SPP Sponsors Citizen Panel for Department of Homeland Security

The Critical Infrastructure Working Group at the School of Public Policy recently conducted a citizens' panel on critical infrastructure protection, vulnerability and public confidence for the Department of Homeland Security/National Capital Region (NCR). The panel met from November 5 through 7 at GMU’s Arlington campus.

“The purpose of the panel is to help NCR develop a clearer understanding of the role of public confidence in managing critical infrastructure protection in the Washington region,” said Todd LaPorte, a professor in SPP’s International Commerce and Policy program. “We hope an examination of public attitudes toward vulnerability, interdependence and institutional performance will help shed light on that and other questions facing NCR.”

Members of the citizens' panel join in small groups to discuss critical infrastructure protection

The panel included a representative selection of 18 people from across the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. “It was about citizens in debate,” LaPorte explained.

Over the course of two days, the citizen panelists spoke to a series of experts about various aspects of homeland security. The sessions were meant to help them reflect on the state of affairs, current thinking and policy on:

* how people typically respond to disasters and extreme events
* new and traditional threats to critical infrastructures, especially terrorism
* the degree of interdependence among key systems and the scope for disruption
* protective government activities currently underway in government and the private sector and possible alternative approaches
* how people understand and react to risk, including terrorist attacks
* how institutions can maintain or lose public confidence, and how they might regain it

On the third day of the conference, panelists met to discuss what they had heard and learned. With the assistance of the project team, the panelists will produce a short report laying out their views on a number of topics: how vulnerable they feel they are to extreme events, the extent to which they feel prepared to deal with terrorist attacks or other disruptions and what priorities they feel public authorities should have in protecting against disruptions and extreme events.

LaPorte hopes the findings will be used to help ease anxieties people feel toward the government’s ability to provide security and safety. “We want to help government figure out what it needs to do to instill a sense of confidence in the population,” LaPorte says. “We want to answer the question, ‘How can government be trustworthy?’”