Interview: David L. Miller
Administrator, Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Division
David L. Miller began his emergency management career in the trenches, as
a dispatcher with the Iowa Department of Public Safety in 1974. He then
oversaw 911 systems in Oregon and Missouri before returning home in 1989
to join the agency he now heads. He worked as Iowa’s Enhanced 911
coordinator, as the state’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Division (HLSEM) chief of staff, and has served as an alternate
coordinating officer or the alternate governor's representative in 16
presidentially declared disasters, including the Great Flood of 1993. He
was appointed HLSEM administrator by Governor Tom Vilsack in
September 2004. A Navy veteran, Miller chairs the Governor's
Communications Interoperability Task Force and the Iowa First Responder
Advisory Committee. (His remarks have been edited to accommodate space
limitations. Read the full interview online.)
Can you give readers a sense of what your job consists of—what your
primary responsibilities are on a typical day or in a week?
Well actually there really isn’t a typical day or week. We’re involved in so
many things with so many other agencies. I guess if I were to answer I’d say
lots of coordination and policy discussion. In one week, we begin by
discussing agricultural-related disasters and diseases, to pandemic flu, to
floods and ice storms, to a chemical plant explosion. So in that regard, things
change daily. But there are routines that we face. We do a lot of grants
administration in our agency, we have a tremendous number of grants we get
from the federal government, we have some responsibilities in my agency
for e-911 communications systems, and we have some responsibilities for
nuclear power plant planning. There are some routines we face, but every
week is a challenge.
Can you tell me how your personal background has helped in the
position?
Well, I kind of grew up with the position. My background—after I got out of
the military—I worked as a public safety dispatcher for the state of Iowa.
Later I got into data communications, ran enhanced 911 systems in a couple
of states, and then became the state 911 manager here in Iowa. And when I
became the manager of that program, it happened to be under the emergency
management division of the state. It gave me an opportunity to really grow
up with the system, and I got involved in the management of disasters going
out at joint field offices, managing the programs, following them through,
meeting the mission assignments, and trying to satisfy them during
operations in support of local governments. And I kind of grew up with the
system.
The good news is in today’s environment there is actually formal
education available for homeland security and emergency management, and
that’s growing and expanding every day. So new people coming up, they
have a chance to take it as a college course, whether it’s an associate’s
degree, a bachelor’s degree, or even a master’s or doctorate degree in
homeland security and emergency management. And that’s a good thing.
We really are becoming more professionalized and more of a discipline.
What would you say is the number one priority for homeland security
in Iowa?
Right now I would say our number one priority—and this is really broad—
but it really is preparedness. And by that I mean preparedness for any
disaster, whether it’s caused by humans or nature. There’s so much that goes
into it. When we talk about preparedness, we talk about all the planning
activity, the training and educational activities, the testing and exercising of
plans and procedures, and evaluating that information, then you go back to
the planning cycle again. It means having the right equipment, the right level
of training, the right people involved at all levels—whether its private
industry, all levels of government, volunteers, citizens themselves.
Preparedness is our number one priority, but, believe me, it is very, very
broad.
What is the biggest challenge you face since you took the job?
I think the biggest challenge is remaining flexible. We are—and I tell my
staff this every day—we really are a coordinating, facilitating agency. We’re
not the subject matter experts in so many areas, and yet we have to deal with
those people every day. And our job is to do the coordination; make sure the
pieces fit together and that we have an effective plan and framework for
working through an emergency and a disaster. And that means remaining
flexible. Ideas change, policies change, you learn lessons from your
evaluation and your exercises, you gather new information. Every time
there’s a disaster we learn something new. So remaining flexible I think is
the probably the biggest challenge we have.
What are the top issues you focus on?
Right now, from a homeland security perspective, probably one of the top
issues we’re facing is infrastructure protection. It really is the key as we look
at it, and it’s not just a homeland security piece, it also an emergency
management piece.
So that is one of those top issues that we face, and how do we do that?
Depending on whose numbers you use, 65 to 85 percent of the critical
infrastructure is owned by private enterprise. How do we engage them? How
do we form a partnership that provides for the security of that infrastructure?
How do we determine what’s critical? Do we understand the
interdependencies from the various sectors and pieces of that infrastructure,
and how do we work those issues?
Another priority is communications interoperability. It’s recognized as
an issue nationally; it’s recognized as an issue in our state. And it seems
really simple: it’s how do you communicate with each other, and who needs
to communicate at what periods of time. We’ve begun to take a proactive
approach in Iowa in trying to put together a plan that allows us to plan not
only for voice communication, but also how we use data communications
and video communications during times of emergency and disaster.
What has surprised you most since you started the job?
Actually, I get a little surprised every day. I think the thing that surprises me
is how intricate we are, and how involved we are with communities. The
complexities of the job are probably the biggest surprise. You learn new
things every day because you tackle new problems every day.
What are your biggest goals for the agency in the coming year?
With regard to infrastructure protection, it is establishing a program that says
how we identify critical infrastructure; what measures we put in place to
protect them; how we assess vulnerabilities to that infrastructure. That’s a
huge priority for us.
With regard to communications interoperability, it’s how we tackle
that as a state. We want to do it with a broader brush than looking at voice
communications only. Again, we’re going to look at data and video and have
a plan into the future, and it’s going to require a substantial investment, so
how do we partner with that?
Intel: intelligence fusion, gathering of information and providing
analysis, getting a situational awareness and a threat picture for the state.
That includes all sectors, whether it’s transportation, public health,
commerce—which includes banking and financing—and energy.
If you look at the infrastructure protection program, it outlines about
17 sectors. How to look at that information, gather information, fuse it into a
viable product so we get a threat picture for the state, and have the ability to
share that information with sector partners, including private enterprise and
business, so they can take effective action; that’s going to be a big challenge
for us, and it’s one of the major goals for the next year.
What kind of cooperation do you get from the federal government?
Actually quite a bit. We have a good relationship with our FEMA region;
they’re based out of Kansas City. We have an ongoing dialogue, almost
daily, with the Department of Homeland Security. And at times it can be
contentious, but the point is, it is an ongoing dialogue, and there’s a lot of
discussion there—a lot of important issues being discussed. We have a
pretty good relationship with the feds. We challenge them a little bit, they
challenge us, and some days it’s very frustrating, but overall, I’d say the
relationship is pretty good.
Would you like to see changes in that relationship?
I understand that part of the federal government’s charge is to develop
policy and to develop guidance. My wish is that they would take more of a
collaborative approach in how they do those things, and they are getting
better.
The other thing really is timing issues. There’s a push to do
everything so quickly. And I understand the importance and the priority of
that. At times, though, I wish we’d work a little harder to get it right and a
little less on the very close and strict timelines for doing it. When we do that
we make more mistakes, and when we do that, it causes us more work. So if
we could just take a little more time to get it right on the front end, I think it
would serve us all better.
What funding does the federal government give you? What are the
department’s other sources? Are they sufficient?
Each state is a little bit different. In Iowa, of course, we get Homeland
Security Grant funding out of the Department of Homeland Security.
There’s the State Homeland Security Grant piece. Eighty percent of that
funding is what we pass on to local governments, initially for equipment for
first responders, also for planning, training, and exercise activity, and then
some of that is kept by the state.
The other kind of funding we get—actually a variety here—we get
funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation for hazardous materials
planning. In our state we get funding through the nuclear power plant
program. The plant operators do on-site preparedness for nuclear power
plant emergencies and disasters, but states and locals are involved in off-site
preparedness, so we get money for that.
We get some money from the state’s 911 fund because we administer
the 911 communications program in the state. We get emergency
management performance grant money from FEMA, which helps us
administer planning, training, and exercise programs in the state. We pass a
little over 50 percent of that down to local governments.
Most of our funding is nonstate funding. We get a little bit out of the
state general fund. We use that for a number of our activities, and the bulk of
it is used to meet the match requirements on the federal funds we receive.
Can you talk about how some funds have been used, and what else you
would do if you had additional financial resources?
A couple years ago, the Department of Homeland Security made us do an
assessment, a needs assessment. We worked with agencies given the
guidance and parameters Homeland Security gave us, and talked to those
people about what they needed. In terms of dollars and cents, the need in
Iowa was expressed at about $8 billion.
Well, I know I’m not going to get $8 billion from the federal
government for my programs, and I’m not going to get $8 billion out of the
state legislature for my programs, but it does give you some idea of the need
that’s out there.
So the question is, with the money you get, how do you prioritize it?
And we have been looking at building capabilities in the state, and capacities
on a statewide basis. We’ve looked at developing urban search and rescue
capability. We’ve expanded our explosive ordinance disposal, or bomb
team, capability. We’re working with our special weapons and tactics teams;
we’ve worked on developing, with our department of agriculture,
veterinarian rapid response teams.
On the public health side, they’ve been working on doing disaster
medical assistance teams. We’ve done a lot of that in the state, and if we had
more money, we could enhance that even further.
Another area where the things we need to do aren’t always eligible
under the grants we receive is in that area of intelligence fusion. We could
pay for planners, but we couldn’t pay for analysts. We were successful last
year in getting money from the legislature to help us in that area. But more
remains to be done.
With infrastructure protection funding, the question is how we work
with business. I think there needs to be an ability to co-invest in that, and it’s
an area that needs to be explored, and of course funding will be needed in
that area. Believe me, we definitely have a need for more money, and we can
spend it. I think the bigger question for us is, knowing there are limitations,
how do we best spend the money we get. And that remains probably the
biggest challenge.
Can you talk a little about how you’re working with businesses and the
private sector to share intelligence, develop counterterrorism strategies,
and prepare for emergency response?
I will tell you that it’s really evolved since 9-11. Prior to that time, there was
a feeling in emergency management in the state that you didn’t use public
funds to enhance private business, because if we did that it showed
favoritism to a business.
We really need to rethink that. And part of it is simply recognizing
that, as I said earlier, the private business owns up to 85 percent of the
critical infrastructure in the United States, in those key resources. Those are
needed to make government work; to provide essential services. If we don’t
find a way to effectively partner, we’re going to really miss the boat. So
since 9/11 we’ve met more and more with our business community, people
who belong to ASIS, the Iowa Business Council; we’re working now with
Business Executives for National Security, and we’ve really broadened our
participation in business and talked about critical infrastructure; began to
talk about interdependencies between various sectors.
We’ve done some exercises together, are looking for opportunities to
plan and work together. We’ve expanded our (Emergency Operations
Center) operations to invite business in, knowing that they’ll play a vital
role, and we need to continue to work in those areas and develop plans and
exercise together and train together.
Probably the bigger challenge is in information sharing. You know
there’s a tendency to look at intelligence as criminal intelligence in the state,
and there are restrictions in state law, as in federal law, in sharing criminal
intelligence information. At the same time, we want businesses to
understand a threat that they may face so they can take appropriate
protective measures. That’s been a challenge for us. And we keep attacking
that, and going back to our legislature and saying, “You know, we need to
protect information on one hand, but we need an ability to share it on
another, and do it in an effective way so people can take the right protective
measures given that information.”
And that’s a partnership with business. I want to be able to do that; I
want to be able to do it quickly. At the same time, business needs to trust
that they can give information to the state and we can protect it.
Has the state conducted any drills or simulations, and if so, what did
officials learn from them? How did they act on lessons learned?
We do. We do testing, and we actually have a refined program for doing
exercises in which we do after-action reporting, and we do capture lessons
learned, and we do corrective action planning, so we can walk through those
things and know what actions we’re taking after that exercise. We’ve done a
number of those.
We did an “Amber Waves” exercise with business, I think a little over
a year ago. That allowed us to work with business, go through a scenario of
a disaster; discuss interdependencies and how we would interact with
business.
We’ve also been learning lessons from Hurricane Katrina. We did
some things that we hadn’t done in this state before. For instance, we know
that we have evacuations from our own disasters, and truly, in Iowa, people
go live with friends or they go live with family and we don’t have a large
sheltering issue, even when we evacuate.
Last year in Katrina, we really had to discuss how we shelter evacuees
from other states that may come into our state. While we always kind of
knew that was there, I don’t know that we had effectively planned for it, and
now we have. We have a better idea of how we respond, how many people
we could handle, how we would process them through the systems, keep
them connected to the things they needed to keep connected to in the
disaster, and still assimilate them into our communities.
We’re about ready to do a functional and somewhat of a full-scale
exercise in September around pandemic. Right now we’re focusing on our
interface with state agencies, and how we receive and distribute the Strategic
National Stockpile, but in the future, we know we’re going to have to bring
business and others into that discussion and into that exercise group. But we
continually do that, refine our plans, write the after-actions, engage the
effort, evaluate it, plan some more, and get right back into the cycle.
Can you describe Amber Waves?
Amber Waves was an exercise with a variety of business sectors. Part of the
big discussion was simply saying you know, to make government work in
Iowa, continuity of our operations, this is what we need. If you’re going to
supply to me, what do I have to do to help you survive? That’s an effective
dialogue.
We came out with a number or priorities, a number of things to look
at: everything from information sharing to protective measures you would
take; how we engage those things. And we continue to work on those issues
that we discussed. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re making some
progress.
Are weather and natural disasters the largest practical threats to the
state, and what role does your agency play in response?
They are. We are—unlike some states—we are homeland security and
emergency management. And in that, we probably have more of a history on
the natural disaster side than we do on the threat from terrorism. As we look
at it, we want to remain cognizant of the threat of terrorism. And while Iowa
is a low-threat state in anybody’s estimation, the truth is that it isn’t a case
where there isn’t any threat. And we know that we have to continually look
not only at the foreign threat—or the threat of foreign terrorism—but also
domestically and what that means in our state. And we do that. It is part of
our threat picture, it’s part of our threat analysis.
But you’re right. Probably the greater threat facing the state of Iowa at
any given time are the natural disasters we have. Now, knock on wood,
we’ve been lucky the last couple of years. We haven’t had a major disaster.
But for a while we were averaging almost two disasters a year—one in the
spring and one in the fall. And that was whether it was a flooding disaster—
which is something that affects us often—or it was ice storms, severe winter
weather, we’ve had those.
We’ve had other human-caused disasters and emergencies; we had a
chemical plant explosion a few years ago; of course one of the other
disasters that we were involved in—and this was right at the time I came to
the agency—was the 232 plane crash in Sioux City.
I guess our point is that we want to take a multihazard approach. And
what that means is we do an analysis. As a matter of fact, we’re in the
process of re-doing our risk analysis right now, to say what kinds of things
can happen in Iowa; what’s the probability of their occurring; what’s the
impact if they occur; to get some gauge of that, and look at all those hazards,
try to put them in a proper context, and then plan accordingly.
Do you ever run into a problem with pots of money where you can’t
direct the funding to an all-hazards approach, it has to go to a specific
threat?
Yeah, we have, especially early on in the Homeland Security Grants. The
money really became stovepiped. Congress was intent, of course, on looking
at the threat of terrorism, and necessarily so. It is a priority in the United
States. The problem that we began to have, though, is the money was
focused in that area, and if you looked at total threat, you knew that you
needed to do more work on the natural-hazards side than the other things
that were affecting the United States.
I guess one of the things that struck my mind—and we think it’s key
in Iowa because of the role we play in agriculture and in the nation’s food
supply—that’s issues of food security. The truth is that without proper
measures in place, food security can be an issue. It may be a naturally
occurring event, and at the same time, it could be a terrorist event. Frankly,
from a threat picture, I don’t care which. I still need to respond.
Joseph Straw is an assistant editor at Security Management.