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What is the Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise?
The Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise (FSIE) is a collaborative effort of the State and Local Program Office, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), with support from the National Preparedness Directorate in the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Its purpose is to “incorporate Fire Service interests (defined as fire and emergency operations, emergency medical service operations, rescue operations, hazardous materials operations, fire prevention/protection, fire investigation, incident management, and responder safety) into national standards, protocols, and mechanisms for homeland security information and intelligence sharing.” (1) Put another way, the FSIE’s objective is to establish a direct information conduit between the fire service and DHS. How did the FSIE get started?
Before September 11, 2001, some people may have questioned the need for a role for the fire service, or emergency services in general, in the world of intelligence. However, September 11, 2001, changed the need and mindset. Diane Pitts, senior fire-intelligence analyst for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in 2008, On Sept. 11, the nation watched firefighters lead the way to rescue thousands of civilians, and then toil in the recovery phase for months after the attack. That day tested the fire service not only in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Shanksville, Pa.; but all over the country. Immediately after the attacks, fire departments went on alert in cities and jurisdictions far from where those four planes were used as weapons. Nationwide, cities and counties also were facing the unknown. Were there any more attacks underway? If so, would it be more planes, or were there other tactics to look out for, such as vehicle bombs? Those very questions thrust the fire service into the intelligence world. (2) Indeed, given “that firefighters are among the country’s first responders to terrorist incidents, natural disasters, industrial accidents and everyday emergencies,” they have a clear need for a channel through which they can deliver and receive information and intelligence in a timely manner. (2) “Through sharing pre-incident information and intelligence and real-time incident updates, situational awareness [is] enhanced to support the preparedness efforts of both local fire departments and DHS. Rapid and comprehensive information sharing also is imperative to establishing a common operational picture on the local and national levels during a major incident,” explained Pitts. (3) A concrete example of the “need for this type of collaboration occurred in October 2006,” noted Pitts, “when New York Yankees’ pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a New York apartment building. Many initially thought the incident was a terrorist attack, and cities across the country went on alert. FDNY firefighters were among the first to arrive on scene, but because there was no direct link to a state fusion center, they were limited in relaying initial information to federal and state officials. Conversely, they were slow to receive information from intelligence sources to confirm or deny a possible terrorism nexus. [Bolding added.] The Lidle incident demonstrated the position of many fire departments in critical minutes following an incident, and reinforced the need to establish protocols to enhance the ability to receive and share valuable information.”
The first step to involving firefighters in the information and intelligence streams was “to get a fire representative into the Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center,” said Pitts. “The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis met with the U.S. Fire Administration in April 2006 to discuss this and other actions both departments could undertake to enhance information-sharing with the fire service. Within a few months, USFA assigned a temporary representative to National Operations Center two days a week. Recently [2008], USFA hired a full-time employee to staff the fire representative desk five days a week.” (2) Next, according to Pitts, the Department of Homeland Security teamed with New York City’s fire department to develop and execute a pilot information-sharing project. FDNY Deputy Fire Chief Michael Puzziferri initially proposed the program and developed it with support from DHS, as he explains in a July 2009 interview transcribed below. (4) Phase I of the project ran from December 2006 (two months after Lidle’s crash) to March 2007. On September 7, 2007, the Fire Department of New York and DHS hosted a national conference on information sharing with the fire service. (5) An article written about the conference noted, It’s not often that top fire officials from across the country get together with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But that’s just what happened on September 7 as the FDNY and DHS hosted the inaugural Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise (FSIE) conference in Manhattan to discuss a collaborative, communicative effort among the country’s major fire departments to formalize the fire service’s ability to gather, receive and analyze intelligence. “The bottom line is that the fire service needs the intelligence community, and the intelligence community needs the fire service,” said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. “Real-time intelligence and information leads to a heightened state of situational awareness. And situational awareness is key to saving lives.” Commissioner Scoppetta, Chief of Department Salvatore Cassano and other FDNY officials attended the conference, as well as Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Charles Allen and other DHS representatives. Among the 80 fire and security officials who attended the conference were chief officers from 15 major fire departments, including Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. “You are truly at the front line – at the vanguard of all relief efforts,” said Assistant Secretary Allen. “Our partnership is critical and should be sustained.” Acting FDNY Chief of Counterterrorism and Preparedness Michael Puzziferri said officials that attended the conference now are working to create a network that can increase the values of each department by opening up communication and utilizing the information technology that has been provided by DHS. “This [FSIE] meeting was a great first step,” he said. Another meeting, similar to this one, of officials from major fire departments will be hosted by DHS in San Francisco in March 2008. (6) Robert Summerall of The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, interviewed FDNY Deputy Fire Chief Michael Puzziferri on June 23, 2009, about progress of the FSIE. (7) The transcript follows:
Robert Summerall, Interviewer: …I’d like to talk with you about is the genesis of the fire service intelligence enterprise idea, some of the expectations that were generated from that idea, how you actually sold and marketed the plan, [and] what the DHS and federal involvement was… Chief Puzziferri, FDNY: Thank you for having me, sir. The Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise started out as an idea in the Intel class and it spontaneously arose from us in the classroom and it also arose in DHS. Part of it was driven by 9/11, of course. The Fire Department of New York felt the need to start to get some information. When I say information, I mean information from around the world that we didn’t know about and thought we needed to know about for our mission, which is to protect people’s lives and the property of New York. We needed to understand what the threat might be or what could get in our way and what we needed to do about it so that we could be successful. About the time we starting to think it would be a good thing for us to engage DHS, we indeed got a call from DHS saying they would like to engage us in conversation—that was in late September 2006. They came up and we had a nice chat for an hour or so and then the chat was about to come to a close and we said let’s do something about this. Two months later, in November 2006, we started to draw up a pilot program. There were three or four of us in New York that started to piece together a pilot program along with DHS where there were another three or four people. We went down to DHS and saw a lot of what they had to offer. We sat down, made 90-day milestones. Then, about a year later, we had a conversation and said, well, what’s next? This went so well, let’s try to grow this thing a little bit. We decided on fourteen other cities, to ask them to come to New York to develop the Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise.
Interviewer: So the Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise has expanded into fifteen major fire departments across the nation? Chief Puzziferri: Yes, sir, the fifteen largest, give or take one or two, in the country. [The 15 fire departments are New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Seattle, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami-Dade County, and Boston.] Interviewer: Was there a model that caused to get you started? Did you see the law enforcement model and see that you needed to find a way to bring the fire service in? Chief Puzziferri: Yes. At the start, there were some fusion centers starting to pop up across the country, Los Angeles County and Los Angeles city were already or about to go into the [JRIG?] However, there were other cities that really didn’t have a source of information. Some were close to law enforcement or some were in a developmental stage like we were in, in New York with the NYPD. Since then, it’s gotten pretty good with NYPD; we have a nice relationship. However, it is still evolving. The fusion center piece in New York was that it was located up in Albany and the discussion is going on now about all hazards. Interviewer: How has it met—it goes through a kind of process, starts out as an idea, almost an entrepreneurial approach, and then along the way it becomes a product of the bureaucracy. What are the expectations, now? Is it taking off, is it meeting expectations among the fire services now? Chief Puzziferri: Yes. A small kind of effort at the start, a pilot piece, and then when we started to see how the fifteen cities started to bond, started to exchange information, I think that DHS understood and happily, they were pleased with what they saw as a nucleus to grow out from. Now we’re discussing how we’re going to evolve. Actually, DHS and DOJ [Department of Justice] have formalized administrative oversight of the project. Interviewer: Tell us about Watch Line, you could call that one of the outputs of FDNY Intel. Would you describe how that was started and then how it has taken off as a niche fire intel product and how it has reached quite a level of following across the nation? Chief Puzziferri: You correctly describe it. One of the things that we wanted to do was to get the message, the information, to the boots on the street, to the guys on the street. Being there and working on the watch line kind of understood that guys and gals on the street needed something that was informative, something that wouldn’t take too long to read, and something that centered on what they do every day. So we developed a one-pager and got 8-10 points that we found to be interesting from current activities from around the world that we could bend back on our daily activities. So we put together a piece, we sat in an office and our main analyst came up with the idea to call it Watchline. It is like an evolution in the FDNY. When we have a large fire, we don’t want to commit too many people for something that is small and smoldering underground, we leave a watch line to make sure that this problem doesn’t arise after we’ve gone. So it’s kind of the same idea for our product—it’s something that we’ve got a watch line on, to keep it under control. So we made a one-pager and he picks out 8-10 pieces each week and does an analysis on them and he makes recommendations that can be given to the guys on the street. They understand it. It’s made by one of us.
Interviewer: It seems, Mike, with Watchline and some of these other products, there’s the “so what?” Why is it that we are providing you with this analysis anyway? Is that fair? Chief Puzziferri: Yes, that is fair. We get a lot of products from a lot of different places. I don’t want to say cut and paste, because some of them are great and they read like newspapers and they’re fantastic. But we want our guys to take away the so what? So we send it down, he does the analysis and applies it to our operations. The question arose, should we send it outside the job, outside the FDNY with the analysis? And we said, “Sure, let’s send it out so others can learn about what we do.” Interviewer: Well, it looks to me like an effective intelligence product that’s really found a niche. Chief Puzziferri: Every week we get more subscribers. It’s amazing who we’re exchanging information with. It’s almost like a calling card: here we are, this is what we do, and others respond and others respond and say, well, this is who we are and this is what we do. So you start to develop not only these digital or electronic relationships but you meet new people and develop joint activities. It’s really become a wonderful thing. Interviewer: How would you describe the array of readership? Who’s reading Watchline these days? Chief Puzziferri: We know it goes to the Pentagon. We’ve gotten some feedback from the White House. It goes overseas. It goes to law enforcement. It goes to the FBI. It goes to public health, the transportation industries. It’s got a pretty good following. Interviewer: It is impressive for what started off as a local fire department intelligence product. Chief Puzziferri: It’s kind of nice for something that started off as a mom and pop shop operation and it’s still growing but it still has that homegrown grass roots feel to it. Interviewer: What’s the way ahead, Mike, for the Fire Service Intel Enterprise? Chief Puzziferri: The FSIE will grow. As it grows, one of the things that I like about it is that it has taken on this holistic view by which it has evolved. It is not just about technology, it is not just about training, it’s not just about one of the aspects that makes up this big piece, as it goes forward. So it’s kind of fun watching the whole piece evolve. Interviewer: Well, the way that you have described it, it’s really the role of intelligence, to support an operation or an enterprise. Is this FSIE a good model for other homeland security disciplines, public health, medical, others. Chief Puzziferri: Well, it’s turned out, it actually has been a model for others. DHS, as they build their DHS intelligence enterprise has used the Fire Service Intelligence Enterprise to work off. It’s really been a pretty good exercise going forward. Interviewer: So the universal appeal of a fifteen-member enterprise, you all have the same work—the fire service, you pretty much talk the same language. Chief Puzziferri: Well, we don’t need a lexicon! Interviewer: Well, you have one. Chief Puzziferri: I mean to communicate with one another. Interviewer: Right. Chief Puzziferri: And we’re trying to at least get the way that we think about things out to others so that it brings us to the table. Interviewer: Federal support adequate? Chief Puzziferri: It’s been fantastic. Interviewer: I think that that’s the take home from this interview is that there is an occasion, an instance, where you have partnered with DHS, a federal agency, and have worked out some of the support arrangements, even with some IT and information sharing support and portal support and you reside on the Homeland Security Information Network, which is the backbone of sharing between DHS and states and locals. So you would describe your venture as successful. Chief Puzziferri: Yes. Interviewer: Thank you and great to see you in Monterey. Chief Puzziferri: Great to be here. Notes:
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