Several federal agencies co-hosted a national meeting of state alerting officials in St. Louis last week.
The hosts were the Cybsersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, and the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.
According to a CISA blog post, this meeting brought together state, tribal and territorial alerting officials to talk about best practices, challenges and new alerting technologies.
The aim was to improve collaboration and partnerships. To that end, the meeting produced a call to action for alerting officials “to continue to work together to identify next steps for preparing for the future of alerting, launch future discussions and meetings, and develop resources to better support AOs nation-wide and throughout our neighboring tribal nations and communities.”
CISA quoted Antwane Johnson, director of FEMA IPAWS, saying it’s important to “ensure the federal agencies charged with supporting AWN can hear from the alerting community they serve.”
CISA is the “operational lead for federal cybersecurity and the national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience.” April marked its second annual Emergency Communications Month “to shine a light on the people who make up the emergency communications ecosystem.”
