Saturday, October 22, 2016

US Elections System as Critical Infrastructure?

What is "Critical Infrastructure?"

According to the US Department of Homeland Security "Critical Infrastructure" includes those assets, systems, and networks whether physical or virtual, that are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.

Presidential Policy Directive-21 (PPD-21), "Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience," identifies 16 critical infrastructure sectors.  These sectors include:

  • Chemical Sector
  • Commercial Facilities Sector
  • Communications Sector
  • Critical Manufacturing Sector
  • Dams Sector
  • Defense Industrial Base
  • Emergency Services Sector
  • Energy Sector
  • Financial Services Sector
  • Food and Agriculture Sector
  • Government Facilities Sector
  • Healthcare and Public Health Sector
  • Information Technology Sector
  • Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste Sector
  • Transportation Sector, and 
  • Water and Wastewater Sector

What About the US Elections System/Sector?

In the news these past six weeks there has been an elevated discussion regarding the US election system and whether or not it should be identified as "Critical Infrastructure" and thus protected in the same way and means as the other 16 identified infrastructures.  This is aggravated by Mr. Trump questioning the integrity of the US election system and elevated concerns raised by the media that our country's enemies may take action to negatively impact the results of the voting on Tuesday, November 8th.

In early August, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, observed:


"There's a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others as critical infrastructure."  However ... 
 "There's no one federal election system. There are some 9,000 jurisdictions involved in the election process," Johnson said. (Link)

So, Johnson's perception is that there is no single "Election Infrastructure Sector" per se and it may be challenging to quickly and effectively identify it as "Critical Infrastructure."

I even heard of this issue at a recent conference held by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) where a "new" critical infrastructure sector could be the US election system.

With some investigation by this writer, an article published on September 13, 2016, in Fedscoop, was located noting DHS Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity, Andy Ozment, said that DHS will not classify election systems as critical infrastructure before the November 2016 presidential election.

Ozment's quote continued:

"This is not something we're looking to in the near future.  This is a conversation we're having in the long term with state and local government, who are responsible for voting infrastructure.  We're focused right now on what we can usefully offer that local and state government will find valuable.

"From our perspective, it gives us more ability to help.  It does not put DHS in charge."

It will be fascinating to see how this conversation progresses -- especially if Mr. Trump's noisy questioning of the integrity of the voting process continues through and after the presidential election.

At a minimum, perhaps the "Election System Sector" could be included under the auspices of the "Government Sector" Critical Infrastructure designation rather than adding "Number 17."

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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Review - WEF Global Competitiveness Report

This September 2016 the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its annual Global Competitiveness Report 2016-17.  This report is almost 400 pages of a fairly comprehensive analysis of each country in the world and its relative competitiveness based on 12 separate factors (shown below):




And based on these 12 factors, the factors themselves are broken down into key elements for:

  • Factor-Driven Economies
  • Efficiency-Driven Economies, and
  • Innovation-Driven Economies
For instance Institutions and Infrastructure are key "Basic" requirements necessary for an economy to thrive and compete.

The WEF analysis then used these factors to ascertain the competitiveness of a country relative to the rest of the world as well as to its geographic region in many cases.  For instance, the top 10 most competitive countries using this methodology are:

And the bottom 10 are:

Infrastructure Factor

The elements reviewed to calculate each factor are listed in the "Technical Notes and Sources" section at the end of the report.  Since this blog is focused on infrastructure there is interest on the elements included in this calculation.  These include the following:

  • Quality of overall infrastructure
  • Quality of roads
  • Quality of railroad infrastructure
  • Quality of port infrastructure
  • Quality of air transport infrastructure
  • Available airline seat kilometers
  • Quality of electricity supply
  • Mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions
  • Fixed telephone lines
At first glance, this list is missing such elements as fresh/potable water supply, food availability and distribution, etc.  However, the "Technological Readiness" factors include the following that could be considered part of the strength of a country's infrastructure:

  • Availability of latest technologies
  • Firm-level technology absorption
  • Foreign Direct Investment and technology transfer
  • Internet users
  • Fixed broadband Internet users
  • Internet bandwidth
  • Mobile broadband subscriptions

Conclusion

As usual, the quality and content of this report are very good.  It is compelling and interesting and a useful reference for country policy development.

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