EIC Commends Secretary Chertoff on DHS Reorganization

The Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) today strongly endorsed the reorganization plan for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put forward by Secretary Michael Chertoff.

(PRWEB) July 17, 2005 -- The Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) today strongly endorsed the reorganization plan for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put forward by Secretary Michael Chertoff.

We were very glad to see that Secretary Chertoff placed such a strong emphasis on overall preparedness, information sharing, and strengthening public-private partnerships," said EIC Chairman Matt Walton.

The EIC has had a strong and close relationship with the Department. It is only organization with a formal agreement DHS to advance emergency data communications interoperability. This has resulted in the rapid adoption of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), an international emergency standard that allows data sharing among emergency-response agencies on public alerting matters such as weather, earthquake, or homeland security events. CAP is an approved standard of the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured information Systems) international standards body. The CAP standard has shown it can be effective in situations such as the recent tsunami warnings on the West Coast and the storms in the Southeast.

EIC members are working to continue development of CAP and of the next generation Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) for emergency data communications among all emergency response agencies that is being sponsored by DHS.

EIC looks forward to working with DHS to improve these standards and to make our emergency communications systems even more efficient and effective," Walton said.

The Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) was launched in October 2002 to address our nation's lack of consistent technical interoperability and standards for emergency and incident management. Now comprised of over 60 private entities, public agencies, university groups, and non-profit organizations, the EIC is promoting the development and adoption of standards for using Web services, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and existing relevant standards that will enable emergency industry interoperability.

Contact:
Matt Walton
818-621-0660

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