ELECTED OFFICIALS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NIMS 
The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was published by the Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2004.  It provides a comprehensive and consistent national approach to all-hazard incident management at all jurisdictional levels and across all functional emergency management disciplines.     
Since most incidents occur and are handled by local government, the support of elected and appointed officials in the NIMS implementation process is crucial to the nation's success in preventing, preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters – regardless of their cause.  
The benefit of NIMS is especially evident at the local level, when the entire community prepares for and provides an integrated response to an incident.  Elected and appointed officials need to be involved in all aspects of NIMS implementation to include the following: 
*     Adopt NIMS at the community level for all government departments and agencies and encourage NIMS adoption and use by associations, utilities, non-government organizations and the private sector.   
*     NIMS should be adopted through executive order, proclamation, resolution, or legislation as the jurisdiction's official all-hazards, incident response system. 
The NIMS necessitates the use of the Incident Command System, the multi-agency coordination systems and a public information system.  All these command and management systems rely on the direct involvement of elected and appointed officials in a community during an incident. 
When implementing NIMS, all emergency plans and SOPs must incorporate NIMS components, principles and policies, including emergency planning, training, response, exercises, equipment, evaluation, and corrective action plans.  Elected and appointed officials of a community need to be directly involved in these NIMS preparedness elements, especially when the community exercises its emergency management policies, plans, procedures and resources. 
Jurisdictions will be required to meet the FY 2006 NIMS implementation requirements as a condition of receiving federal preparedness funding assistance in FY 2007.  However, it is important to recognize that the NIMS is a dynamic system, and the doctrine as well as the implementation requirements will continue to evolve as our emergency management capabilities nationwide change based on the hazards and threats of the nation. 
The NIC strongly recommends that elected and appointed officials complete IS-700 NIMS: An Introduction and ICS-100: An Introduction to ICS training courses. They are available online at: http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/IS/crslist.asp
 
Supersedes Fact Sheet, Elected Officials, What You Need to Know About NIMS, dated Dec. 2005 
 
 
###