California Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) Training

The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) and the California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) have revised the next generation Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) course to create a balance between learning exercise methodology and using Web-based toolkit activities to plan and develop exercises.

The revised HSEEP training course is a four-day, interactive course with computer-based activities that maximize use of the HSEEP Toolkit. The course is focused on hands-on, toolkit activities that provide participants with valuable practice and training. The course also allows participants to use their own jurisdictional information to complete course activities, making the material more relevant.

The course includes:

• 24 hands-on exercise planning activities that make up 45 percent of the course
• Consolidated course modules that eliminate redundancies and allow more time for hands-on activities
• Use of the live toolkit site for course activities
• Development of actual tabletop exercise products
• Development of after-action report recommendations and an improvement plan matrix using exercise information provided and generated during the course

As a result of the improvements:

• Participants gain experience in all aspects of exercise design, development, conduct, evaluation and improvement planning.
• Participants gain valuable HSEEP Toolkit training and experience.
• Participants can use course activities to plan an actual exercise.
• Participants evaluate the actual, abbreviated tabletop exercise in which they have participated.