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Today, Harvey Molotch and Noah McLain gave a talk entitled "Learning From the Subway: How to Do Security For Example" at Columbia Sociology. Based on 100+ hours of ethnographic research conducted by McLain in the New York subway system, Molotch and McLain made an argument argument for a notion of security that extends beyond counter-terrorism measures. They emphasized the inefficiency of the security measures imposed from top such as FEMA and DHS and argued for security measures that will improve regular use conditions and that can also be used under emergencies, such as a better ventilation system. Furthermore, their focus was also on how in everyday practices the subway personnel bent the formal rules to keep the subway running safe and efficiently. With a Latourian emphasis on the agency of objects, they demonstrated how the personnel found new ways of dealing with the pressing practical everyday problems of operating a subway system. One thing that was interesting was to see how a contradiction between different logics of security emerged in the case of the subway. Even though their analytical distinction between safety and systems security was a poor one, they tried emphasizing this distinction with a bias towards safety. I would argue that the weakest aspect of their work seems to be related to the vantage point through which they conducted the research and the modal order of their analysis. Since they conducted ethnographic research in the subway system, they focused on the safety problems that the personnel faced on everyday basis. From this vantage point, they also witnessed the pressure exerted onto these people from top, i.e. FEMA, DHS and the city council. By taking the perspective of the social, they criticized the absurdity of some of the security measures, such as the survailence system with thousands of cameras or the alarmed doors that are not connected to any other centralized alarm system. They simply dismissed the systems aspect of security as a 'myth' and a 'ceremony' that under the bureaucratic hierarchy of command and control one had to perform. Following this argument, they identified DHS utilizing the ideology of 'command and control'. Their perspective also did not allow them to appreciate the role of external consulting agencies who are commissioned for developing subway security systems. When I asked about the role of OR and systems analysis in this process, in the talk the answer was a simple no, but then after the talk when a professor insisted on my point with a surprise that OR would not be involved, McLain admitted that outsourced consultants with military backgrounds (such a coincidence...) were involved. Finally, as you might have already guessed their analysis was at the first order and they seem to see those consultants as competitors in a sense... For this reason, their analytical categorization was weak. What was interesting to see was, even though they did not qualify it in these terms, safety meant minimizing the perverse effects of the risks due to the practices that are necessary for operating a system in an efficient manner. Clearly, this was a local concern and the personelle had to improvise for achieving the optimum system, which involved putting themselves under risk. Security, on the other hand, was located at the aggregate level and this locatioinality meant that it did not necessarily fitted well with the logic of safety. Often times security logic seemed from a local vantage point absurd and meaningless, if not problematic for operating the subway system. Since their research was focused at the subway system itself, they did not have data regarding this aggregate level. But one might speculate subway security has to do with systems vulnerability and not safety.

In October Dale posted on the release of the National Response Framework (NRF), which at the time was roundly criticized both because it did not give adequate power to FEMA administrators (a major issue during Katrina and Rita response) and because it was weak on specifics and failed to take into account criticism from the emergency management community. At a press conference yesterday a revised NRF was released. And the response has been dramatically more positive thus far. The International Association of Emergency Managers, which derided the original NRF as a "public relations document" that lacked any usable specifics praised the new NRF. Russ Decker, the First Vice President of IAEM said in a press release that:

We are extremely pleased with the final National Response Framework (NRF) product. It is apparent that our counterparts in Washington were listening and genuinely interested in addressing the issues raised by local emergency managers. As result of the improved process, we believe the NRF is a document that local emergency managers will find very useful. This is the greatest compliment a local official can give a Federal document. We get many documents from Washington that go on a shelf, but this one will actually be used. We appreciated being included in the process and look forward to a continued dialogue on this and other issues.

More on this, no doubt, in days to come. But at least in this area it looks like DHS has finally gotten a bit more serious about distributed preparedness. The full range of documents DHS released yesterday can be found here.