from the private sector. the hardware, the software, the people who rain to make sure -- that -- train to make sure -- the government plays an important role but would not be nearly as far along when it comes to homeland if it were not for the leadership that was generated within the private sector. . .

>> the scope of their legal authority and their powers. those areas are what defines what the government can do with respect to the private sector if it is out of those boundaries, it is out of the comforts of an illegally going past supported. that presents a problem. it presents significant problems. when you talk about the private sector interaction, it is ltd. despite the overall broad mission of the department of homeless and security. if you look at the authorizing statute of 2002, the department is encouraged to get involved in different areas. they have transport authority, or patrol, secret service, a new authority in science and technology, all that is significant. there is a lot to do. one of the great anecdotes' i heard from my friend was -- in the early days, you'd be sitting

in a meeting and someone would say," i need to talk about something at this meeting. " at that point everything was being run at 2. -- from at you. the hard part was there were hard parts to deal with and they were equally difficult. in trying to think of this in terms of what is a good analogy in terms of where dhs is hemmed in, the best i can think of as minor action with my three young daughters. i have three daughters under the age of eight and i being be all consuming authority over that have significant areas of responsibility, their health, their welfare, their general well-being. perceived areas of

responsibility cover everything. my actual scope of authority is very limited. there is only relatively few things i can do. i can have my wife tell me what i can or can't do per my enforcement powers are more limited because they don't listen to me. some people would say the private sector is the same way. the higher power is my wife telling me i could do few things. their allowance. don't wait -- don't take away money from the private sector. [laughter] my greatest authority is in the out the money but i don't actually authorize it. [laughter] keeping that in mind, where does dhs play its role? it is most in the area of character and not stick. -- carrot and not stick.

you have programs like the private sector prepared this program,pcii, these are incentive programs to get the private sector to work with the department to modernize its supply chain security and pay more attention and share information. there are relatively to areas where dhs can compel people to work with the federal government. chemical securities relatively new and that is being worked out. that only affects one area of infrastructure. other areas like cyprus security are still being decided where that will wind up. -- other areas like cyber security are still being decided where that will wind up. those types of programs are diffuse and our right protect -- relatively few of them at the end of the day that the department has to brenda's a stick and say you must do this,

a private sector. you must have locking doors and schools. oil pipelines, trucks and transit, there are programs but they're not that many and they are not that big and they are not that sweeping. as was noted earlier, the problem continues to be that at the end of the day despite many of these carrots, security is rarely seen as a value added. investment only comes when it is seen there is a return or a possibility for profit. this may come as a shock to some people in washington right now but the private sector is often motivated by profit. [laughter] kind of hard to believe. some people are offended by it but that is the way things work. if you can make the case that this investment in innovative technology will either help your

bottom line or increase your profits because you have a customer, that is a very good day. that business case for home as security whether as a business model to sell is still being worked out. there is very limited areas of infrastructure, hospitality, sports, and others that see the value added. they have reputations to protect. there is the t get the end of the day when it comes to terrorism. -- there is fatigued at the end of the day when it comes to terrorism. we're talking also about natural disasters, not terrorism. you have the christmas park incident but that was limited. it was more about crates kenner's into the area. -- it was more bad getting scanner's into the area.

when we talk about the big things, it has been in the case of a natural disaster or man- made environmental disaster. it has not been because of terrorism. there have been plenty of attempted acts of terrorism but those seem to shuffle by a day or two later. the man-made disasters or natural disasters continue to linger. what we see from hurricane katrina and deepwater -- fema is doing a good job. they did a better job on katrina then they get credit for. the department of homeless and security is on year seven and are constantly being fine-tuned. you need a white board with causally moving squares to keep track of what the department is doing.

long term, that will generally be the case. there are lessons to be learned from the private sector if the government will listen and be willing to listen and will accept them and be willing to implement those solutions. there are fundamentally different business models in terms of what they can or can't to but there are resources to share. that is important. deepwater raises some serious concerns. that may extend well beyond a man-made environmental disaster. putting aside any discussions about what the liability of bp should be, the important point that is rising out of here is that there is a large discussion going on about how there should be no liability caps when it comes to a disaster3 . the insurance market will respond. companies should be made to pay. putting aside the deep water bp

element of it, that discussion could creep into the terrorism role. an important lesson to be learned is that it should not. when it comes to a terrorist of bent, when there is an anomaly causing that event that would exceed the capabilities of the private sector to prevented or mitigated, there should be a continued incentive to make sure they are doing something to respond. i tell my students in the 9/11 commission report they said that the lack of imagination was the biggest factor. the government did not see it coming. the 1993 world trade center bombing, certain people were held more reliable than others. why should they be more responsible? the simple answer from a legal

perspective is that they have deep pockets. you cannot recover from osama bin laden much less serve him with a complaint. if you find a process server that can find him, i would like to meet that person. the private sector has problems because they have deep pockets and they will always be a lookout. some of them will withdraw from security which is not what we want. we are starting to see some of that. there is a decrease in interest and that is not a good thing. something else that might happen is that what regulatory programs exist that might be more fine-tuned? you might have people who say they don't want to be the one who approved the blowout preventer that failed. we have to inspect and make sure everything is right.

that may creep into the terrorism world, as well. we have to be careful about that to make sure that it happens, it happens in a responsible way. dhs has a responsibility to the private sector. it has to be there and share responsibility and have a minimum of discussions and responsibly administer their carrot programs. they want to give liability programs to the private sector and they have to be responsibly administered the. . there has to be a common goal. there is a partnership here. when there is a significant event we are reminded that the private sector matters. the private sector and government have to cooperatedhtos can only do so

much. at the end of the day, when all these discussions are going on, we have to recognize that when it comes to terrorism, it is different than a natural disaster or a man-made environmental disaster. terrorism is something so you make caused by evil actors that we need to rely on the resources of the private sector to help prevent it and make sure they are there to help response. if we don't, i can assure you there will not be tools we need. >> i will talk about the mindset of how government should see the

parts sector and their role in the garden to prepared as an disaster response. there is a mind-set of the american people and on capitol hill often that congress -- the government can do everything and should do everything. a disaster like hurricane katrina heads and the reality overtakes the theory. it becomes clear there is no way that when you have a large scale disaster and anybody who is doubt in mississippi or louisiana can tell you this is a disaster that is mind-boggling in scope, there is no way for government to be the only ones to respond and take care all the needs that arise in the context. the government's primary role in a car is he prepared as an disaster response with regard to the private sector is to understand the private sector and respect it and make sure that shares information properly with the private sector and receives information in a proper

manner. they should also remove legal hurdles to the private sector to do what it does best. above all, i will start this as an overall theme, the reason the american people can respond in pakistan and can respond in haiti and can respond throughout the world is because we have such a tremendously successful private sector. does not because we have a successful government. does not just the generosity of the american people but it is also the fact that the private sector generates the resources that are necessary to respond to disasters. those are things that government can never store and buy enough of. wendy's them to respond in pakistan or haiti, it has to return to the private sector to get them. we need to foster a strong private sector and make sure private sector does what it does

best which generate goods and services and make sure they can respond flexibly and does not have to overcome legal hurdles in order to provide the basic needs that people want. there are some inherent advantages that the private sector has over government. size, the private sector is much larger than the government. their resources are greater. the private sector resources and the food chain and other places are vast and they dwarf the government's of resources. beyond that, there are some things that come out in my experience that may be obvious but i think they should be taken into the proper account. the private-sector is ubiquitous. the private sector is everywhere. the government is not everywhere and you don't want the government everywhere. you don't want them in every neighborhood.

the private sector is everywhere and has eyes and ears and understands what is happening and has networks and relationships that the government will never be able to replicate unless we end up in the soviet system which i hope we never do. beyond that, the private sector information gathering ability is always going to be superior for that reason. the private sector has flexibility that the government will never have. an organization like the government will never have the decision-making abilities and the ability to harness volunteer resources that the private sector has. my perspective on this comes from specific experience i have had. one of them is being involved with an organization that was working on integrating the private-sector into the world's

largest civilian terrorist response to exercise. it is called top off. it had the largest integration of the private sector. it had two events, one in new jersey and a chemical event in connecticut. the organizations i worked with showcased a number of different features. in addition to having scores of companies involved ranging from wal-mart and home depot and citigroup and american express to fedex and ups, there were also representatives from the national infrastructure coordinating center.

after doing the work, four months after top of three, hurricane katrina made landfall in mississippi. we went into operation perot some of our rope bridge ♪ -- we went into operation through the private sector response in louisiana and mississippi. i was on the ground about five weeks after hurricane katrina it. most of my work was done from my office in virginia. the goal was to make sure that we basically kept people alive. the nature of a disaster response changes over time. in the initial response, we were doing things like making sure that private pilots who had volunteered their time knew where to bring the water they were carted in as much as they could carry to keep people alive. they're flying in medicine and medical supplies and doctors and

we were coordinating that. after that, it was food, water, and blankets. also it was keeping people alive over the long term. we had a need for building supplies and coordinating volunteers to go in and clean out buildings and clean out homes and to help people get back on their feet. it takes a lot of volunteer work to do that. as most people know, the private sector was the champion in that disaster response to it without the private sector, i can say for a fact that many people would not have water for probably seven days. there were carloads and pallets full of water. i was on phone calls every day with three different organizations.

although there were resources available, it is very difficult to get those government resources from the spot where they were to the spot where they needed to go. what was successful as finding a trucker up in washington who said he has put together a group of people in his neighborhood and we have -- and he filled up his truck and where do they bring it. churches were working on the ground as command post on a regular basis to figure out who had needs and make sure those need got mad. et. we were matching the resource to the need. the difference is we had a flexible structure we could make a determination based on a relationship and information gathering we are able to do and make a decision about who it was that needed these resources. we were able to respond in a timely manner.

we ended up setting up helping to support a couple of different networks, one of which was based through several different churches, about six different churches in mississippi and louisiana and ground transportation between the churches which was run by missionaries from latin america. they came back and happens to have very large trucks and trailers they could carry things around in. that is how we move things back into that region and kept the people doing it fed on a regular basis even though i was on those calls with government agencies on a daily basis, there were a few things that were successful and ended up hitting the ground the way it needed to get there. the fema trailers are an example. that was a good medium term solution for many people were displaced. beyond that, the best government agency i worked with was the

multi-agency warehouse in mississippi under the leadership of governor haley barbour. also the management of becky baum who was a hero because her and her organization and the governor had a can-do attitude. they would figure out what needs to get where and they figured it out. they did not run through a large hierarchy of priorities. they made sure that things got where they needed to be. taking away from that, there are a number of things. i was convinced from those experiences that we will never be in a position during a disaster, it was a mind-boggling disaster, it was like several nuclear weapons went off in that area. it did not just hit a single city. it hit an entire region.

it effectively level of the area in terms of its operational capability. the thing that we will never have is the information gathering abilities that the private sector will have and that is key. without government having those abilities, it has to rely on the private sector because otherwise they don't know when there are little pockets of people who need certain things. there is no way to get that information up through the chain. the private sector knows how to respond to this type of things pretty private sector operates in a disaster response very similar with market forces. it base -- it is based on supply and demand. government needs to take that into account. government cannot control that or coordinate that. government needs to understand that. they cannot put in the hurdles in louisiana in particular after hurricane katrina where medical

professionals who volunteered could not get in and care for people were dying. they could not get in because they did not have liability or the licensing issues. by the time louisiana got around to doing that, the critical need had ended. i don't know how all the stories turned out. i know that some medical professionals said the hell with the regulations and they helped anyway. i have forgotten the names. at the end of the day, the government's responsibility is to make sure it understands they remove legal hurdles whatever they may be. in the case of the oil spill, it was getting rid of some of the epa regulations or getting a waiver. there is no reason why we should required 99.9% pure water when anything pure, even

50% pure is better than water that is permeated with oil. government needs to make sense and how to understand -- engage the private sector. we have to have a non-hostile environment for the private sector. trust and relationships are important. if that is not good, there is no way for people to rely on them. there were not a lot of american companies who were offering their services on a volunteer basis to go down there. there were some at first but when things got hot and a criminal liability issues got raised, all the sudden the noise about volunteers died out. that is a tremendous mistake. it is a problem that government can fix by making sure that we recognize that if we want oil or what what w -- or if we want food, we get it from the private

sector and there might be tainted food or there might be oil spill and we will have to recognize that we don't want to go after people and punish them. that is not the primary call when there is a disaster. the primary goal is to take care of the people who have been hurt and figure out what lessons were learned and move forward, not punish people. thank you. >> i am honored to be here today and appreciative of the work that heritage has been doing for many years in the area of homeland security policy and getting a better understanding. it is important for the conversation and i appreciate being part of this today. before i begin, i am reminded even though my youngest is off to nyu graduate school this friday, i am reminded that this is the first week of school for

many school districts. in the context of the note i want to go over witches -- i was put and so we are not part of a "bob newhart show." imam wanted to wake up for daughter for the first day of school and shook her and said you have to go to school where the daughter said she did not want to go to school. the mother said you have to go to school. the daughter asked for two reasons. -- the mother said give me two reasons why you don't want to go back to school. she said the daughter had to go to school. that is the reason why she had to do it. >> the daughter said she needed to give her two good reasons.

the mother said she is 34-years old and you are the principal. the context of all of this is that if we enter into the discussion on all line security from the context of an adversarial relationship, we get nowhere. it is not about the 85% of what is of in the civilian community. i think that we cannot just have this broad brush stroke of what is the private sector. the private sector from my perspective is three legs of the still pretty first one i would define the critical infrastructure. the telecommunications, the power grid, the folks we talked about all the time that made the chemical facilities. that aspect of the critical infrastructure. the second leg of the school would be more of the general

business community. the owners of buildings, the real estate owners, the owners of stadiums or restaurants, the folks that are part of the private sector. they have to be better prepared in the context of a homeland security. the third leg of the still is the community i represent on a day-to-day basis which are the social providers. if general dynamics was to in effect be blown up, they are not sick considered critical infrastructure. the folks that provide the solutions, technology, products, personal services, are not part of the critical infrastructure and yet they provide the products and services and technology that need to be utilized by government and the critical infrastructure. when you say private sector, we have to be like hell eskimos

define snow. we have to be more precise. let me go over some notes and weekend get into what i hope was a good conversation. the nature of the ppre-position that is alluded to is always viewed as tense, physical infrastructure and not pay pre- positioning of strategies and solutions. it is not just products and contracts. if the private sector is not part of that conversation from the get go in advance of what is needed because they come in with experience and capability

and innovation and the kind of things that are being discussed, then in essence, it is not just about the first responders but the whole nature of what you need to plan in a dance and what you need to discuss in advance with the government which does have this overarching responsibility oversight over everything. they have to be the ones that design what will go on. we have to respond with the kind of things we need. there needs to be inherently governmental discussions. there needs to be a recognition of was in charge but it cannot be dealt with on a need to know basis. if the private sector is only brought in on what i will tell you to do, we will lose. there will be waste. there will be gouging. there will be not enough

planning that is necessary. there is a lot of strategy and there is a lot of pre planning in the national security component part. that is a pretty good model in terms of the dov and long term planning. that does not exist to the extent to which it showed. in the homeland security arena. when i talk about conversation or communication, the three c's are important, collaboration, cooperation, and communication. this should exist between the private sector and others. i also think that we put too .uch emphasis on t of itt o

going back 15 years, i always heard about the fact that we can provide the technology but there was never any emphasis on the information, the context. you can put technology anywhere and do almost anything, you can give first responders all the pda's and laptops they need but if there is a suitcase on a bridge on connecticut avenue, is every first responder going to go there? you have to have a sense of the information. if all the port authority in new york had been on the same radio frequency, my theory is that they would have simply been talking to each other as they perish because that would not have had the information they needed to deal with what happens when a missile is loaded with

airline fuel hits a building at this kind of velocity and what kind of information do we need. the chinese first responders a couple of months later who were diedy mudslides and or in the same situation. they did not have the information even though they have the technology. we have to put more emphasis on the fact there has to be this conversation and collaboration. the best phrase has always been that you cannot exchange business cards at the scene. to a certain extent of that is what is going on. the people need to know and need to be coordinated long before the incident whatever it is. i have to assume that everyone wants to be a good actor. the fact is that because there is a profit-making motive and the private sector does not necessarily turn a good actor into a bad actor. it means there are different

motivations. in the private sector, we have to respond to our employees, to our customers, to our shareholders. part of that is not business continuity to keep my own business going but long after the disaster, long after hurricane katrina or the world trade center or the oil spill, is business continuity of the community. that is not the responsibility of the government. that is the responsibility of the private sector in every way, shape, and form. if we have that responsibility to provide community continuity, we have to be part of the pre positioning of strategies before an incident happens. i focus on the strategy aspect. the government cannot be prepared for everything. they are not responsible for

everything. the flip of that coin is that they have to market -- they have to be a cheerleader, and instigator, a motivator to the private sector to understand that it is not always about roi in terms of preparation. we will be launching over the next year a9/10 project. the 10th anniversary of september 10, 2001 is the important context for it we don't know what will happen tomorrow. it could be an oil spill or a bridge fall in minneapolis. it could be a terrorist attack. it could be a hurricane. we don't know. it could be an egg recalled. = .

we have to be better prepared for what tomorrow brings great we have to work together with government in a much better and much more open wide. ay. the whole nature of in sourcing which is the big discussion over the course of the last year-and- a-half cannot be done in an adversarial atmosphere. i also don't view it as a political issue. it is being viewed that way and this administration is talking about in sourcing and the last administration was talking about more outsourcing. we can go back to 1993 to the reinvention of government under the clinton administration where vice president gore lead that effort to in fact 250,000 jobs were jettisoned off the federal government payroll and $40 million for say because there

was a recognition in the private sector that they can do certain things better. this is not a political issue we should not turn it into that. the democratic administration, the last one was the one that talk more about the value of the private sector. if we don't have that, if we don't recognize that, if we don't involve the private sector, there will be redundancies. if we are not allowed to think about long-term strategies and planning down the road, we will not have the stuff ready for you when you needed. community, government, what ever. i am told by my members that the materials needed for hospitals or vaccines are being produced outside the united states. let's say that all of the equipment we need for a hospital today is in all the hospitals but if the generator goes, it will take weeks to get it shipped in from china or

wherever it comes from. that is not good or bad but have we thought about the supply chain and the way we showed it? if, heaven serb-led, the perfect storm happens at all ports are closed, we will not be able to get the stuff in we need because businesses in the united states have not been part of the economic supply chain discussion in a way that -- televisions are made overseas or in mexico -- the stuff that we need for emergency preparedness and response is not necessarily being made whether it is flak jackets or whatever the vaccines are because we are not part of an economic discussion of what we need to plan the future. those aspects need to be looked at. we have to think in terms of the art of the possible. that is what my foundation is and that is the foundation of a

discussion that has to go forward. in every testimony i have ever given, i look at three things. one is the unintended consequences. if we only think about the intended consequences, we will not be pre-positioned very well. the unintended consequences have to be talked about not at the time of the incident but well in advance in response, would r ever theyfp will be, we have to think about other aspects. that is the economic reason ability and the technological feasibility. sometimes we don't ask that question. congress does not always ask that nor does the administration and business is the one that asks ed.

it. if we ask the right questions in advance, i believe we will get to the regulatory issues, the voluntary issue, the rli issues, the continuity issues that we all want to get to. i believe the government -- i believe the government and the private sector are all in for the same thing great we want to be respond and prepare and be responsible for any incident whether it be manmade or terror or nature. that is the nature of what the council is about. i appreciate you calling this forum. >> we have microphones for the question and answer period. state your name and affiliation and wait for the microphone.

please, sir. >> marc, i would like to follow on your last series of comments. we have the establishment of a new headquarters for the department of homeless security at st. elizabeths. is there a way in the planning for this new series of headquarters to enfranchise the private sector and bring them into that campus in some way? >> that is an important question. i have to smile. what we have been trying to do is have a discussion with gsa and the folks putting this together. facilities is something that our members understand. they understand terms of branches and companies. they know how to deal with communication. there is no culture at the

department right now. you are spread all over the place. i may say my colleagues by e- mail or phone or a once in awhile, is meeting but there is no sense of we are in this thing together. hopefully, the existence of the campus will be helpful for the government. right now, the anecdotal story is that when people go to the nebraska avenue complex that are part of the government detail is that they have to park over on the new mexico ave. they cannot even part in the main parking lot. they have to duck their head as they go in. i am being too cute. it is difficult for the private sector contractor to be recognized as a cut-equal in terms of what is going on. i was told yesterday by a female

person rfe by a -- by a fema person that they will not even have enough space for government workers. we wanted to have a discussion exactly what you are doing. g it has beensa -- a it had g beensa who has -- it has been gsa who has been resistant to that discussion, dh nots. it has not been dhs. i am not overly pessimistic but

i am not overly optimistic right now. good question. >> in the front here. >> thank you. i have a question regarding liability. in your example, you use the example of the recent bp incident and terrorist issues. do you think the same concept of liability can be stretched to a cyber incident? can that be classified as an act of crime or terrorism or wore? war?

>> the short answer is yes. the safety act is an example. there is a liability issue dealt with by the department. there are liability issues associated with it. there could be immunity and that was created by congress post- 9/11 because there was a fear that companies would not deploy technologies. there could be a cyber-incident that could shut down the east coast of the united states. there might be a license and they have $100 billion of liability associated with that.

absolutely, a cyber incident. what the safety act did was when congress wrote the law, they rowed a broad definition of terrorism. it concluded any unlawful act that causes harm to persons, property, or interest in the united states that was committed with the intent to cause a. pharma -- to cause harm. what happens is when there is an act of terrorism involving a product or service, it is up to the secretary of home and security to declare that that incident was an act of terrorism. for your particular example, you would have to have a point person who is responsible for making the decision whether this was an act of war or a simple cyber crime like a teenage hacker out of thailand or indonesia or whether it was a deliberate terrorist incident. if it is decided to be an act of

terrorism, then the company is eligible for liability protection. -- if it were an act of war and you work a government contractor selling fire walls to the department of defense, it would not be the same case. you would have to find your cells good lawyers. for the very significant incidents which are terrorism or act of war, there are liability mechanisms in place in order to help assure companies that deployment is not equal financial debt. >> can you talk briefly about media businesses? we talk about wal-mart and tom

-- and home depot. you can see one of the lessons of hurricane katrina that if a business have to shut down for two weeks, a small business, that can wipe them out. they are not likely to come back after that. their calculations says it is not worth it. can you comment on that and what we can do to make sure those businesses are included in the dialogue? >> the one thing you alluded to, when i will gl danickman who was active in agriculture. i am not proposing this but it was helpful, there were farm bureau's. that exists across the country and before any crisis of forming or whether or whatever,

there are people there to help from the federal government to advise the small businesses and small farmers. there has been nothing proposed other than some grants to local areas that would provide that kind of dialogue and conversation in advance of their can be repaired as for the small business to understand what the capabilities are. are they along the mississippi? are they along a p the floodlane? -- are they along the flood plane? those kinds of conversations are the kinds of things i am talking about. the small businesses are in economic linchpin to the community. one area has been hit twice in

five years and i and detroit -- and i am from detroit and i feel hurricane katrina it 25 years ago. small businesses need to feel they are part of the solution. i think that is an excellent observation and part of the discussion that's necessary. >> i would actually agree. i think there are things the government can do like major individuals and communities understand what their responsibilities are and what their options are to prepare for disaster. if some organization store data of sight, they might survive a disaster. that might make all the difference and that is a simple solution. getting that training down to communities -- there has been a movement since hurricane katrina for others to get involved to make sure the communities are prepared. that is a perfect government

role. government should be facilitating that information sharing and make sure it gets a. down incentives are not a bad idea at the state level for those type of preparedness. keeping with my larger thing about how government can screw up disaster response, the greatest hurdle for business to get back on its speed is some of the legal and regulatory hurdles. there is a certain amount of capital investment that is difficult for small business to get beyond where it becomes -- or they can operate with a margin of. that has to do with safety regulations and state organizations have to be cognizant of that. if you make it difficult for businesses to start up in the bases, you will not get the response from the small business community after there has been a

major incident. >> this is not just focusing on the small to medium-sized businesses for responsive also making sure there is that partnership so that these businesses are part of a solution before an event occurs. they have been a bit of solutions. they have things that a larger company might not have thought of. they have the ability to bring that information to the department of olwen security through a liaison or something as simple as offering their trucks or saying that a truck was stolen. one thing we should know is that we talk a lot about the inefficiencies that are within government. sometimes those can serve a particular purpose. i have a blackberry.

it does not work well anymore. come december, hopefully there will be a verizon iphone so i can have a decision that i can decide whether i want to continue with blackberry or i can get and iphone. my contract is up and i can get either an iphone or reply very. when i make that decision, it is done. if dhs were deciding between a blackberry and an iphone, you can expect a letter from the losers lawyer saying they protest. you go off into this rather tortuous three months scenario.

there is a byzantine set procurement system in the department and is -- and it is right to make fun of. small and medium businesses is one way where they can come in thand there may have discussions going on but they did not have access to. let's take an opportunity to look at this and make sure that everything that was supposed to be done was done the correct way. while it is less efficient than a private sector model in terms of signing a model and signing on for two years, that as a situation where the government has to be smart and things are right up front and the right technology is identified. we have to make sure that in addition to boeing and northrop grumman, small and medium businesses have to have a seat at the table so they can identify their solution so everything goes smoothly from their. >> everything that has been the

problem is that government is supposed to come up with a solution or pick out a winner. i am suggesting in the context of the discussion is you need to know what your options are. if your options are that you need a blackberry or a communication pda, there should be interoperable the tape. -- enter operain -- teroperability. interoperability. the context is that the insurance companies have not stepped up and said these are the things you need to do in order to get a better premium rate. on your hazard insurance for

your umbrella insurance in order for your preparation. that would be better as an instigator, as an incentive than the government coming in with regulations up the was it apparewazoo. if that happens, businesses will do it. the insurance companies need to be part of this discussion as well as the solution providers. when we talk about the private sector, we have to be more detailed about a broad brush stroke of the private sector. we have to engage all levels. >> thank you, guys. this has been a good discussion. i hope we can continue the discussion in the lobby. we will end on time. join me in thanking our panelists. [applause]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> on c-span today, "washington journal" is live next with your phone calls. and the heritage foundation hosts a conference on cyber security. and they look back at news coverage on hurricane katrina. and in about 45 minutes, a look at the economy with bloomberg business week writer roben business week writer roben