Leveraging Public-Private Partnership Models and the Free Market System to Increase the Speed-of-Execution of High-Impact Solutions throughout State and Local Governments

The real challenge for US Mayors, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and other state and local government officials is to—as a group—prioritize the unsatisfied needs/wants of their particular regions. The Interagency Office (IAO) of the Research and Development Partnership (RDP) Group of DHS S&T is well-positioned to aid all state and local government officials to place detailed operational requirements, concepts-of-operations and a conservative estimate of the potential available market (PAM) for products/services needed collectively by cities (and extended at the state level if needed). The IAO has already accomplished this for segments within the massive first responder communities throughout the United States and can assist your community as well. In an analogous way, DHS can assist city CIOs, Mayors and other officials to ensure that they work closely with the private sector through partnership models like the SECURE program to obtain the highest performance/price products and/or services at a speed-of-execution not typically seen at the local government level. This paper also summarizes a substantial collection of publications (see Bibliography) that substantiate these models as well as provides many useful templates and guides to make the SECURE process simple and easy to use.