INTERAGENCY COORDINATING COUNCIL ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES

Disability Preparedness Resource Center

What's New

Highlights

An Important Message to DisabilityPreparedness.gov Users:
In April 2011, the President issued Executive Order (EO) 13571 “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service.” The EO directs federal agencies to, among other things, “Improve Online Services” as more than “half of all Americans accessed a Federal website in 2010 --evidence that many Government services are now delivered online. While many Federal websites provide timely and accurate information and services, many others have redundant, outdated, hard to use, or poorly maintained content. There are nearly 2,000 top-level Federal .gov domains; within these top-level domains, there are thousands of websites, sub-sites, and micro sites, resulting in an estimated 24,000 websites of varying purpose, design, navigation, usability, and accessibility. This duplication not only can cause confusion, but also wastes taxpayer dollars.”

In compliance with the EO, federal agencies, including DHS, initiated the following .gov reform efforts:

  • Freeze establishment of new federal Executive Branch domains
  • Update .gov domain policy and guidelines
  • Eliminate duplicative and outdated websites.
In response to the EO, the DHS Enterprise Content Committee conducted a review of DHS websites to determine whether to maintain, eliminate, or merge existing websites. As a result of this review, the current manner in which www.disabilitypreparedness.gov is managed will be changing. We have successfully collaborated with our colleagues at the Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) to merge the current site with www.disability.gov by creating a new tab on the Emergency Preparedness page that will contain ICC related content. The timeline on this transition is not set in stone, but meetings are underway to move the process along and we anticipate that the transition will be complete by early 2012. We will take steps to have our current domain name “connected” to the information that will be transitioned to the Disability.gov web site so that users will not hit a wall when looking for resources. We believe that the end result of this change will be a more robust and up-to-date ICC web site. Thank you for your continued interest in emergency preparedness with regard to people with disabilities. We look forward to your feedback once this transition is complete.

New Workplace Resources:

This disability preparedness web site provides practical information on how people with and without disabilities can prepare for an emergency. It also provides information for family members of, and service providers to, people with disabilities. In addition, this site includes information for emergency planners and first responders to help them to better prepare for serving persons with disabilities. Get started by learning what is Emergency Preparedness?

Personal Preparedness Planning
Access information and guidance in developing your plan of action if faced with an emergency or disaster.

Emergency Managers, Responders, Service & Care Providers
Access resources for emergency managers, responders and service and care providers regarding their role in ensuring the safety and security of people with disabilities.

Get Involved in Your Community
Learn how you can best get involved in your community and a tap into guidance regarding community outreach and getting key players involved in disability preparedness efforts at the community level.

Ready.gov
Provides an overview on emergency preparedness for individuals and businesses!