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GCN Home > 04/17/06 issue

Agencies shore up as hurricane season looms

With '05 problems still fresh, FEMA, others vow to improve info sharing

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

This hurricane season, things will be different, federal officials are promising. For one thing, information sharing will improve, they say: from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s use of the Global Positioning System to track the flow of food, water, medical supplies and other important items, to weekly meetings of law enforcement officials across all levels of government.

“Part of our FEMA retooling [a plan initiated in December] includes looking at logistics, situational awareness and emergency communications,” said FEMA CIO Barry West. “We want to get information to the right people, better link [Department of Homeland Security] entities and coordinate how the information will flow and who will work with whom.”

Justice Department CIO Vance Hitch told lawmakers during a recent House Government Reform Committee hearing that federal, state and local organizations have made disaster planning a part of their routine. “We have weekly cross-government meetings to develop concept of operations, and we have technology to share information more effectively,” he said.

Better communications
For FEMA, better communications starts internally and extends to all levels of government.

West said the situational awareness plan should be ready by June 1 and will include a revised set of policies and procedures, possibly some collaboration software and videoconferencing capabilities, to ensure everyone is familiar with command-and-control processes.

The GPS logistics system, which FEMA is using in the Atlanta and Fort Worth, Texas, regions, will give officials real-time tracking capabilities for commodities go-ing to disaster victims.

“That is something we haven’t had before and it has been an issue for us,” West said. “It will help for preplanning and staging.”

FEMA hired Stratix Corp. of Norcross, Ga., in September under a $6.2 million contract to develop the system.

Additionally, West said the National Emergency Management Information System can now handle more than 200,000 registrations a day, up from 107,000 at its peak last year and 60,000 two years ago.

West’s office switched most of its servers to the Linux operating system and upgraded FEMA’s routers and switches so they are IP Version 6-ready. NEMIS also will move its databases to Oracle 10g later this year, West added.

And with less than 60 days until the next hurricane season starts, Congress is paying close attention to how agencies are applying the lessons of last summer.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Mobile & Wireless, Management, IT Management



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