DHS wants your comments

DHS is seeking the online input of the American people to help guide a departmental review that will determine the departments’ strategies for protecting the country from natural hazards and terrorist attacks.

This new effort is part of the department’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR), which, according to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, “sets forth our vision for homeland security and to address challenges we face as a department.” The secretary called it one of her most critical tasks for this year.

As one more addition to the department’s recent public relations overhaul online, the “National Dialogue on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review” allows Web users to read, rate, and comment upon on proposals from DHS study groups in six different categories: counterterrorism and domestic security management; securing our borders; smart and tough enforcement of immigration laws; preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters; homeland security national risk assessment; and homeland security planning and capabilities.

Users have until 9 August to comment in the dialogue’s first round, reports the Washington Independent reports. DHS will provide additional opportunities to comment in late August and early September. Comments, however, have already begun to trickle in.

Security Management reports that under the counterterrorism section, “smp,” a private citizen and a reserve police officer, wrote that the study group needed to add another entry underneath goals: “to establish a coordinated approach between agencies and also within agencies.” “Netwings,” from CERT Queens District 1, recommends DHS close U.S. borders to all immigrants to secure the nation’s borders. “Btussing,” from U.S. Army War College, wrote that DHS must concentrate on “risk communication” if it wants its risk assessments and risk management to be successful

DHS is expected to present the QHSR to Congress in December.