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New Jersey to Test Cooperation in Homeland Security

Businesses, state agencies will create public/private partnerships that will focus on anti-terrorism measures.

TRENTON, N.J. -- New Jersey will serve as a pilot program in which government and business work together to plan and prepare public/private responses to terrorist attacks, Gov. James McGreevey said this week after a meeting with General Charles Boyd, president of Business Executives for National Security (BENS).

BENS, a national non-partisan organization, created the New Jersey Business Force to develop and implement the pilot program.

McGreevey said the New Jersey Business Force has begun its work by identifying three areas in which the public and private sectors can work together:

- The Office of Emergency Management and New Jersey businesses will create a Web based information system, the Business Response Network, that connects emergency management personnel to needed resources -- including goods, equipment, volunteers and facilities -- quickly and effectively during a catastrophic event.

- The Department of Health and Senior Services and the Office of Emergency Management will provide business volunteer training in areas such as collecting health care data and performing damage assessment.

- An effective distribution plan for the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile "push packs" will require coordination between the National Guard, state agencies and the private sector companies. Each will play a role in transporting and repackaging the bulk supplies for quick distribution to health care sites.

"The New Jersey Business Force will implement three new programs each year," McGreevey said. "It will also manage all programs it has implemented in prior years."

The NJBF will work closely with government and business leaders to select programs that are both of high priority and feasible to implement and will monitor existing homeland security efforts to create programs in New Jersey that will complement them.

NJBF staff will work with the Department of Law and Public Safety (including the Office of Counter-terrorism, the Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force and the Office of Emergency Management), the Department of Health and Senior Services and other relevant state agencies.

They will also seek input from FEMA, Red Cross and other federal agencies and first responder organizations.

"America needs effective public/private partnerships to develop a proactive counter-terrorism plan designed to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from potential terrorist activities," McGreevey said.