Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

Text of E-Mail released today:

The primary mission of FEMA’s Integrated Public Alerts and Warning System (IPAWS) program is to provide integrated services and capabilities to local, state, and federal authorities that enable them to alert and warn their respective communities via multiple communications methods. The federal mandate is to develop, deploy, and maintain the infrastructure for aggregating emergency messages originated by federal, state, local, and tribal officials and routing them to public dissemination systems including the Emergency Alert System (EAS), the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), and others. FEMA is committed to achieving this mission.

The IPAWS Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN) will serve not only as the IPAWS Aggregator for Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) emergency messages, but also enable the interoperable exchange of other standards-compliant messaging between commercial systems. Currently, over 40 private sector companies are in various stages of developing and testing interoperable software applications compatible with IPAWS-OPEN. Many of these applications are expected to come to market over the next several months and further information about these products will be available from the Responder Knowledge Base (RKB) Website. In addition, FEMA is investigating a viable solution for an Open Source CAP authoring tool and will provide updates via the IPAWS Website.

IPAWS-OPEN will supersede the existing DM-OPEN which is scheduled for decommissioning on June 30, 2011. Concurrently, the Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) Toolset system will also be retired. All software currently connecting to the legacy DM-OPEN application must be migrated to IPAWS-OPEN 2.0 by June 30, 2011. After that time, legacy DM-OPEN will no longer be available and IPAWS-OPEN 2.0 must be utilized.

In order to focus more fully on its primary mission and make the most effective use of its resources, the IPAWS Program Office has recently completed a re-evaluation of its priorities. As a result, the decision has been made to cancel the release of the Framework incident management support tools originally planned to replace the DMIS Tools. A number of Web-based incident management systems are now widely available and emergency management practitioners are encouraged to assess their requirements and apply for grant funding assistance to meet their needs. For further information see the Interoperable Emergency Communications Grant Program (IECGP) or the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP).

We regret any inconvenience resulting from this decision. In the long-term, FEMA believes this is in the best interest of the public safety. For further information, please contact Mark Lucero at FEMA-DMIS@DHS.GOV

v/r
Mark A. Lucero
Chief, IPAWS Engineering
FEMA National Continuity Programs