Maintaining a CERT Program
Step 4: Maintaining Records
Words of Advice: Tips for Maintaining Records
Click on a topic to review tips from experienced CERT Coordinators:
- Track Important Information
- Reasons To Keep Good and Accessible Records
- Maintain Up-to-Date Rosters
- Stay in Communication
- Safeguard Personal Information
Stew Anderson - Natrona County, Wyoming
Track Important Information
Recordkeeping is important so that you know:
- Who has completed 100% of the basic training.
- What types of advanced training individuals have completed.
- What types of events (emergency/non-emergency) individuals want to be called out to.
- Locations individuals are willing to travel to.
The other records we keep are CERT member addresses and contact information so we know where CERT members are located.
Rachel Jacky - Portland, Oregon
Reasons To Keep Good and Accessible Records
There are operational, administrative, and political reasons to keep good and accessible records.
- Operational: During emergency operations, the teams may self-activate; however, if the sponsoring agency needs to activate the teams, it will need reliable and quick information–where the teams are, how big they are, who their contact persons are.
- Administrative: Administratively, we need to keep track of how many people have completed the training, up-to-date contact info for each participant, and information on things like advanced training they may have taken.
- Political: Finally, recordkeeping is necessary to generate statistical information for interested parties, such as elected officials, about the number of participants in different parts of the city and the growth of the program.
Joe Lowry - Memphis, Tennessee
Maintain Up-to-Date Rosters
Up-to-date rosters are a pretty important tool for team leaders, fire station captains, or anyone who needs a reliable list for contacting program participants.
Dale Kleos - Whatcom, Washington
Stay in Communication
One main reason we keep records is for communication. Accurate records are needed in order to stay in communication with the graduates. In addition, we have registered emergency workers. Keeping records allows CERT volunteers to be eligible for benefits and insurance as part of that registry.
Frank Lucier - San Francisco, California
Safeguard Personal Information
We are in the business of training and every business keeps records, especially training records. But as with any personal information, you have to get the people's permission to share their information with neighborhood team leaders. We ask the participants, before the end of each training session, if we can share their personal information with the team leaders.
We only kept data that was critical to the program–name, address, phone number, email addresses, training dates, other classes taken, special skills, team assigned to, and team position. Our City Attorney felt that keeping other information (Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, etc.) could cause some legal issues if they ever got in the wrong hands.
Bottom line is that we guarded personal information with our lives. We kept it on only one computer and this computer was not hooked up to the Internet or our internal network.