Robert Irving Desourdis (Editor) – Solution Architect, Master, Desourdis Collaboration, LLC, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Kuan Hengameh Collins (Editor) – Doctor of Management, University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, Maryland, USA

Series: Homeland Security and Safety
BISAC: POL012000

Target Audience: The book must apply to the leaders and executives in all industry and government enterprises, organizations, and bureaucracies, beyond anything in homeland security. It shows that the people you work with and those who you only meet occasionally, but may be drawn together in disaster, must work for the common cause. All those who are recipients of the benefits of successful collaboration are also those who suffer when it fails.

Why are the same planning failures that led to the loss of 2,400 Americans at Pearl Harbor apparent in the 9-11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina response, Virginia Tech shootings, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster? Why are we surprised when cyber-attacks disrupt our IT systems, internal spies publish our protected information, mentally ill or volatile individuals attack police and innocent people, and trusted state or federal employees turn out to be untrustworthy and release critical secrets to enemies or the world? These are all attributable to failures in the ability of people to work together, or collaborate, for our protection. The failure is not that of the first responders or warfighters, to whom this book is dedicated. On the contrary, these heroes must show superior initiative and risk self-sacrifice while the stove-piped-organization system planners and vendors with no skin in the game risk nothing. These leaders, planners, scientists, engineers, managers, administrators, salespeople and others are wholly responsible for the technological innovation, processes and products used, but these people are almost never on-scene when an incident occurs.

Part I of our book explains to both the general reader and homeland security experts alike, what individual and organizational factors are needed to establish a collaborative environment. These factors include organizational trust, knowledge management, organizational structure, organizational culture, and leadership. These collaboration factors provide the basis for Part II, where we look at the important contributions of actual homeland security practitioners. These practitioners describe the role of human collaboration in making peace, bombing the Third Reich (by a member of the Greatest Generation), disaster management, public safety communications interoperability, electric power restoration, medical support for mass sheltering, government healthcare, cybersecurity, science diplomacy, technology innovation, government acquisition, systems engineering, and intellectual property litigation. Finally, in Part III, we describe a methodology for comprehensive collaboration planning (CCP) to optimize planning for day-to-day or rare “grey swan” or unexpected “black swan” events.

In the end, we show that achieving these five collaboration factors ultimately requires direct interaction between the people involved in any homeland security endeavor, and not the technology they envision, develop, buy, sell, deploy, operate and sustain. It does not matter what you buy if the people who use it – or with whom they must collaborate in a crisis as well as day-to-day unexpected events – do not have their act together. The bottom line is that how well people do together in any homeland security (or other) domain depends exclusively on the success of human-to-human interoperability and interaction. This interaction is governed by long-known and waning (in an e-world) rules of civility, such as George Washington documented and practiced some time ago.

With Forewords by renowned historian Edwin Bearss, experienced homeland security practitioner Ken Born, and mental health professional Anthony Rogers, the emphasis of this book (“it’s the people, not the stuff”) demonstrates the success of our homeland security ̶ and everything else, including the technology utilized ̶ is solely dependent on how well the people work together.

Included DVD with oral histories from Edwin Bearss and Bernard Nolan on their Word War II combat experiences as prime examples of human collaboration in homeland security – as well as great true American stories. Edwin Bearss was a Marine shot four times at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, spending 26 months in hospitals and eventually serving as Chief Historian of the National Park Service. Bernard Nolan was driven to fly, going through cadet training after Pilot Classification in Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, Arizona and New Mexico before flying B-24s and B-17s (though unhappy he was not in fighter aircraft) bombing the Third Reich in the “Mighty Eighth” U.S. Army Air Force based in Lavenham, England.