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GCN Home > 09/11/06 issue

A tale of 3 cities

Special Report | COOP, COG and the alphabet of 9/11: How Arlington, Va., New York City and St. Louis changed their application of technology

By Caron Golden, Special to GCN

The chaos that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and continued for weeks afterward gave municipal officials across the country a new appreciation of the importance of information technology—and communications, in particular. Whether their locales were a target of the attacks or not, the lessons of that day have influenced everyone’s approach.

Along with interoperability of communications systems, federal, state and local entities have given high priority to continuity of operations for everything from human resources and payroll to property records, and information sharing.

But even with the momentum from 9/11 and IT’s recognized importance to continuity of government, systems are far from complete.

“It’s expensive, politically sensitive and involves all sorts of turf issues among agencies—who owns the system and makes the decisions, who has to change their behavior to conform with a new system, and whose budget is being tapped. These are busy people, and this is overload,” said Anthony Cresswell, deputy director of the Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany, N.Y.

Still, “the best stories we tend to see are at the local level, where people have done a good job at getting smarter, getting information and sharing what they know,” he added.

State and local communities across the country have benefited from the billions of dollars flowing in from the federal government for homeland security missions. Just this past summer, DHS said it would give state and local governments about $1.7 billion for homeland security efforts.

For this story, we picked three areas that represent how city and county governments have changed since 9/11. New York City and Arlington, Va.—where the Pentagon is located—were obvious choices. We also included St. Louis, where the threat may be just as real, but the focus is not always as sharp.

For 2006, St. Louis is supposed to receive $9.2 million in homeland security funding, ranking it in the middle of major urban areas.

DHS granted New York City more than $124 million. Arlington County does not get funds directly from DHS; officials there depend on receiving homeland security funding through the state program.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Homeland Security, Management, IT Management, State & Local



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