com, DomPrep Journal, May 2007

 

Is China Complying with New Pandemic Strategies?

Is China Complying with New Pandemic Strategies?
What precautions are you taking to safeguard your business with China? China’s tremendous economic growth has come with increasing risk. Poor quality control on foodstuffs; manufacturing and distribution of counterfeit pharmaceutical products, along with exposure to the Pandemic Flu, have elevated the risk.

China continues to be in the international spotlight when it comes to compliance with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new strategy on international reporting of infectious diseases. The results have not been impressive.

At the WHO’s recent Assembly in Geneva, members passed a resolution, called “Pandemic influenza preparedness: Sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits” which urged WHO members:

“to continue to support, strengthen and improve the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network and its procedures through the timely sharing of viruses or specimens with WHO Collaborating Centers, as a foundation of public health, to ensure critical risk assessment and response, and to aim to ensure and promote transparent, fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the generation of information, diagnostics, medicines, vaccines and other technologies”

On the heels of the Assembly’s action came the announcement by China’s Health Ministry that a 19-year-old soldier hospitalized on May 14 had contracted the H5N1 bird flu. Henk Bekedam, the WHO’s representative in China, said the case was China’s 24th of 25 human infections that occurred without a reported outbreak among poultry.

“That is not a good record. I have to say that is still confirming that in China the animal surveillance system needs to be strengthened because this human case is a very clear reflection that the virus is still circulating,” Bekedam told reporters.

Repeated concerns over delays by Chinese health authorities in providing information on bird flu and other emerging diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, continue to be expressed. The WHO was said to be pressing China’s Health Ministry for more information.

How agile is your business should the need occur to react quickly in the event of a spreading pandemic in China?

(FluRadar.com, May 30, 2007)