Recommendation:  Establish a new funding program for community-wide interoperability that enables multiple disciplines and agenciesto jointly request funding.  The requirement would include participation from police, fire, public health, local OEM and a serving hospital along with approval by the chief executive officer of the community. 

Why:  The National Response Framework (NRF), national Incident management System (NIMS), National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) and National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP), all are driven around a scalable, all hazards, all disciplines emergency planning, response and recovery model, which necessarily means collaboration and cooperation among first responders as well as an array of community assets and organizations. 

Notwithstanding this important (and correct) approach, funding initiatives are balkanized or "siloed" by discipline and sector, effectively limiting the ability of multiple parties to implement a cohesive implementation plan for shared infrastructure and programs such as a community-wide interoperable preparedness and response network.

 For example, if a school district, OEM, local hospital, police, fire and public health agency, and utility wanted to establish seamless interoperable communications which required the deployment of gateway equipment at each location, it is virtually impossible to do so through a single funding program.  Rather, the schools would request funding via Safe Schools or ED, hospitals would go through HHS,  OEM, Fire  and Police through DHS (or Byrne, DOJ COPs), and utilities through a separate DHS program.  The inability to submit to a single program in a collaborative manner frustrates the objectives of National Emergency Policy.

 The basic funding program structure forces each participant to utilize its own resources in a way that is disconnected with an overall community strategy.  Moreover, the requirements of each program differ sufficiently that there is no cohesive eligibility that permits a unified or collaborative project approach to occur.  Finally, due to differing funding priorities, award procedures and reporting requirements, the parties are unable to synchronize their activities at a deployment planning or implementation level.

Benefits:  The benefits of this recommendation are manifold:

1.  It aligns funding with policy goals
2. It empowers multi-disciplinary and cross agency project cooperation
3. It enables unified project planning within the context of project funding considerations
4. It increases efficiencies by eliminating multiple independent grant requests
5. It eliminates asynchronous timing and funding problems, and uncertainty
6. It provides a framework for ongoing planning and preparedness