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The InfraGard® Program and the Delivery of Value
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By Robert Schmidt
The InfraGard Program recently celebrated its 10th Anniversary. During that time, it has grown and thrived to become much more than what originally was envisioned. As with any rapidly growing organization, the program must continue to develop and enhance its value proposition if it is to long endure.
The ongoing delivery of value for the private sector participants of the FBI's InfraGard Program will rely on the private sector's ability to continue working with the FBI while simultaneously engaging a wide range of government/corporate programs, at the national and local level, to generate a value-add for InfraGard Members.
The greatest value for the FBI is realized by continuing to develop the best membership possible. The diversification of the program, to include additional government agencies, will attract high quality Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and will continue to expand the program into all areas of critical infrastructure protection. This increased base of expertise will provide the program greater penetration into areas of FBI interest and as a consequence greater value.
The Delivery of Value to the Private Sector
In the past few years, tremendous strides have been made to define and enhance the program. However, technological improvements and good corporate governance will not provide the solutions for the two important and inherently human problems associated with any public/private collaboration:
1) Gaining Trust: For a variety of regulatory, legal, and business reasons, the institutional participants of all public/private programs do not easily trust one-another.
2) Coordinating Goals: The goals of the participants in any collaboration are not necessarily “shared goals.” Obviously, all InfraGard participants are focused on securing our nation, but the methods used by the public and private sector may vary and often create a set of important, but very different goals.
The Private Sector finds the InfraGard program useful in two ways: first, InfraGard meetings represent cross-sector gatherings of FBI vetted industry professionals at 85 Chapters across the country. These gatherings provide the private sector the opportunity to share expertise in a private trusted forum. This process is tremendously valuable to individual enterprises as an infrastructure protection tool and is considered by the private sector to be the program's principle benefit. Second, the interface with the FBI represents the single best opportunity of its kind for business professionals to interact with law enforcement in a non-threatening and non-crisis environment. Private enterprise participants clearly benefit from developing personal relationships with someone from federal law enforcement.
The Private Sector can help the FBI achieve the following goals:
a) Help identify Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on a wide range of topics
b) Assist with cases for all FBI units, and decrease the nation's vulnerability to crime
c) Propagate throughout the Bureau as a valuable resource for understanding the country's critical infrastructures
Clearly, the law enforcement goals of the program and the desirable metrics that support those goals, i.e., cases initiated, cases investigated, crimes prevented, etc., often line up well with the private sector's general infrastructure protection goals. But, in some cases, law enforcement and business considerations may be at odds with one another.
The potential dichotomy of these perspectives and goals requires that we consider the use of different methods to deliver value to both sets of participants.
The InfraGard Program, similar to other Information Sharing & Analysis Centers developed in the mid to late 1990s, initially focused on encouraging proactive, high volume information sharing of sensitive information as a matter of routine between members and each other, and between members and the government. The notion that business and government would release this quantity and quality of information, absent a specific request or demonstrated need, was a commendable goal but ultimately not fully achieved by any organization.
As the program moves beyond the original information sharing paradigm, the InfraGard National Members Alliance (INMA) has discovered that the FBI vetted InfraGard membership can provide value to a wide range of government programs from FBI to TSA to the DNI's Office. In return, these government agencies can provide great value to the membership.
Currently, the INMA is engaged with FBI, DHS, DoD, state and local law enforcement, and the intelligence community to generate or take advantage of programs that will add value to the InfraGard membership. The INMA believes that the greatest value the private sector can bring to the program is the SMEs that represent the best of the private sector. To do this, the INMA must expand and enhance the program's value to current and prospective SMEs.
Ultimately, the private sector participants of the program are primarily interested in the protection of their families and their enterprises. Providing InfraGard members with access to programs across the entire spectrum of government is the only genuine way to deliver value to the highest quality SMEs. Fortunately, the new corporate structure of the program allows the INMA and its member IMAs to freely engage with all state, local, and federal agencies in addition to corporate America to discover and deliver value to the InfraGard Membership.
The Delivery of Value to the FBI
Historically, our membership value to the FBI has largely been dependent upon the InfraGard Coordinator, the level of support that the Coordinator receives from his or her Field Office, and the ability of the local membership to provide assistance. The INMA and its member IMAs seek to assist the Bureau by gathering high quality SMEs together in communities of interest that focus on the infrastructure protection issues of a particular location. However, the manner in which the FBI engages these SMEs will determine the program's value to the Bureau.
Over time, the Bureau has identified a small percentage of InfraGard Members as highly knowledgeable SMEs who also are uniquely suited to assist the FBI with a variety of cases. Many of these members have proved invaluable in this role. These results are easily accounted for with traditional law enforcement metrics. However, the vast majority of InfraGard members are useful to the Bureau as general experts on the critical infrastructures that are owned and operated by the private sector. The value of this SME consulting expertise is, currently being captured by the FBI to determine when InfraGard members help initiate or enhance cases or intelligence products. This is considerable improvement, since historically most of the data surrounding the use of InfraGard SMEs was anecdotal.
As an example, the FBI tapped my experience as an SME long before I ever became aware of the InfraGard Program. Several years ago an FBI Agent, a former law school classmate of my wife's, who knew that I had spent most of my career in the commodities and options business asked me a question over dinner: “What is a Grain Elevator?” I drew diagrams on a napkin, illustrating how wheat in the field becomes WheatiesÆ on your breakfast table, making clear the role of a Grain Elevator. We talked a bit about how operators of Grain Elevators make money and the meaning of an “Elevator Receipt.” We did not discuss any specific business entity or any pending legal action of any kind. Some months later, the FBI raided and closed a large Grain Elevator operation in northern Illinois. To this day, I do not know if the two are related. What I do know is that the 20 minutes we spent at dinner saved this Agent several hours if not days of research to understand a process that was already well understood by a trusted private sector SME.
This kind of interaction had been difficult to quantify and consequently was difficult for the Bureau to evaluate. However, this SME concept is not lost on the FBI nor is it lost on the Director of National Intelligence's Office (DNI). In his address at the InfraGard National Members Alliance Conference this year Eliot Jardines, Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source made it clear that the DNI believed that the intelligence community needed to radically change the priority that is afforded open-source intelligence. Traditionally, it may have been the case that the intelligence community addressed problems from the top down. That is to say that they contacted their top secret sources first, followed by their secret sources, and so on, until finally, if they had not answered their question, they were forced to consult open source material. There is reason to believe in this day and age that more often than not the answer was in the open all along. To some degree law enforcement can risk falling into the same trap of believing that the most worthwhile source is a clandestine one. I am convinced, however, that by starting with open source material and seeking SMEs to interpret the material, the intelligence and law enforcement communities can make progress without the burden of dealing in a classified environment.
Conclusion
InfraGard's value to the FBI is dependent upon the quality of SMEs that the private sector can bring to the table; reliant on the Coordinator's relationship with his or her private sector participants; and a function of the cross pollination of the program across all FBI equities.
The delivery of value for the private sector participants will rely on the INMA and IMAs ability to engage a wide range of government and corporate programs to generate a value-add proposition for the InfraGard Membership.
Robert Schmidt is president of the InfraGard National Members Alliance.
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