Progress in Developing the National Asset Database

State officials had little knowledge about the first data call, and did not knowthat it resulted in lists of assets that were included in DHS’ national assetinventory. In fact, officials were repeatedly surprised to learn about theexistence of another batch of assets from their state in the NADB. One stateofficial remarked that the list should be deleted. DHS did not appear to havecommunicated its intentions to add those assets to the NADB. State officialssaid they would seek clarification from IP as to their respective total numberof assets in the NADB. One state official commented that he was told byDHS that the data was in the NADB because DHS needed to begin preparinga prioritized list of national critical infrastructure and it was going to use thisinformation if states did not adequately respond to the 2004 data call.Since we began monitoring the development of the NADB, IP officials haveasserted that the older data was of low quality and that they had little faith init. They claimed not to know what criteria ODP used. 27 We received scantinformation detailing those criteria. However, based on the origins of thedata, the subjective criteria used, the process used to collect the data, thestates’ lack of knowledge, and in some cases denial of those lists, IP shouldexamine the data to identify those assets that other sources find insignificant.It should receive cooperation from state officials, who said definitively thatthey want to have more input on their assets in the NADB.July 2004 Data Call Included Some Curious AssetsThe July 2004 data call was significantly more organized and achieved betterresults than the previous data call. IP provided sector-specific parameters tohelp states identify the assets it wanted and encouraged states to submit anyasset they thought was important (see Appendix E). IP expected states wouldvalue sectors differently, and states did arrive at different conclusions aboutwhich assets, and how many, were nationally significant. Their responses alsovaried because of a lack of understanding of critical systems on a nationallevel. States that pursued every asset thought to be a potential target mayhave submitted assets that are not in fact nationally significant.Although it generated more relevant assets, the 2004 data call includednoticeable out-of-place assets, especially among those assets designated asnon-nationally significant (see Table 2). We examined in more detail theNADB’s list of assets for Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Maryland (we visited27 ODP officials provided evidence that they collaborated with infrastructure protection officials during the stateassessments and both organizations prepared the criteria.Progress in Developing the National Asset Database12