Organizational Preparedness and Challenges
| Subject: | 💰 Economics |
| Type: | Exploratory Essay |
| Pages: | 7 |
| Word count: | 1598 |
| Topics: | 🛒 Consumerism, International Business, Law Enforcement, Marketing |
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Taylor Technologies Inc is an American multinational company based in California. We design, manufacture as well as market media and communication devices, consumer electronics such as TVs, refrigerators, music players and personal computers. Taylor Technologies also sells a variety of related accessories, services, software as well as networking solutions coupled with 3rd-party digital content together with applications. The corporation’s segments comprise the Americas, Greater China, Europe, Japan as well as the rest of Asia Pacific. The company being headquartered in America and fully aware of the threats that our country faces would be more than willing to respond to your request. This report seeks to address what we feel are our roles/responsibilities related to overall homeland security efforts, the steps we have taken as an organization, both internally or externally to ensure these expectations are fulfilled, challenges our organization faces that serve as an impediment in meeting our homeland security commitments and lastly our expectations from DHS in this collaborative effort and how the agency can enhance its level of support towards us.
Our Responsibility
As an organization we feel that we owe our country a great duty in critical infrastructure protection. Thus, with about 85% of the country’s critical infrastructure under the control of the private sector, we feel that our alliance with your department is critical. Under this aspect we feel Taylor Technologies feels that we can give vital information to the DHS (Wolff & Koenig, 2010). Thus, through the Office Of Infrastructure Protection (OIP) in your department, we can feed you with critical information that can assist you on vulnerability and threat analysis, local and national-level coordination with government agencies and businesses, risk mitigation, and coordination of information exchange as well as collaboration amongst the six critical sectors of commercial facilities, critical manufacturing, chemical, emergency services, dams as well as nuclear reactors, waste and material (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2007).
The other critical area we can partner with DHS is on cyber security especially since we are an IT company. This partnership will be important in accomplishment of national security goals. Through routine partnerships, we will share and help in addressing IT challenges with DHS. We can offer critical information such as illegal access of government’s websites and help the government to understand sources of such attacks and methods employed by the hackers thereby offering greater knowledge concerning cyber security threats to effectively ensure safety in our cyber space (Busch & Givens, 2012).
Steps We Have Taken
Taylor Technologies Inc, has assumed numerous steps to ensure the above expectations are accomplished. First and foremost we have set aside resources in terms of physical and human capital with which we hope to attain our role and goals toward DHS. Setting aside of resources entails directing these vital assets toward a particular purpose, and forgoing other opportunities in the process. By directing our resources toward applications of homeland security, government and businesses can greatly benefit. Thus the government will gain from our privately produced services and products, implying that public safety will be highly enhanced (Bullock et al., 2013).
Secondly we have come up with specializations in functional aspects, improving sector performance. A process such as this can allow government agencies in focusing more upon mission-essential projects. Knowledge such as this builds efficiencies over time. Thirdly, Taylor Technologies has taken steps to act as a catalyst for novel technological innovations. Thus our company designs technologies utilizing our own resources and share the same with the DHS.
Challenges Taylor Technologies Faces That Serve as an Impediment in Meeting Homeland Security Commitments
One of the biggest challenges we face includes lack of trust between the DHS and our organization. Thus, in spite of significant partnerships and discussions between the two sectors. In most cases the two sectors view one other as competitors having distinct objectives. Thus, we both our organization and the DHS must work a lot to eliminate the trust obstacle (Busch & Givens, 2014).
The other challenge is misinformation and misunderstanding. One of the key causes of mistrust is misunderstanding and misinformation. This rises because most of the time, neither our organization no the law enforcement has a correct understanding of what the other one can do or does. Therefore, if our partnership with the DHS is to be effective, then the law enforcement officials should work with officials from our organization to communicate consistent and clear not only amongst themselves but also down through their organizations to the lowest cadre employees (Lee, 2015).
Management and accountability-This is a major challenge especially since over-time this kind of relationship normally has a negative impact on the skills set needed for both private and public sector employees. Thus, the question of private sector looking as if they are interfering with the working of the public sector is one of the biggest challenges since this begs the question who is calling the shots between the two. With a large number of corporations joining the homeland security department, delicate management questions become relevant. For instance, many a times issues have arisen whether it is proper for an employee from the private sector to question, direct or guide a governmental official to carry out definite work functions? And under what conditions might this be true? Therefore as this discipline of homeland security evolves, these issues will go on presenting hard challenges for private and governmental sector specialists (Bullock et al., 2012).
Growing need for transparency-public-private partnerships generally raise concerns linked to transparency, which is used in referring to 2 separate, yet related ideas. First and foremost is governmental transparency, particularly agency reporting to the Congress. Secondly, is business and agency reporting to the general public. Thus, both disciplines of transparency pose considerable challenges. Thus, can the private organization employees be held to similar standards and ethics as their private sector colleagues? This is one of the conflicting challenges that our employees face every day as they go about their business (CTI Reviews, 2016).
Expectation from the DHS
The DHS can enhance your level of support by organizing and leading meetings for the facilitation of standards, funding research and raising awareness. This will go a long way in ensuring that our organization is engaging the latest cutting edge research that will enable creation of new solutions that can counter emerging threats. Through such meetings with the DHS, we can raise key issues and challenges that we face during our operations and collectively discuss the best possible way to enhance our partnership further (Nemeth, 2016).
The DHS can also incentivize us -this is so especially since public-private relationships become extremely easy when both the organization and government benefit immediately. For instance, as pertains a service contract, the government procures a much required service or good, increasing the bottom line of the business. Nonetheless, when it comes to the government obtaining data concerning vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure, our organization lacks incentives to cooperate with the DHS. As much as we would love to cooperate with you and provide you with all the information you require, this process eats into our overhead expenses. This is so especially since collection of data on the vulnerabilities of business needs material, labor and time costs that are not in any way profit-oriented. Thus, we feel there exists a financial disincentive for our organization to cooperate with the DHS. This issue can further be compounded if one of our competitors decides not to be so cooperative with the government like us. Thus, the competition can possibly provide services at reduced cost than us that decide to “play ball ” (Nemeth, 2016). Last but not least Taylor Technologies would appreciate if your department pushed for our protection against proprietary and legal risk for our company. Thus, your department should come out and clearly state how you are going to protect sensitive or proprietary information which we may have to give you from time to time. Moreover, if there is a leakage of the same, it can quickly enter the public domain via social networks and potentially damage our reputation . This is a reasonable expectation because our organization’s information could be subject to such disclosures as those of wikileaks while under the custody of your department (Sauter & Carafano, 2012).
It is my hope that my report has answered all your queries and my organization is looking forward toward a very healthy and exciting partnership with yours. Thank you for taking time to write to us,. It really means a lot and we appreciate your continued support, understanding and cooperation!
- Bullock, J. A., Haddow, G. D., & Coppola, D. P. (2013). Homeland security: The essentials. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.
- Bullock, J. A., Haddow, G. D., & Coppola, D. P. (2012). Introduction to homeland security: Principles of all-hazards risk management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
- Busch, N. E., & Givens, A. D. (2014). The business of counterterrorism: Public-private partnerships in homeland security.
- Busch, N. E., & Givens, A. (2012). Public-Private Partnerships in Homeland Security: Opportunities and Challenges. Homeland Security Affairs , np.
- Bureau Justice of Assistance. (2007). Engaging the Private Sector To Promote Homeland Security: Law-Enforcement Law Enforcement-Private. New York: BJA.
- CTI Reviews. (2016). Homeland Security and Private Sector Business, Corporations Role in Critical Infrastructure Protection: Business, Business. New York: CRAM.
- Lee, E. (2015). Homeland Security and Private Sector Business: Corporations’ Role in Critical Infrastructure Protection. New York: CRC Press.
- Nemeth, C. (2016). Homeland Security: An Introduction to Principles and Practice, Second Edition. New York: CRC Press.
- Sauter, M., & Carafano, J. J. (2012). Homeland security: A complete guide. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Wolff, E. & Koenig, G. (2010). The Role of The Private Sector in Emergency Preparedness, Planning and Response. Business Litigation , p2-5.
Offered for reference purposes only.