HSIN Site Admin Weekly Update

St. Thomas Gas Fire Relies on HSIN Connect for Fast, Mobile Response

When a fuel tank exploded at a gas station in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (VI), on September 14, emergency response teams used HSIN Connect and the mobile app to enable ongoing collaboration through cellular connections. “In preparation for an event such as the fuel tank fire, we set up the Multi-Threat Coordination Room in advance so that all parties involved could access the necessary information as quickly as possible,” said Wayne Bryan, director of the VI Fusion Center. “By using the Connect mobile app, everyone could access the Room and share raw data no matter their connectivity or their location.” The mobile app is available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry devices.

For more information about how HSIN Connect was used during this event, please contact HSIN Mission Advocate Tracy Carlton.

HSIN Connect: Operational Best Practices

Recently, HSIN hosted an Operational Best Practices of HSIN Connect seminar. This seminar is now available for all HSIN users to view on the HUWG Best Practices site on HSIN Central. The seminar highlighted several success stories from users in the field as well as some insights, tips and best practices, including how to set up a room to get immediate buy in from stakeholders and how to grease the skids to get mobile users to post updates from the field in chat pods.

You can view the entire seminar or the session of your choice here.

HSIN Featured in USFA InfoGram

The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) featured HSIN Program in last week’s InfoGram. The article highlighted some of the benefits of HSIN R3 and the HSIN Emergency Services site.

Tomorrow is the Big Day! HSIN R3 Launch Celebration

The time is upon us! Tomorrow is the much anticipated HSIN R3 Launch Celebration! We look forward to seeing everyone who has RSVP'd either virtually or in-person. There is still time to participate. Please send your RSVP to sarah.schwettman@hq.dhs.gov noting an in-person or virtual attendance preference.

When: September 26, 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. EST
Where: Crystal City, Virginia and via HSIN Connect
Who: All are WELCOME!
Speakers include:

• Rafael Borras, Under Secretary for Management as DHS
• Richard Chavez, Director, DHS Office of Operations Coordination and Planning
• Caitlin A. Durkovich, Assistant Secretary for DHS Infrastructure Protection National Protection and Programs Directorate
• Margie Graves, Acting Chief Information Officer, DHS Office of Chief Information Officer
• Donna Roy, HSIN Program Director
• Bill Tarry, Principal Deputy Under Secretary, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis
• Charles Werner, Chief of Charlottesville, VA, Fire Department

Training: Granting COI Access to Multiple Users

In the past, nominating and validating member access to specific COIs had to be done on an individual basis. For large groups, this process could be time consuming and tedious. New features now give nominators and validators the ability nominate and validate multiple users at the same time. To learn how to take advantage of this new capability Bulk Nomination and Bulk Validation training materials have been added to the Nomination and Validation (Nom/Val) course materials.

To download the latest Nom/Val course materials (Presentation and Quick Reference Guide), please navigate to the HSIN Training Materials Library.

A Message from the Help Desk About Outages

Our network has been experiencing a series of unexpected outages. We’re writing to let you know what we’re doing to fix the problem and how we handle outages.

Your trust is vital to the success of our network and we understand the impact an outage has on the success of your mission. Our Development Team is working around the clock to find the cause of these outages, take corrective steps, and determine preventative measures. During this process, we have beefed up our service and communications protocols to better serve you. These actions include:

• Improved Monitoring: Better monitoring means faster reaction. Over the past two weeks, we’ve raised our monitoring capabilities well beyond normal system specifications and industry standards. We are taking efforts to ensure every critical piece of hardware and software that make up HSIN will soon be under our watch.
• Faster Escalation and Resolution Times: We now have a “lower threshold” escalation process. By implementing a more comprehensive trend analysis process, when issues such as slow log on times are identified, we can react faster and engage the appropriate resources to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. The result: faster responses and faster fixes, any time of day or night.
• Better Outage Communications: An outage doesn’t usually affect all of HSIN. In fact, many HSIN services are unaffected when outages occur. We’ve improved our outage notices to clarify which services, like Connect and Jabber, continue to be available. Additionally, our Outreach Team personally calls the leads at major watch desks and operations centers, as well as affected site owners nationwide with outage notifications, progress updates, and all-clear notifications.
• Shorter Outage Windows and Later Start Times: Planned outages are a necessary part of maintaining and improving an IT system. In response to HSIN user requests, we are working to do the following:
  • Move the maintenance days and times to windows that are more convenient for most users
  • Clearly define the maintenance window to better relay the outage duration and affected services
• After Actions and Exercises: Finally, following all unplanned outages, we undertake a thorough after action reporting process, in which we conduct a team review and document lessons learned. We also have quarterly exercises to train on unplanned outage procedures. The results of these activities will be provided to all COI Owners.

Thank you for your patience and partnership. As always, your input is vital. We want to hear from you. If you observe any issues with HSIN’s performance, please email our Help Desk at HSIN.HelpDesk@hq.dhs.gov.

Changes to Communications: Your Feedback Needed

On the heels of a very successful migration, we’re looking to enhance the way we communicate and interact with you. Now is the time to figure out the best way to share information with you that you can pass on to your site users as well as keep you informed of HSIN improvements and updates. We’d like to know your thoughts on the information we’re providing you, the methods we’re using to communicate with you, and even the frequency of updates. We would also like to know how you use the updates we send and how you distribute it to your site users. In short, we want to make our communications with you useful, informative and just the way you like them. Please let us know your thoughts and feedback at HSIN.Outreach@hq.dhs.gov in the next two weeks as we start building the next stage of HSIN communications. Thanks!

HSIN Community: Appearing at a Location Near You!

• Sept 26: HSIN R3 Launch Celebration, Arlington, VA - HSIN Program Director Donna Roy
• Oct 16: Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Bethesda Monthly Breakfast Series, Bethesda, MD - HSIN Program Director Donna Roy
• Oct 22: IACP 2013, Philadelphia, PA - Tracy Hollis, HSIN Solutions Engineering Lead

Have an event you’ll be going to and want to share news about HSIN? Let us know and we’ll get the word out and/or share how it went! Please email us at HSIN.Outreach@hq.dhs.gov.

Upcoming Planned Outages

Planned outages are a necessary part of maintaining and improving an IT system. Be advised of the following, currently planned outages. Please note that planned HSIN R3 system outages are always subject to change. Final notice of an outage will always be provided by the HSIN Service Operations Team:

• Thursday, 9/26 (9:00 PM – 5:00 AM EDT)