Keeping our country safe from terrorist threats, specifically unconventional attacks with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, involves more than guns, more than soldiers-it involves information, and lots of it. And the many people and organizations needing information in an emergency must be able to understand it, share it, and act on it quickly.

Analysts at MITRE realized this need for sharing critical information years before the events of September 11. Several years ago, Robert Nesbit, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE's Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems, posed the problem: How do you address indications and warnings for asymmetric threats?

By this, he meant: How do you defend your country when the enemy isn't an army massing its troops? When, in fact, "the enemy" may be a hard-to-identify, small organization or a widespread infectious-disease outbreak? Finding better ways to gather, disseminate, and share huge amounts of data from diverse sources lies at the heart of the problem. How do you automate the process for identifying and acting on these indications and warnings?

Homeland Security Information Service (HSIS), acting as the information gateway for the 2002 Boston Marathon

To answer the question, MITRE pulled together experts from across the company to identify key indicators. Under the guidance of John Woodward, MITRE's director of information warfare, our staff began developing a customizable, Web-based portal known as the Homeland Security Information Service (HSIS) in 2000. In different incarnations, HSIS has acted as the informationgateway for such events as the 2001 Presidential Inauguration and this year's Boston Marathon.

With HSIS as the portal framework, any group with a stake in public safety—from local law enforcement agencies and public health organizations to the Department of Defense, the Customs Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency—can share their mission-critical information and provide services to manipulate that information.

For example, using the HSIS framework, the National Weather Service (NWS) could provide other organizations with a stream of data about earthquakes or tornadoes. To make the information more useful, NWS could also provide a Web service, such as a map, to display the weather graphically.

The basic HSIS design includes tools that filter data into various "watchlists," such as disease outbreaks, terrorism, crime, natural hazards, and so on. Users can manage their pages and contact lists, receive breaking news, access live Web cams, and review maps. MITRE's Russ Graves, a principal software systems engineer and the current project leader for HSIS, notes several of the advantages of the system, particularly its flexibility.

"First, HSIS is Web-based, so it can be used anywhere," Graves says. "It allows collaborative sharing of data, while letting you partition data so each person can do his or her job. It's a model for agencies to follow, with a great deal of interoperability." HSIS can be customized to fit a variety of users.

HSIS was created as a framework to focus research in information retrieval, analysis, and sharing. It also serves as a vehicle to better determine user requirements through their interaction with the system.

Think Globally, Act Locally

The IMIP system is an easy-to-use, password-protected Web site that helped emergency management officials coordinate operations.

HSIS had its highest profile use to date during the 2001 Presidential Inauguration. As proof of the tool's adaptability, it morphed into the Inaugural Management Information Portal, or IMIP. The main features—links to various Web sites and points of contact, incident reports and logs, graphics, threat news, and more—enabled a host of users to gain real-time information specific to their needs. Groups such as the Washington, D.C., Emergency Management Agency (DC EMA), the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee, and the U.S. Park Police, among others, entered data directly into IMIP's databases.

MITRE sent two employees to train agency personnel, focusing especially on situation reporting and maintaining logs. By using IMIP, security and other inauguration personnel viewed reports, analyzed data, and—most important—made decisions quickly and efficiently. No more waiting for someone to fill out and fax a report; no more finding out that a lost child was returned to his parents hours earlier. After the inauguration, MITRE left the IMIP structure with DC EMA, which eventually remodified the portal for its daily business and renamed it EventNet.

After September 11, MITRE and DC EMA gave the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency a version of EventNet to support security efforts for the 2002 Boston Marathon. MITRE provided staff and technology tools for situational awareness at the agency's "bunker." Agency officials deemed the experiment a great success, increasing information flow and supporting decision-making processes.

Graves says each planned event provides an excellent training ground for technology like HSIS. He draws an analogy between community-based emergency coordination and a large-scale national program.

"Emergency management is very similar to homeland security," he notes. "You must coordinate different groups—fire, police, EMS, public health, utilities—to respond. You have to decide: 'What are the issues and actions? Who's doing what?' That's really just a local view of homeland security.

"Often, in fact, the better information is at the local level. It can then be sent upwards to the federal level," he says.

Moreover, these real-world testing grounds have proven HSIS's viability as a framework for a range of potential users in both the civilian and military sectors.

Although sharing data among agencies is HSIS's primary goal, too much of a good thing can become negative. "If an organization is flooded with every tidbit of information available, it can't digest it in a timely manner. This is where technology can help," Graves says. HSIS enables users to compartmentalize data, giving the right level of detail for analyzing potential threats and warnings. Portal users can filter out unwanted material and concentrate on high-value, high-priority information specific to their jobs.

"These are all areas where MITRE can help: information management, data mining, data analysis," he says. "We already do most of these things for the Department of Defense, so we can leverage this expertise for the civilian side. As a not-for-profit working in the public interest, we can come at these problems with an objective perspective as far as choosing the best technology to use."

Replacing "Need to Know"

In the wake of last year's tragedies, it's clear that governmental agencies must cede some of their natural territoriality in order to work together. Frameworks like HSIS facilitate cooperation and coordination of effort.

"Since September 11, people have to share more information to get the job done," Graves says. While maintaining certain information as classified will always be vital, he points out the necessity for finding the right balance. "We need to replace 'need to know' with 'need to share.'

"A lot of technology can be brought to bear on a problem, but determining processes and procedures are just as much constraints on information sharing," he says. "The idea is to convince all organizations to follow a standard, portal framework to make data available to others." To reach this goal, he and his colleagues envision an "e-business concept" of emergency planning, with tools that enable the agile, rapid changing of partners and exchange of data—ideally when the first threat indications appear.

"Since our world is far from perfect, there never will be a one-size-fits-all information-sharing tool for homeland security," Graves says. "In a perfect world, everyone would use the same standard, and build and use services that would help others to get into their portal to share and use data.

"In the meantime, HSIS can act as a prototype of the concept to get the community working together."

—by Alison Stern-Dunyak

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