Mayor's Technology Summit:
Homeland Security, Safety and Economic Development
About the Summit
Nearly two years after 9-11, are American cities any better prepared to handle terrorist attacks then they were on September 10, 2001?
At a major national conference on Thursday-Friday, July 17-18, in San Francisco, mayors and other government officials, academic experts, and technology leaders from across the country will examine this and many other questions surrounding the state of homeland security during the Mayor's Technology Summit: Homeland Security, Safety and Economic Development, jointly hosted by San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., and the Center for Competitive Government at Temple University’s Fox School of Business and Management.
Fresh on the heels of the highly controversial Council on Foreign Relations' Independent Task Force Report on Emergency Responders asserting that the U.S. is grossly unprepared for another terrorist attack, the Mayor's Summit will explore how public-private partnerships can work effectively to ensure better preparedness.
Homeland security issues influence everything we do. Our civic leaders, especially
in America’s major cities, are now faced with the greatest challenge of doing more with
less,
says M. Moshe Porat, dean of The Fox School. Through this Summit, our goal
is to engage leaders from the public and private sectors and demonstrate, through
leading-edge research and best practices, the capabilities of technology as a conduit
for coping with these issues.
The Council's report cites the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's severe under-funding of state and local governments' emergency response training systems, which are expected to spend $26 to $76 billion during the next five years. The task force is calling for an additional $98.4 billion, an amount the Department of Homeland Security contends is overstated.
Effective homeland security is placing substantial cost pressures on local
governments at a time when traditional revenue sources are static or shrinking,
states
Simon Hakim, director of the Center for Competitive Government at Temple's Fox School.
Technology and innovative management can help mayors provide services more
effectively and more efficiently and offer basic solutions to longer-term problems.
The Mayor's Summit will showcase the best practices
of mayors and technology
executives who are pioneering technologically innovative projects. The Summit will also
serve as a forum for discussion between the public and private sectors to explore
effective cost-saving systems through the implementation of e-government technologies.