Basic Practices: Aiding High-Performance Homeland Security Regional Partnerships

Abstract

One national priority under the National Preparedness Goal is collaborative geographic regional approaches. This article identifies several basic practices intended to facilitate forming and sustaining a high-performance partnership that should be useful for these collaborative approaches. These practices draw on collaboration, coordination, partnership, and performance management literature and reports. The practices are in two categories: strategic and enabling. The strategic practices value and justify the partnership. Strategic practices are (1) implementing a formal regional partnership; (2) assessing the value and content of a regional partnership on an ongoing basis; and (3) defining and articulating a common mission and specific regional partnership strategic outcomes. The enabling practices support developing, implementing, and sustaining the partnership. Enabling practices are (1) having leadership to champion commitment to a regional partnership and high-performance; (2) crafting the regional partnership's organizational infrastructure and norms to perform effectively; (3) developing joint regional strategic goals, objectives, measures, and strategies across regional jurisdictions to accomplish the strategic outcomes; (4) providing resources from both joint and individual regional partner sources to initiate and sustain the regional goals, objectives, and related strategies; and (5) setting a regional partnership performance management system for outcomes and individual performance management systems to reinforce partnerships. The practices are intended to serve as aids as jurisdictions enhance current regional arrangements or build new ones. They might be considered the base set on which to build or assess regional homeland security approaches. The article also points to additional avenues of research, such as criteria to form a geographic region, dealing with 'free rider' partners, and specific homeland security partnership skills and capabilities.