Obama Orders Launch of Executive Committee on Communications
President Barack Obama Friday established a new National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Executive Committee as a “forum” on communications issues of importance to national security. The new committee will have a high-profile membership and is to make recommendations directly to the president.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions,” said an executive order from the president (http://xrl.us/bnfrg5). “Survivable, resilient, enduring, and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial, and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies, and other nations."
Members are to include “Assistant Secretary-level or equivalent representatives” designated by the secretaries of State, Defense, Justice, Commerce and Homeland Security, as well as representatives of the Director of National Intelligence, the General Services Administration, the FCC and “such additional agencies as the Executive Committee may designate."
Among the committee’s responsibilities are to “advise and make policy recommendations to the President ... on enhancing the survivability, resilience, and future architecture of NS/EP communications, including what should constitute NS/EP communications requirements,” to “develop a long-term strategic vision for NS/EP communications and propose funding requirements and plans to the President and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget” and to “coordinate the planning for, and provision of, NS/EP communications for the Federal Government under all hazards."
The DHS secretary is to provide staff for the new committee through an Executive Committee Joint Program Office. The committee itself is to send quarterly updates to the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and to also write an annual NS/EP communications strategic agenda.
The order does not discuss the role of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), made up of the CEOs of some of the largest communications companies, which has not met since May 2010.
In addition to creating the committee, Obama delineated the responsibilities of a number of administration officials. The director of OSTP, for example, is charged with advising the president “on the prioritization of radio spectrum and wired communications that support NS/EP functions.” The DHS secretary is to “serve as the Federal lead for the prioritized restoration of communications infrastructure and coordinate the prioritization and restoration of communications.”
The order also directs the DHS secretary to prepare within six months a report on a number of communications issues that will look at the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, the Wireless Priority Service (WPS) and Telecommunications Service Priority program, used by government officials for priority communications during a disaster. The report is timely given the difficulties FCC Commissioners Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn reported in trying to use the WPS program last summer to communicate with their staff following the Virginia earthquake (CD Sept 9 p1).
The secretary of defense is to “oversee the development, testing, implementation, and sustainment of NS/EP communications that are directly responsive to the national security needs of the President, Vice President, and senior national leadership, including: communications with or among the President, Vice President, White House staff, heads of state and government, and Nuclear Command and Control leadership; Continuity of Government communications; and communications among the executive, judicial, and legislative branches to support Enduring Constitutional Government.”
Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association, welcomed the executive order. “Having an Executive Committee with a clear Presidential mandate may finally allow the federal government to overcome long-standing barriers to efficient deployment of communication resources and improve the coordination of inter-agency efforts,” Fontes said.