300 words or less.

Discussion BOARD Unit 5: The field of homeland security is quite interdisciplinary, and advanced technologies are used to communicate intelligence to various local, state, and federal agencies. Fusion centers are often the conduits through which information to first responders in the field is disseminated.

If you were the senior leader of a fusion center, what challenges do you foresee your staff could face when using newly released technologies to aid first responders? Do you think public opinion could add to these challenges? As the leader, how would you address these challenges?

Answer preview

The Department of Homeland Security uses fusion centers to detect and stop terrorism and criminal activity as well as carry out counternarcotics activities. They believe that the fusion centers are capable of facilitating intelligence gathering on all crimes. As a senior leader of a fusion center, the immediate challenges employees face while dealing with new technologies is the difficulty in dealing with them. Software developments increase in their sophistication after each major change. This makes it lose the previous user-friendly ability they had causing difficulty in relaying the information to first responders. This makes all staff undergo training sessions every time the software changes. This causes a form of delay in intelligence monitoring and creates possible scenarios where vital information might be missed. Staff also face challenges through the overwhelming information the new systems capture. New technology combs through the world in a much faster and efficient way often bombarding the analysts with too much information (Lewandowski, Carter, & Campbell, 2017).  (331words)