The drive to fuse law enforcement and intelligence data across jurisdictional stovepipes has sparked its share of polarized discussion. Proponents tout an ambitious vision of not only seamlessly integrated counter-terror information but a new era of collaborative intelligence. Critics fear the emergence of an unaccountable police state apparatus.

In fact, as HSToday found last year in our feature The Fusion Revolution, the fusion center concept has remained a work in progress, less a unified national platform than a patchwork quilt of promising state and local initiatives. The challenge for the federal government and DHS in particular, our sources told us, was to supportively coordinate all these grass-roots efforts with existing legacy networks on the federal level.

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Last week Jack Tomarchio, Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, provided the most detailed progress report to date on the state of fusion center deployment in the US and the role DHS sees going forward in a statement before Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.

Tomarchio reported that DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis now has 23 officers deployed and serving in fusion centers around the country. “Many of you will remember how we struggled two and half years ago to get the first officer deployed to Los Angeles,” he said. “That officer and his 22 counterparts now have become the pathfinders for the way the federal government shares information and intelligence with its state, local and tribal partners – precisely what the 9/11 Commission and Public Law 110-53, Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 said we needed to do.”

The role of these officers, according to Tomarchio, is to provide their other federal, state, local, and tribal partners with the information and skills necessary to cull the best of what the fusion centers are collecting and analyzing and ensure that this information gets to the appropriate people.

Tomarchio also reported that the Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN) is now deployed in 19 fusion centers. As he put it, “HSDN enables access to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) On-line, a classified portal that maintains the most current terrorism-related information at the Secret level. HSDN also provides the fusion centers – and through them the states – with a window into the national intelligence community that they can use for their own information needs. We are working with the Department of Defense and other members of the Intelligence Community to expand the offerings available through HSDN and have received helpful support from our state and local customers in this effort.”

A further area of progress cited was streamlining of the clearance process to obtain federal information. “When I arrived at DHS from the private sector two and half years ago,” Tomarchio recalled, “ the wait time to receive even a Secret-level clearance was nearly two years and the backlog of applicants was enormous. Thanks to the efforts of the DHS and I&A Offices of Security, we have dramatically reduced the amount of time it takes to grant those clearances and nearly eliminated the backlog. The FBI also played an integral role in reducing this backlog over the last two years, especially by working with DHS to establish a reciprocal clearance process whereby security clearances for fusion center personnel are recognized by both agencies, regardless which agency issued the clearance.”

Another concrete benefit of the fostering of closer relationships with local and state fusion centers has been a sharing of analytical expertise. According to Tomarchio, “ The analytical and production (A&P) divisions provide support specifically dedicated to Critical Infrastructure Protection Assessment, CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive), Borders, Radicalization, and Demographics. Each of these divisions has developed analytical relationships with their state and local peers. As a result of these relationships we have seen a tremendous growth in the number of analytical products, sometimes carrying the seals of four and five partners. The A&P divisions have sponsored a series of analytical conferences for state and local analysts with specific topics such as Borders, CBRN, and radicalization. These conferences allow for direct interaction among DHS, other federal intelligence professionals, and their state and local counterparts. The feedback from these conferences indicate they are well received and useful to our customers.”

Another focus of DHS outreach to the fusion centers has been the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest (HS SLIC), a virtual community of intelligence analysts from across the country -- currently, 1,000 members from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and six federal departments. As Tomarchio described it, “Through the HS SLIC, intelligence analysts across the country collaborate via weekly threat conference calls, analytic conferences, and a secure Web portal for intelligence information sharing at the sensitive-but-unclassified level.”

DHS, according to Tomarchio, has developed tools for supporting information exchanges, specifically to support the fusion centers. The HSIN-Intelligence portal hosts a restricted portion for the HS SLIC and is the means for disseminating all I&A finished intelligence products. I&A also provides access to classified national security systems, such as secret telephones and the Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN). Tomarchio said, “The HSIN-Intelligence secure Web portal has fused technology with the governing business processes to ensure the proper protection of sensitive intelligence and privacy-related information; supporting and upholding federal laws and policies, as well as accommodating the laws and policies uniquely applicable to the state and local jurisdictions from which participating agencies and their assigned government officials are represented. The HS SLIC, and its enabling HSIN-Intelligence portal, enjoys robust membership and supports important analytical communications between fusion centers and the federal Government. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to the National Strategy for Information Sharing, which calls for an “information sharing framework that supports an effective and efficient two-way flow of information enabling officials at all levels of government to counter and respond to threats.”

Finally Tomarchio cited the series of national and regional fusion center conferences organized including the two most recent national conferences, in Destin, Florida, in 2007, and San Francisco, California, in February 2008. “Nearly 600 delegates attended in 2007, and we reached capacity this year at almost 900,” he said. “Staffers from this Committee were in attendance and can attest to it being the seminal information-sharing conference of state and local governments, fusion centers and their federal partners. All of this work is done jointly and again illustrates how fusion centers have set a standard in cooperation within DHS, across federal agencies and with our state and local partners.”