National Credentialing Working Group

People are the 'critical success factor' in well-managed emergencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been working with health care, fire, law enforcement, public works, public health, animal emergency and other disciplines to help clarify some of the basic qualifications responders should possess. These skills contribute to the success of dealing with an emergency when personnel are deployed and serving 'interstate'.

Congress picked up on FEMA's efforts under NIMS Guide 0002 (March 2007) and asked the agency to create a credentialing system for use within the U.S. FEMA linked arms with Cabezon Group to help to facilitate the efforts of a national working group of experts focused on making recommendations about the implementation steps, the basic guidance and the outreach efforts to move the nation forward, and improve the number of people qualified for interstate deployments under the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Credentialing capabilities help get qualified people to work as soon as possible when a major disaster strikes.

This highly visible project moved rapidly through its formative stages in a well-planned and executed effort led by the Working Group chairman, Jerry Ostendorf, and with Cabezon Group's assistance. Committees and task groups debated issues, reviewed research papers as well as drafts of memos and reports that all came together on time to assist FEMA. The project team handled policy matters and complex assessments of the issues, strategic planning of the implementation steps, and management of a secure online collaboration team site within SharePoint. All this was done while Cabezon Group deftly organized and managed all the logistics that allowed the Members of the Working Group to focus on accomplishing its tasks, on time and under budget.

Success is best gauged by objective measures, and in this case, FEMA was able to use the input from the national working group to help it fashion proposed guidance issued by it in the Federal Register to aid in the creation of a credentialing effort across the U.S.

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