Presidential Initiatives

 

Recent events have highlighted the difficulties government agencies and private-sector organizations face in providing coordinated, comprehensive, timely, and effective disaster assistance information and relief to the public. Citizens, businesses, and governments alike spend significant amounts of time collecting appropriate disaster management information.

The Disaster Management initiative uses cutting-edge information technology to improve the delivery of disaster assistance information and services by creating a single Internet-based portal to serve the public’s requirement for assistance, and the government’s requirement to provide disaster information and services. The public side of the portal is a single location where the public and private businesses can easily access disaster information and services provided by government agencies and non-governmental organizations.

The government side of the portal is a layered, secure environment that provides access to disaster information made available from government and non-governmental organizations, and the means to securely exchange sensitive information relating to disaster preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery. Government emergency managers are able to use the portal to monitor major disaster and national security events, coordinate state, federal, and private organization responses, and collaborate on damage assessments and summaries.

The Disaster Management initiative makes disaster assistance information easier to find, cuts the “red tape” for citizens to apply for disaster assistance and eliminates redundant agency processes. Disaster services providers save considerable resources and, potentially, lives. The accelerated provision of information and services to disaster victims expedites recovery, reduces government spending, speeds rebuilding and restores public confidence.

The Disaster Management initiative also provides a free incident management toolset called Disaster Management Interoperability Services or DMIS. DMIS is made up of two components. One is the basic incident management toolset that allows registered emergency management user groups to manage incidents by creating a common situational awareness and then securely sharing that information across the nation's emergency management community as appropriate. The second component is an interoperability backbone of software and hardware that allows disparate third party incident management software applications and devices to share information through a secured, open architecture platform. Emergency responders and incident managers can learn more about DMIS and its components at: https://interop.cmiservices.org/.

A third component of the Disaster Management initiative is its standards development effort. Disaster Management is facilitating the development of practitioner-driven standards for exchanging data messages within the emergency response community, providing the ability to seamlessly and securely share data across disparate information systems. By taking requirements for data exchange directly from the emergency responders, the initiative is able to provide standards which will directly improve incident response at the local, tribal, state and Federal levels. The implementation of these standards into incident management software and systems will enable responders to more quickly respond to disasters and share information that will minimize the loss of life and property.