Collaboration suite to help secure tonight's Bush-Kerry debate

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Secret Service and a throng of state and local police and emergency management officials in Missouri will for the first time tonight use a customized Microsoft-based collaboration portal to share security information during the second presidential debate between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry.
The system, known as the E-Sponder portal, was designed by St. Louis-based Convergence Communications LLC for the Missouri Department of Homeland Security. The $1 million portal, which wasn't scheduled to go live at the Missouri DHS until Nov. 1, is based on the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, with extensive .Net customization and custom Microsoft Web components.
Convergence's E-Sponder "is based 100% on our .Net framework that enables interaction and collaboration between agencies," said Tom Richey, director of Microsoft Corp.'s homeland security business line. The system relies on a secure network infrastructure backed up by an on-site server as well as a server located at the state's homeland security operations center.
The system will be responsible for handling more than 1,400 security-related activities such as assigning officers or checking out threats during the debate, which is being held at Washington University in St. Louis, said Rob Wolf, CEO of Convergence.
Officials said the network backbone remains hard-wired and closed off from the public Internet. The level of security required by a presidential visit almost immediately nullified any use of wireless or the public Internet.

Tom Richey, director of Microsoft Corp.'s homeland security business line

A unified command center has been established that consists of 25 workstations, with each workstation assigned to a functional group, such as the local police and fire and rescue teams as well as the Secret Service and the FBI. The workstations each run Microsoft Explorer 6.0 and Office 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Prior to the activation of the command center, the user groups were integrated into the portal sites using InfoPath Forms, which are hard-copy forms that police officers and government agencies are accustomed to working with. The forms were also used to create the look and feel of the portal.



"For example, if, on the day of the debate, an officer is instructed to close down a street at 10 a.m., that information is now directed to the officer via an electronic InfoPath form that had been created and approved through our system," said Wolf. "Once the task has been completed and approved by the officer's superior, the information is automatically sent to and documented within the portal."
Wolf also said that a second Web module was