Witt Associates was retained by the state of Maryland to provide technical expertise to analyze and recommend actions to enhance the Emergency Management and Homeland Security structure within the State. Witt Associates assessed the State’s level of preparedness and provided recommendations intended to help make Maryland safer and better prepared to respond to and recover from natural, man-made, and technological threats.

This significant effort involved organizing, facilitating and interviewing representatives from designated stakeholder groups in the venue of focus groups and conducting a series of conference calls with key internal and external stakeholders. Witt Associates identified key findings and developed clear and comprehensive recommendations to strengthen and/or refine the structure, organization and statutory framework for emergency management and homeland security in the State of Maryland.

The final report, presented to the Office of the Governor included a thorough explanation on how these findings emerged, provided a clear justification for each finding and details a series of recommendations on how each finding should be addressed in order to assist the State of Maryland to better prepare for, respond to and recover from an emergency or catastrophic disaster.

The assessment included the following deliverables:

• Review of the formal relationships and the assigned responsibilities of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Maryland National Guard, and the Office of Homeland Security (OHS)
• Review of the present organizational structure of MEMA, Maryland National Guard, OHS, and the Maryland State Police
• Review of the State of Maryland Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) for operational effectiveness and sustainability
• Review of all Emergency Support Function (ESF) Annexes to the State of Maryland Basic Plan against industry best practices and recommendations to strengthen the viability of the ESFs in order for them to be sustainable, operational, actionable, and flexible
• Assessment of Maryland’s current catastrophic disaster planning capabilities and recommendations for improving the long-term sustainability of Maryland’s catastrophic disaster plans
• Assessment of the Maryland’s Homeland Security Fusion Center and recommendations for improved collection, analysis and sharing of information
• Assessment of Maryland’s National Infrastructure Protection Program to facilitate efforts enhancing the current status of critical infrastructure/key resource protection including telecom, chemical industry, utilities, health, agriculture and inter-modal (rail, maritime, air, surface, transportation) infrastructure

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