Enhancing Communications for the Public Safety Community
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently released comprehensive updates to the National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP) – the Nation’s roadmap to ensuring emergency communications interoperability at all levels of government.
Organizations with missions to improve public safety interoperability and communications collaborated with CISA on this effort to ensure critical firsthand knowledge of emergency communications challenges, needs, and best practices are reflected in the NECP.
CISA engaged more than 3,500 public safety representatives from Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial public safety agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other groups in revising the NECP. This process examined lessons learned from real-world incidents, results from the 2018 SAFECOM Nationwide Survey and the 2018 Nationwide Communications Baseline Assessment, and input from stakeholder groups throughout the nation to inform the Plan’s goals, objectives, and success indicators.
Key updates to the NECP include adding a cybersecurity goal, emphasizing the importance of strategic and lifecycle planning, promoting the importance of evaluating and documenting lessons learned from training and exercises, underscoring the need for coordination of communications assets and capabilities at incidents and planned events, and focusing on effective and interoperable information sharing.
To learn more about the updates to the NECP, you can participate in one of three informational webinars CISA is hosting on the following dates:
Wednesday, October 2, 2019, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm ET
Tuesday, October 8, 2019, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm ET
Wednesday, October 9, 2019, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm ET
To participate use: webinar link (for visual): https://share.dhs.gov/necp2019 and dial-in (for audio): (800) 381-7839
A copy of the updated NECP is available for download at: https://www.cisa.gov/necp and for questions on the NECP, contact: necp@cisa.dhs.gov.