In Depth

Interview with Tom Ridge

Former DHS leader Tom Ridge talks about the practicals of communication and collaboration

By Katherine Walsh

Did you view technology as central to preparedness before 9/11? Or did that event change your view of the intersection of IT and security?

I can’t think of a company that doesn’t use technology as its backbone for operations. So just like anything else, the first thing you do is protect the most critical thing to your operations, and that’s IT. But the business enterprise today has a nervous system in IT which is basically the sine qua non of the entire operation. Security and risk assessment of IT systems includes looking for points of access in the event of disruption, safeguarding proprietary information and protecting consumer and customer information—they are all related. I don’t pretend to be a technology expert, but I’ve known intuitively and instinctively that whenever you have an opportunity to embed technology with well-trained people around a very specific mission, you need to do it. You can’t operate any entity, large or small, this day and age without a good IT system.

How did technology affect the events on 9/11?

On 9/11 we learned that the traditional means of communications within the first responder community was inadequate. We had different communication systems that were not interoperable. One of my great frustrations six years after the event is that there has been much discussion about interoperability but very little has been done about it. The FCC has indicated they are prepared to dedicate a certain spectrum on the broadband for a nationwide public safety network. They are to be commended for their vision and foresight.... I just wonder where Congress has been for the last five or six years. One can imagine the enormous benefit of data, voice and video being available to the first responder community, not just in the event of a terrorist attack, but so many other occasions. This goes back to the sense of complacency. One of the most glaring examples has been the failure to build a national system, and it’s going to take years to get it to where it needs to be. Clearly, technology failed a lot of people on 9/11. On the flip side, the people on United 93 were able to communicate with others and learn the fate of the other three planes. Armed with that information and more courage than most people can muster, they understood their fate had been sealed; they decided this was one commercial airliner that was not going to be turned into a missile. So there was good and bad. It was good enough to inform the passengers of United 93 but not good enough for the firemen and policemen on the ground surrounding the twin towers.

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