The next president needs to appoint a continuity and resiliency of government commission alongside any 9/11-style investigations. That committee shall be empowered to make recommendations that Congress would pledge to introduce as legislation. Not a report, but actual /1

Legislation. Obviously, Congress can and should modify the recommendations. But @NormOrnstein sat on a commission that produced a great report that Congress sat on. The bias here should be towards action. We need to make sure that all essential government functions /2

Can operate during a climate emergency or a pandemic. Current assumptions and planning are still nuclear / terrorism focused. That’s the courts, jails, health service, executive branch, intelligence community, critical infrastructure, telecom resiliency, cyber resiliency, etc./3

A lot of the answers will be discovered as we respond to this crisis. they will come from academia, the private sector, Sillicon Valley and the government. But basic questions must be answered: how can the Bureau of Engraving and Printing print money if their guardforce is ill?

I volunteer to help the next administration figure this all out. Whomever the President is.

The CIA has a fully staffed secret COOP location. But what happens if all of the designated and delegated cadre or relocated employees are sick? What happens if chiefs of station get sick? Since we know, now, that this WILL happen again, it behooves us to think around corners.

I am not focusing on the near to medium term tracking and tracing testing needs or medical surge capacity. I’m no expert and the experts are speaking. But I’ve studied government continuity for 20 years. The biggest post 9/11 change has been physical upgrades to comms. So...

Government leaders can talk to each other relatively securely (though not over Zoom just yet.). But as a senior national security official put it to me: “so we can talk to each other. But we have no idea what happens next.” That’s the biggest lacuna in planning.

Don’t get me wrong: the NLE (exercise) programs are valuable; a lot of scenarios are modeled and solutions proposed. But the system doesn’t elevate the policy to execution or priority level because too much else is going on. That will change after this.

A lot of good people work on continuity issues. The brains are there. The ideas are there. The innovative spirit is there. But the interagency needs to prioritize this (often highly classified) part of government. If anyone has any thoughts on this, my DMs & ProtonMail R open.