Catalyst Partners

Author Archive: David Olive

Doing Business with DHS: An Open Letter to Nick Nayak

A continuing (and welcomed) theme of some DHS presentations has been the importance of maintaining a dialogue with all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stakeholders, including the private sector. While the messages have been well received in the audiences...

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Congress Must “Shape Up,” 9/11 Commission member says

Yesterday the 9/11 Commission members got together and talked about their views on what has been learned, and what has been done, since their report was issued several years back. One pointed resonated: Congress needs to reform the way...

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Emergency Response and Network Congestion – A Matter of Bandwidth

As the East Coast is cleaning up from the effects of Hurricane Irene, pundits have not been shy in expressing opinions about the use (mostly about the benefits) of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to get information...

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Post VA, DC Earthquake, After Action Report Required

One of the best descriptions of what it is like to work in Washington, DC, can be summed up with the old canard, “After all is said and done, there will be a lot more said than done.” I...

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Doing Homeland Security at the Speed of Bureaucracy

It is all but impossible for DHS to fulfill its mission of protecting the homeland when the bureaucratic processes they must work with fail to recognize that sometimes a partial solution is better than a delayed solution. Last week...

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Droning On and On

John Villasenor at Brookings released “Cyber-Physical Attacks and Drone Strikes: The Next Homeland Security Threat,” that is well-worth the time to digest. While the thrust of the paper was to highlight the potential ability of U.S. adversaries to use...

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Can a Predator Be Used to Deliver Pizza?

It is a legitimate question to ask what we are getting for our money. An even better question, and one that is not so frequently asked, is “Could we have gotten something better for the money we spent?” CBP...

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“Purposeful Redundancy” of Overlapping DHS Oversight Should be Fixed Before 9-11

Within the past few weeks, testimony from former Congressman Lee Hamilton and an Associated Press story both highlighted the cost — in time and money, if not security — of overlapping jurisdiction of congressional oversight of the Department of...

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The “One Size Fits All” Rhetoric from DHS Does Not Fit the Facts

I have a suggestion for those hard-working, well-meaning and too-often overwhelmed folks in the DHS Public Affairs shop. Get rid of the “one size fits all” term (“OSFA”) when referring to homeland security programs that Secretary Napolitano wants to...

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New Customs and Border Aircraft Rolled Out This Week

On Wednesday, the Office of Air and Marine at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) held an open house in a government hangar at Reagan National Airport to show off its latest aircraft – the Multi-Role Enforcement Aircraft (MREA). It...

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