Oct 1, 2011 12:00 AM, By Bart R. Johnson

How engagement between the federal government and a nationwide network of state and major urban area fusion centers enhances America's homeland security.

Over the past year, the threat environment facing our nation has evolved from one that primarily emanates from outside our borders to one that increasingly comes from within our communities. The country’s homeland-security and public-safety leaders have been reminded — as recently as the May 1, 2010, attempted bombing in New York City’s Times Square — that it is likely that an alert police officer, firefighter or concerned citizen will be the first to see and report suspicious activity.

This new threat environment means that traditional intelligence community efforts and travel analyses may not be enough to identify domestically inspired terrorists, their planning and their attacks. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important for the federal government to partner with state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) law-enforcement and homeland-security officials to detect and prevent terrorist and criminal activity.

State and major urban area fusion centers play a critical role in this partnership, as they are focal points within the SLTT environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering and sharing of threat-related information. Fusion centers have the unique capability to gather and receive information shared by the federal government and various stakeholders within their areas of responsibility. Further, fusion centers also have access to suspicious activity reporting (SAR) information identified within their communities.

Such centers also serve as partners to entities at all levels of government, including the Joint Terrorism Task Forces led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Working with these partners, fusion centers blend national intelligence with local, regional, and state information as appropriate, in order to provide state and local context to enhance the national threat picture. This additional context provided by fusion centers assists homeland-security partners at all levels of government in identifying and addressing emerging threats.

The National Strategy for Information-Sharing, produced in October 2007 by the National Security Council, called for the development of baseline operational standards to help define fusion center capability requirements. Subsequently, the federal government, in collaboration with its SLTT partners, published Baseline Capabilities for State and Major Urban Area Fusion Centers in 2008 to establish these baseline operational standards. 

During the 2010 National Fusion Center Conference, federal government and fusion center leaders distilled these baseline capabilities into four critical operational capabilities (COCs). The maturation of these COCs is essential to building an integrated national network of fusion centers.

Given the evolving threat environment, DHS has renewed its commitment to support its SLTT partners. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called the national network “the centerpiece of state, local, [and] federal intelligence sharing for the future.” To ensure that information-sharing occurs at all levels of government, the DHS and its federal partners are coordinating to provide the essential resources needed to support fusion centers nationwide.

What is a fusion center? from CIR on Vimeo.

The importance of fusion centers is two-fold: they develop and disseminate products that assess the local implications of national-level information; they also share critical state and local intelligence and information with the federal government and each other.

Fusion centers facilitate the sharing of homeland-security and law-enforcement information; collaborate to create a common understanding of this information; bridge the information-flow gap between individual fusion centers, as well as between such centers and the federal government; and produce actionable intelligence. Throughout this process, fusion centers adhere to practices that ensure the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of Americans. Protection of those rights and information is critical to fusion centers’ ability to retain public trust and confidence. 

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2012 Penton Media, Inc.