User:Lindseywb18/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
U.S. critical infrastructure protection

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to review an article related to Critical Infrastructure Protection since I work in the field of critical infrastructure protection and it related to the policy aspect of this class. The article is relevant to the regulations and current US policie that are in place to ensure CIP is being implemetned.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section Evaluation

The lead section does include a sentence that clearly describes what the rest of the article is going to be about. It also relates a brief description of the articles major topics and objectives related to critical infrastructure protection and why it is relevant to the overall security and resiliency of the American way of life. The lead does not include information that is not presented in the article and the lead is concise and does not seem to be overly detailed.

Content

The article does a good job at describing the critical infrastructure and why it needs to be protected. The article goes over a brief history of critical infrastructure, yet it doesnt clearly define to me what CIP actually is in relation to the different departments withinto the US government such as FERC and NERC. While there does appear to be references from 2023, I think most of the information derived for this article is slightly out of date and a revision with updated information could help make this information more relevant overall. I think the drawn out parts regarding the Department of Defenses specific process is a little out of place and I think more time could have been spent on the specific sectors of critical infrastructure, their importance, and what is specifically being done to protect them by the US government.

Tone and Balance

The article started out specific to critical infrastrcutre and the protection of these sectors and assets, yet it seemed to vear off into a much broader overall perspective related to the US government and the different departments. It seemed to be a little watered down by all the other information that was thrown into this article instead of focusing specifically on critical infrastrucutre. Even the sectors that were listed do little to accurately reflect what the CISA deems as a sector of critical infrastructure and fails to delve into the specifics related to critical infrastructure and its overall protection. The writer does go into some other topics but the focus overall seem to shift to more of the inside processes of the DoD related to CIP and the article gets a bit confusing. I think the author should have created a smaller scope for the article to ensure that all aspects flowed together and conveyed a cohesive picture of critical infrastructre at a basic level along with a basic understanding of what is currently being done to protect these different sectors. The article seems to heavily rely on the position of the DoD in relation to CIP, yet there are actually many different government agencies and organizations that all work together to ensure that each different sector is ensuring they are secure against the specific threats related to their industry.

Sources and References

Most of the sources that are referenced within this article appear to be over 10 years old, as we know a lot can change in that timeframe. The sources and references should be updated and the content updated to reflect those new sources to ensure that the data being shared within this article is relavent to the industry and what is currently being done to protect critical infrastructure. So while the sources may have been relevant, they are outdated and the content is relfective of that outdated information.

Organization and Writing

The article is fairly well written, yet is a bit scattered when trying to understand the different aspects of the paper in a cohesive manner. Working in critical infrastructure, there were also sentences that led me to believe that the person writing this article does not have hands on experience to the specific sectors and how they are currently being protected. I think the beginning of the article started off good and relevant, yet quickly veared off and devulged in information that exceeded the scope of the intial context of the article. Yet, the article did not have too many misspelling and overall was easy to read.

Overall Impresions

While the article started off strong, I think limiting the scope of the article down to a more digestible aspect of CIP would allow for the reader to understand this topic in a more comphrensive manner. The deep dives into the specifics of each program, yet missing different aspect or programs within CIP, is not reflective of the current CIP enviroment. I also believe that updating the article based off of resources that are up-to-date and within at least the last 5 years, would limit the amount of older content that is no longer relevant when to CIP. I believe that with a little updating and revising to ensure the information being shared is relevant to the reader and the initial topic of CIP, this article could be a great resource to other that are looking into this topic.