 Hi, I'm Rick Ozzie Nelson. I'm director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Today we're fortunate to be joined by Shmendra Paul, the program manager for the information sharing environment. Shmendra's responsibilities include facilitating the sharing of information relating to homeland security, weapons of mass destruction and counterterrorism between the federal, state, local and private sector partners. Recently at CSIS we had a conference on information sharing. The keynote speaker was General Clapper, the director of National Intelligence. So Shmendra, thanks for being here today. Ozzie, thank you for having me here today and thanks to you and CSIS for hosting that wonderful event just a little while ago. You know, Shmendra, during the conference we heard a lot about, you know, the significant efforts we've made in information sharing since 9-11. What are some of the examples that you point to that demonstrate to success as the government's seen? Well, the success that I'd like to highlight is the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or NSI. NSI just codifies what police officers have been doing in their communities for over 150 years. Walking a beat, patrolling in a radio car, looking for suspicious activity, and taking action to protect the communities. We've trained over 200,000 police officers across the country in the behavior-based standards for suspicious activity reporting. Privacy policies in place across the country in the different fusion centers. It's a, in a nutshell, neighborhood watch for the nation. In addition, though, it works. Many of the disruptions that you read about in the newspaper come from either directly out of the NSI or from SAR-like activities in local police departments. Thanks, Shmendra. We also heard, though, there was, you know, some criticism as far as things we still need to do regarding information sharing and some progress that has to be made. Can you show us, demonstrate some of those areas? Yes. When you think about the challenges that face the information sharing environment or mission partners, federal, state, local, tribal, far and away the biggest challenge is the budgetary headwinds, the current financial environment. It's been pretty clear that the year since 9-11, a lot of money has gone into federal agencies run counterterrorism, homeland security type applications. So as money is cut, gee, there's actually in addition to the challenges an opportunity towards using shared services, standard approaches, virtualization, cloud computing, things like that. So it's a real challenge, but also a real opportunity. It's something that we've been focused on with our looking at standards and now moving towards procurement and strategic sourcing, leveraging those standards with our partners in the industry. Since the WikiLeaks, alleged WikiLeaks incident, there's been a renewed focus on finding the right balance between information sharing and information security. To this end, President Obama is well aware, established an executive order which established the classified information sharing and safeguarding office, and they actually located that inside the ISC, inside your office. Can you give us an update on where you are with the CISO? Yes. The government did a broad structural review post WikiLeaks, and we last year stood up and integrated CISO or the classified information sharing and safeguarding office as our part of the government's response. You know, it's important to recognize with the government's response here, there's a complete commitment to information sharing. It's a one-way street. You need to share information to support the mission, but we have to do it responsibly. Some people have talked about a trade-off between sharing and safeguarding. We don't look at it that way. Our perspective, and really it's a perspective shared across the government, is that you have to do both. Responsible information sharing is derivative of effective safeguarding. Things like improving identity management, attribute-based access control, locking down removable media, and a variety of other things that we've put into motion. The private sector plays a big role in information sharing in your efforts, and 85% of the critical infrastructure in the United States is owned by the private sector. It's been widely reported. What kind of initiatives are underway to enhance that relationship, and what's the status of those efforts? That's a great question. We absolutely have to work with our partners in the private sector. We colloquially refer to it as critical infrastructure or key resource sectors. I talked earlier about the nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. There's a big effort underway now to expand that more fully to what we refer to as our hometown partners. Fire, EMS, 911 operators, and security personnel in critical infrastructure key resource sectors. There's about 2.2 million security guards, for example, across the country. It's critical that they're fully integrated into the national information sharing architecture. So we're working through those sort of things right now. Well, Schmender, as always, it's great to see you, and for those of you that are watching, we also have all of the panels from that day, including the keynote from General Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. Schmender is Paul's more detailed conversation with him and David Shed in the White House representation, available on our website at csis.org. But as always, thank you very much for your support, Schmender, and best wishes with all of your challenges and going forward. Yeah, thank you, Ozzy. Thank you for all your support and your partnership. I'd also like to encourage your viewers to come to our website, www.isd.gov, follow us on Twitter, add, share, and protect. When you come to our site, sign up for email, alerts, read the blogs, comment if you like. And thanks again, Ozzy, for your support.