Why dissemination is the hard number to report
Fusion centers report to several audiences at once: the annual DHS fusion center assessment, the state administrative agency that manages Homeland Security Grant Program funds, a governance board, and command staff. Each one wants evidence that the center's products are reaching partners and being used.
Counting what a center produced is easy. Counting what reached people is not, because most dissemination still happens through email distribution lists. Email tells you a message left the building. It does not tell you who opened it, which partner agencies are engaged, or which ones have gone silent.
Measures worth tracking
Output
Products published in the period, broken down by type, classification or handling caveat, priority, and audience.
Reach
How many distinct people and partner agencies opened each product, not just how many were sent it.
Engagement
Opens, read time, and how far readers got through a product. A two-second open is not the same as a read.
Partner coverage
Which agencies, sectors, and regions are engaged, and which have stopped reading and need outreach.
Responsiveness
Tips received and referrals made to outside agencies, with their pending and completed status.
Customer value
Direct reader feedback on which products were useful, to set beside the reach numbers.
How RAID records it
RAID delivers products inside the platform, so delivery and readership are recorded as a side effect of normal use. Nobody has to fill in a tracking spreadsheet.
Executive Summary
A one-page rollup for any date range (7 days, 30 days, the current quarter, year to date, or custom). It shows products published by classification, priority, and community; the most-read products; email delivery and daily-briefing open rates; tips received and agency referrals; and engagement totals including unique viewers, average read time, and scroll depth.
Reports with CSV export
Per-user engagement, per-community performance, and a platform summary, each filtered by date range and exportable to CSV for your own charts or a grant workbook.
Engagement by agency
Statistics break session and read time down by the reader's email domain, which in practice maps to partner agency. That answers "which partners are using our products?" directly.
Reader feedback
Readers can mark a product as insightful. Those reactions are counted per product, per community, and per user, alongside opens and read time.
Turning the numbers into a narrative
- Pick a fixed period that matches the reporting cycle, such as a fiscal quarter or the assessment year, and pull every figure for that same range.
- Lead with reach, not volume. "312 products opened by 1,140 people across 86 agencies" says more than "312 products issued".
- Show coverage gaps honestly. Naming the partners you are working to re-engage demonstrates active management, which reviewers value.
- Pair numbers with one or two outcomes. Engagement data shows a product was read; a short account of what a partner did with it shows it mattered.
Common questions
Does RAID submit anything to DHS or our state administrative agency?
No. RAID gives you the figures. Your center decides what to report and submits it through the usual channels.
Can we see who read a specific product?
Yes. RAID records readership for each product and each recipient, which also supports dissemination records and follow-up with partners who have not opened a time-sensitive product.
What about products sent before we moved to RAID?
Metrics start when products are published in RAID. Many centers run RAID alongside email for a short period, then report on RAID from the next full cycle. See email distribution lists vs. RAID.