DHS updated their 2008 Chemical Sector Security Summit web page today. There is now a link to a second page, the Summit Presentations Page. That page contains links to .PDF copies of some of the presentations made at the summit.
Chemical Sector Summit Presentations
There are only links to seven presentations on the new page, much fewer than were actually presented at the conference. Since many of the presentations were made by people not affiliated with the Federal Government, there may have been difficulties getting the necessary releases to post all of their presentations on this web site.
The presentations provided do come from a couple of government agencies (DOT, DHS, and Coast Guard) with the Coast Guard having the widest representation. There is even a presentation from a chemical company, the Potash Corporation. Here is a complete list of the presentations listed on the web site:
- Captain Mark O'Malley, The Marine Transportation Security Act (MTSA) of 2002 & the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS)
- Captain Mark O'Malley, Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) and the 33 CFR Subchapter H Update Project
- Robert Ross, There are so Many Information Protection Rules: PCII, CVI, SSI, SAFEGUARD
- Katherine Sinniger, How is SSI Used by the U.S. Coast Guard
- Meghan Ludtke, Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program
- Deborah Allen, Training
- Wade Townsend and J. Travis Walker, CFATS Inspections Process
Limitations of PowerPoint® Presentations
It is quite obvious that all of these presentations were produced as PowerPoint® slides before they were converted to .PDF files. This means that the ‘presentations’ posted to this web site are really just the outlines not the actual presentations. There is some valuable information provided in those outlines, but the meat of the presentation is missing.
It would have been more interesting and informative if there had been audio files posted with these ‘presentations’ so that we could have heard what the presenters had to say. It would have been even better if the presentations had been web cast live. This would have allowed the presentations to have reached an even wider audience. Copies of the web cast could have been posted to the site for a more permanent record of the proceedings.
Perhaps next year, DHS will bring their information sharing technology up to the standards of the 21st century. A web cast or even a podcast of the presentations would provide much more information to the vast number of people connected with chemical facility security that could not make it to the physical event. Heck, even Congressional Hearings are web cast.
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