Federal Computer Week says the Homeland Security Department wants to gauge public credibility of information DHS releases electronically in TopOff 4.
The fourth Top Officials (TopOff) exercise is intended to test the nation’s readiness to deal with a large-scale terrorist attacks. Topoff 4 will gauge how well officials react to the dropping of a “dirty bomb” and is set to hit the Rose City between Oct. 15 and 24.
The TopOff 4 exercise will be held in Portland, Oregon and Guam and follows a preliminary exercise held in June last year called TopOff 4 Command Post Exercise (TopOff 4 CPX), which involved more than 4,000 people from more than 85 federal, state, local and private industry organizations.
DHS will provide information in two formats: a live video feed and a Web site. The live feed will resemble a newscast, according to DHS, featuring interviews with public officials and other experts, while the Web site will function more like a newspaper.
TopOff is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program, and exercises are held every two years. TopOff 3, held in April 2005, involved the United Kingdom, Canada and U.S. participants. TopOff 2 involved a hypothetical attack by a radiological “dirty bomb” in Seattle and a biological attack via infectious pneumonic plague in Chicago.
In other news, the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) has developed a new top-secret network and multimedia Crisis Management System, reports Federal Computer News. It’s designed to operate in High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP), generated by a nuclear blast, which can knock out most forms of radio communications.
It was disclosed in the fiscal 2008 budget and will provide the president, cabinet secretaries, and designated agency directors and their staffs with a secure, dedicated network capable of handling full motion video, voice graphics and data at 64 fixed and mobile locations.
