Center of Excellence

A host of small, innovative companies are hoping to capture the expanding fingerprint identification business by offering alternatives to US-VISIT, the border screening system that critics charge can let terrorists evade detection.
The problem with the US-VISIT entry-exit system, deployed to verify the identities of foreign travelers arriving in the United States, is that it relies on two-print scanners that do not provide enough information to match fingerprints against Justice Department terrorist watch lists, Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, the ranking member on the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge last month.
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The Washington State Emergency Management Department has entered into a contract with the
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to provide five awareness-level courses to all emergency responders between September 2004 and March 2005. The five courses will be delivered completely online through WashingtonOnline Virtual Campus (WAOL), which is a collaborative online service of the community and technical colleges.
Find out more about this program.

WashingtonOnline Virtual Campus (WAOL VC) is a function of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges that provides online training, online hosting services and enrollment management services to the 34 community and technical colleges in Washington. The project was conceived in 1997 as an efficiency in online course development and delivery and is one of the few successful statewide online consortiums in the United States.

WAOL VC, as an agent of the community and technical colleges, can provide all requirements of this statement of work.
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In the first quarter of 2003, the Training Subcommittee of the Committee on Terrorism (COT), later to become the Committee on Homeland Security (CHS), was exploring methods to reach the 101,000 emergency responders who are required to respond to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Terrorism Incidents. The current system of classroom instruction trains about 3,000 students per year. Development and institutionalizing of an on-line training system provides the coverage needed to reach the emergency response communities across the state.

In March of 2003, a new concept was brought before the Training Subcommittee to develop a Washington Homeland Security Institute, encompassing all current campuses that instruct courses for emergency responders and an on-line campus to reach the volunteer and other emergency responders who are not able to travel to training. This concept was approved by the Training Subcommittee and the COT.
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