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Ongoing Management and Maintenance

The mechanism to ensure the ongoing management and maintenance of NIMS is a requirement of Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-5. The directive required the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a multijurisdctional, multidisciplinary NIMS Integration Center. The center is designed to support both routine maintenance and continuous refinement of the system and its components over the long term.

The center will include mechanisms for direct participation from and/or regular consultation with other Federal departments and agencies; State, local, and tribal incident management entities; emergency responder and incident management professional organizations; and private-sector and nongovernmental organizations. State and local departments of transportation can offer the incident management expertise necessary to ensure the success of the center. More importantly, without the participation of the DOTs, it is very likely that the ongoing management and maintenance of NIMS will not be complete. As the subject matter experts on the transportation aspects of incident management, departments of transportation are critical to the continuous refinement of the system.

To become more comfortable with how best to manage and maintain NIMS is to be familiar with successful mitigation examples. FEMA's Mitigation Best Practices Portfolio offers the reader best practices as agencies sough to protect both people and property from devastating losses. In its Best Practices portfolio, Case Studies, and Mitigation Best Practices. As you review these best practices, please consider sharing the measures your transportation department has undertaken to prevent losses in your community. As much as the transportation community can learn from their emergency management partners, one way to re-enforce transportation's role in emergencies is to share the transportation successes stories with these partners.