The National Exercise Program (NEP) serves as the principal mechanism for examining the preparedness and readiness of the United States across the entire homeland security and management enterprise. The purpose of the NEP is to design, coordinate, conduct, and evaluate exercises that rigorously test the Nation’s ability to perform missions and functions that prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. As a component of the National Preparedness System, the NEP provides a consistent method to examine and validate federal and whole community partner core capabilities, which in turn indicate the Nation’s progress in reaching the National Preparedness Goal (Goal).
Each Program cycle consists of a two-year, progressive schedule of exercises that are selected based on their support to the Goal, and the Program’s Principals’ Objectives. The types of exercises selected into the program may include facilitated policy discussions, seminars and workshops, tabletop exercises, modeling and simulation, drills, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises. All of which may be sponsored by organizations from any level of government, non-governmental and private sector, and the whole community.
Benefits of Participation
By participating in the NEP, sponsoring organizations can benefit in the following ways:
- Demonstrate an organization’s levels of preparedness and readiness in a National context
- Directly contribute exercise evaluation data that will validate the Nation’s ability to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from all threats and hazards
- Broaden the impact of an exercise to a wider group of stakeholders, while building new relationships and improving coordination
- Build upon an extensive network of existing exercises
- Opportunity to receive subject matter expertise, technical assistance, and exercise support for selected exercises
Ways to Participate
Sponsoring organizations should follow the process below to participate in the NEP:
- Review the Program Principal Objectives – All Program exercises must support one or more Principal Objective (PO). The Principal Objectives are high-level objectives based on national preparedness priorities across the homeland security enterprise. Currently, there are seven Principal Objectives:
- PO #1: Examine and validate core capabilities and processes to rapidly exchange and analyze appropriate classified and unclassified information among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector and international partners prior to and during an incident that threatens the security of the nation
- PO #2: Examine the ability of departments and agencies to prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents where a Stafford Act declaration is not likely, by identifying and validating appropriate authorities, roles, responsibilities, resources, and organizational structures
- PO #3: Examine the ability of the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial jurisdictions to respond to complex terrorist attacks with a focus on integrated response planning among law enforcement, medical services, emergency management, and other whole community stakeholders
- PO #4: Examine the implementation of national policy, frameworks, and guidance for whole community stakeholders on relevant authorities, plans, procedures, and available resources for cyber incident coordination
- PO #5: Demonstrate the ability of the whole community, especially state, territorial, tribal, and local governments, to perform effective recovery coordination and planning in parallel with response operations to achieve long-term community recovery objectives
- PO #6: Examine the ability of the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial jurisdictions to respond to infectious disease pandemics and biological incidents
- PO #7: Examine the ability of the whole community to deliver life-saving and life-sustaining capabilities to survivors following a catastrophic incident that severely affects communities and critical infrastructure
- Participate in the Upcoming Webinar Series – Register for a NEP Cycle 2017-2018 informational webinar
- Request the Exercise Nomination Form – The nomination form is formatted as an Adobe PDF file that can be saved and revised by sponsoring organizations as needed. To receive a 2017-2018 Form please send your request to NEP@fema.dhs.gov.
- Complete the Exercise Nomination Form – The nomination contains embedded instructions and links to other sources of guidance to assist sponsoring organizations in completing the form. Completion of the form should be coordinated with the appropriate Program representatives:
- Whole Community Sponsoring – Exercises sponsors within the Tribal, Territorial, State, and Local levels of government, and those within non-governmental and private sector organizations should coordinate their exercise nomination with their FEMA Regional Exercise Officer
- Submit the Exercise Nomination Form – All completed exercise nomination forms must be emailed to NEP@fema.dhs.gov. Please include “National Exercise Program Exercise Nomination” in the email subject line.