DHS Six Strategic Challenges: Local Community Response (Social Sciences Essay)

Running head: DHS SIX STRATEGIC CHALLENGES1
DHS Six Strategic Challenges: Local Community Response
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DHS Six Strategic Challenges: Local Community Response
Th United States, world's only superpower, continues to face mounting challenges initiated, occasioned and sustained by a diversity of challenges. The scope and depth of challenges US faces – and, for that matter, is most likely to face in more intensified and mutated forms – are, indeed, beyond any one given entity's capacity. Unsurprisingly, US Government, particularly security departments and agencies such as Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have consistently emphasized extensive collaborations and partnerships between government and business, non-for-profits, civil society organizations, community leaders and private citizens. The major learning lesson US federal, state and local security departments and agencies has come to learn in recent decades is one about a constant necessity to engage as many stakeholders and partners as possible, particularly private citizens, not only to deflect risks yet also, more importantly, to maintain a constant state of preparedness at federal, state and local levels.
In response, DHS has over recent years contributed immensely to ongoing efforts to meet and make US prepared for a growing number of national security challenges of wide implications across security, political, economic, social and cultural spectra. The 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review is, for one, a major contribution by DHS to make explicit past, current and possible future challenges US faces or is more likely to face in more intensified forms. For current purposes, six strategic challenges mentioned in The 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review are of central interest: (i), Terrorist Threat, (ii) Cyber Threats, (iii) Biological Concerns, (iv) Nuclear Terrorism, (v) Transnational Criminal Organizations, and (vi) Natural Hazards (Department of Homeland Security, 2014, p. 28). These challenges, DHS report emphasizes, cannot be identified, deflected and/or eliminated should a
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diversity of stakeholders and partners, particularly local community, is engaged and involved. Three key national preparedness elements, informed by Presidential Policy Directive 8, are, accordingly called for including: (i) The National Preparedness Goal, (ii) The National Preparedness System, and (iii) Campaign to Build and Sustain Preparedness (Department of Homeland Security, pp. 72-73). Of central interest for current purposes is The National Preparedness System.
Under “ The National Preparedness System,” a number of national frameworks and interagency operational plans are mentioned including, primarily, first editions of National Prevention Framework, National Protection Framework, National Mitigation Framework, and National Disaster Recovery Framework, as well as second edition of National Response Framework. These frameworks, each supported by a Federal Federal Interagency Operational Plan, “explains how federal departments and agencies work together to deliver the core
capabilities through the c...