Homeland Security and the New Normalcy

By Jeanne Timmons
Office of Boating Safety
U.S. Coast Guard

For nearly four years, Homeland Security has been a primary focus of
government at all levels, particularly the Federal and State levels.
New departments and agencies have been created, and Congress has
appropriated billions of dollars. A "new normalcy" of activity and
heightened awareness is widely apparent. We've made significant
improvements over the situation as it existed on September 10, 2001.
But there's still a very long way to go and much work to do.
The impact of 9/11 on both the Coast Guard and our State partners has
been enormous. Our workloads have increased exponentially and,
unfortunately, there's no end in sight. But, with continued
cooperation between our agencies, things will continue to improve and
stabilize. I'd like to discuss one initiative of the Coast Guard
that National Association of State Boating Law Administrators has been
instrumental in addressing.

In July 2004, the Coast Guard's Chief of Staff convened a "tiger
team" to identify maritime security risks and outline approaches to
rectify them. The tiger team consisted of several program
representatives from Coast Guard Headquarters. As an initial step, the
team developed and populated a matrix to compare various types of
vessels and facilities with the legal, operational, and information
systems that can control and affect them. The intent of the matrix was
to identify gaps in the system, which result in less than optimal
information availability and exchange within the maritime environment.


The intuitive finding was that the smaller the vessel, the more
difficult our ability to determine who, what and where it was
operating. This lack of knowledge represents an information gap that
could relate to increased risk, based on the threat of a small vessel
attack on national assets similar to the USS COLE incident.

The tiger team's effort provided no remedial action recommendations,
so a follow-up workshop was held in Charleston, SC last December to
review the risk from this information gap on small vessels, and to
identify possible strategies to mitigate the risk. ("Small boats"
were defined as vessels less than 100 gross tons. The recreational
vessel community is by far the largest segment of that population.)
The workshop included representatives from the original tiger team and
other Coast Guard personnel, plus representatives from Customs and
Border Patrol and NASBLA. The contributions of John Fetterman, Chairman
of NASBLA's Homeland Security Committee, and Alvin Taylor were
invaluable to the work of the group.

The results of the December meeting included identification of several
possible initiatives that could help to mitigate the risk identified
with the small boat population. Mitigation strategies were ranked by
impact and ease of implementation, and a recommendation was made as to
whether or not to pursue the strategy. Some of the ones with a
potentially high impact but low chance of implementation were not
recommended for action. Others, the group said should at least be
explored. A couple of these will not be a surprise to those of us in
the recreational boating world.

Among the highest risk categories were the lack of information on small
boats and the degree of information exchange on those vessels. The
obvious mitigation strategy, also rated as having high impact, would be
implementation of the Vessel Identification System. This system would
provide important information on the 13 million State-numbered
recreational and small commercial vessels currently "under the
radar," from a patrol officer's standpoint.
The lack of information on the owners and operators of small vessels
also was ranked high. Implementation of VIS will address the owner
issue. The identification of vessel operators is more problematic. The
proposed mitigation strategy was a Federal requirement for licensing of
all vessel operators, and inclusion of operator licensing information
in VIS. While ranked as high in possible impact, the group acknowledged
it was very low for ease of implementation. However, they did recommend
it be explored.
Another issue identified by the group in Charleston was the importance
of new MOAs/MOUs between the Coast Guard and the States for enforcement
of Federal security zones and homeland security operations. Several
States already have entered into such agreements.

Other issues from the December meeting that could impact some of the
recreational boating community included lowering the threshold for
vessels required to file a Notice of Arrival, and a requirement for all
persons on board a vessel to carry positive identification. Further
vetting of the strategies identified at the Charleston meeting will be
required, and additional workshops are planned to develop more detailed
implementation strategies.

NASBLA is also providing input in drafting a Maritime Transportation
System Security Plan in support of Presidential Directives addressing
homeland security.

"Homeland Security" is not the responsibility of a single entity. It
can only be attained through cooperative efforts. The continued
involvement of NASBLA in many of the Coast Guard's initiatives is
critical, and we trust that we can count on your support as these
issues evolve.

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