Infrastructure plans delivered on time.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Briefs - Brief article

The Department of Homeland Security, with the help of its private sector and federal agency partners, met its year-end deadline to pull together 17 plans to guard resources vital to the nation's security and economy, according to a senior DHS official.

DHS delivered the National Infrastructure Protection Plan last summer, two and a half years after a presidential directive called for the department to formulate a strategy to dearly define the responsibilities for federal, state, local governments and the private sector in protecting critical infrastructure and key resources.

After finally delivering the plan, DHS gave representatives of the industries and federal agencies only six months to come up with sector specific plans.

Those were completed, as promised, at the end of December, said Robert Stephan, DHS assistant secretary for infrastructure protection.

"We have very good, tight organizational networks now," he said at a Surface Navy Association conference.

The 17 sectors included such...