National Preparedness System (NPS) component: 2011 - 2013 DHS/FEMA Strategic Plan Initiative #1 "The whole community approach to emergency operations.

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A Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management
- - - Operational Overview - - -
Sharing resources securely across jurisdictional boundaries & disciplines
Traditionally, Incident Management response to natural and human caused disasters was a
public responsibility, but time and experience has proven that government alone cannot
and should not manage disaster response. This same experience has also dramatically
demonstrated that disaster response must be preceded by strong, permanent, pre-disaster
planning functions – a new Concept of Operations (CONOPS).
Current incident management systems were developed to address response and recovery,
but the pace and reach of technology and proactive CONOPS are constantly exposing the
limitations and additional expense(s) of these systems. At the same time, governments at
all levels are challenging stakeholders (both public & private) to move beyond response and
recovery to resiliency focused disaster planning through public/private collaboration. These
new mandates require a much more comprehensive approach – a realignment of disaster
planning, beginning with public/private collaboration, pre-disaster planning and
preparation, then onto the response and recovery phases, concluding with after action
reporting.
TractorFax Technologies offers a tool that enables all of these new disaster planning
mandates to be met while not requiring that agencies abandon their existing incident
management systems. TractorFax enhances and compliments existing incident
management systems by automating their current labor intensive processes. TractorFax is
completely interoperable with existing systems, thus protecting investments in current
systems while dramatically expanding CONOPS capabilities; all the while improving
operational assessments, which in turn enhances situational awareness.
“A perfect fit for FEMA’s 2011 – 2014 Strategic Plan Initiative”, TractorFax allows
emergency management practitioners and stakeholders to broaden CONOPS plans beyond
the standard response and recovery mindset. TractorFax’s “open platform” accommodates
CONOPS that recognize the benefits of preparedness planning (public/private coexistence)
and automated after action reporting.
Recently released, FEMA's 2011-2014 Strategic Plan - Initiative 1 includes the concept of a
"whole community approach to preparedness and response". However, current incident
management systems were never designed, developed, or implemented with this new,
whole community approach in mind. Hence the creation of cumbersome procedures that
force Emergency Operations Center personnel to utilize piecemeal, complex processes in
order to accommodate current technology’s missing capabilities, with little commonality
among disciplines or from one jurisdiction to the next.

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Today incident management is now a shared responsibility among public, private, and NGO
stakeholders beginning at the local community level.
2011 – 2014 Initiative 1: “Foster a Whole Community Approach to Emergency
Management Nationally”:
“FEMA recognizes that it takes all aspects of a community (volunteer, faith, and
community- based organizations, the private sector, and the public, including survivors
themselves) – not just the government – to effectively prepare for, protect against,
respond to, recover from, and mitigate against any disaster. It is therefore critical that we
work together to enable communities to develop collective, mutually supporting local
capabilities to withstand the potential initial impacts of these events, respond quickly, and
recover in a way that sustains or improves the community’s overall well-being. How
communities achieve this collective capacity calls for innovative approaches – from across
the full spectrum of community actors, including emergency management – to expand and
enhance existing practices, institutions, and organizations that help make local
communities successful every day, under normal conditions, and leverage this social
infrastructure to help meet community needs when an incident occurs.
The challenge that Whole Community presents is: What is the technology piece that
will integrate public, private, and NGOs stakeholders allowing their collaboration and
coexistence, while centralizing and sharing their resources and people skills across
jurisdictional boundaries and disciplines on a pre-determined basis in a “bottom up”
approach?
An Arkansas based company, TractorFax Technologies, LLC, has developed a deployment
ready, NIMS compliant IT platform which answers this challenge and allows county level
emergency response officials to achieve their shared objectives - the ability to
collaboratively centralize, inventory, and share resources across jurisdictional boundaries.
The system also provides the ability to immediately escalate an event to neighboring
counties, state, and regional levels should the need arise.
Authorized users (TractorFaxers) can integrate, centralize, preplan and share inventory;
quickly identify, deploy, and track local resources and people skills; credential, manage
inventory, invoice for reimbursable assets used during an emergency, and support
volunteer and donations management. Beginning at the local level, TractorFax supports a
collaborative “bottom up approach” that works.
Among other benefits, such control eliminates the influx of inappropriate assets and
donations. Referred to by emergency managers as the “second disaster”, these
unrequested, uncoordinated assets and donations actually impede emergency responders
as they require a stoppage in the response effort to determine exactly what unrequested
items have been donated.
According to the National Response Framework, the term “response” includes
immediate actions to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic
human needs. The responsibility for responding to incidents, both natural and human
caused, begins at the local (community) level, supported by individuals and public officials
in the county, city, or town affected by the incident.

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The National Response Framework is the essential playbook in aligning key roles and
responsibilities across the Nation, linking all levels of government, nongovernmental
organizations, and the private sector. The Framework describes specific authorities and
best practices for managing incidents that range from the serious but purely local, to large-
scale terrorist attacks or catastrophic natural disasters.
The President approved the National Response “Framework” in January 2008. It
superseded the National Response Plan effective March 22, 2008. The Framework commits
Federal, Local, Tribal, and State governments and private sector partnerships in both
strategic and operational planning with emphasis on preparedness.
The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is a companion document that provides
standard command and management structures that apply to response activities. This
system provides a consistent, nationwide template to enable Federal, state, tribal, and local
governments, the private sector, and NGOs to work together to prepare for, prevent,
respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of incidents regardless of cause, size,
location, or complexity. This consistency provides the foundation for utilization of NIMS for
all incidents, ranging from daily occurrences to incidents requiring a coordinated Federal
response.
An effective, unified national response requires layered, mutually supporting capabilities.
While effective response hinges upon well-trained local leaders and responders who have
invested in response preparedness are able to achieve shared objectives, and seek out
innovative technologies; at the same time, the Framework systematically incorporates
public-sector agencies, the private sector, and NGOs.
Congressional Special Task Force - Stakeholder Findings…
1) “The American private sector must be systematically integrated into the nation’s
response to disasters, natural and man-made alike. Government alone cannot manage
major crises nor effectively integrate the private sector after a crisis occurs. Building
public-private collaborative partnerships, starting at the state level, is one of the most
important steps that can be taken now to prepare the nation for future contingencies”.
2) “It is important that local communities be as self-supporting as possible in their crisis-
response capacities, putting a high premium on the efficiencies to be gained through
public-private collaboration”.
3) “Local, state or regional public-private collaborations are vital to filling gaps in homeland
security and disaster response. These collaborations mobilize private-sector cooperation—
including the supply of assets/resources, volunteers, information and expertise—
that strengthens our capability to prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters”.
4) “Whether activating established distribution networks or deploying aid quickly in the
aftermath of a disaster, the private sector can play a critical role in securing local
communities nationwide. The private sector also needs—and can provide in return—disaster
information, coordination of assets, protection and prioritization of resources/supplies. A
further benefit is that private sector emergency resources/supplies can improve overall
situational awareness— if they are tied into the local, state and federal systems”.

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5) In order to provide for an effective response, all systems utilized must be interoperable,
scalable, and adaptable with one another across jurisdictional boundaries and disciplines
Call for Unprecedented Change… Following the events of 9/11, hurricane Katrina, and
a host of natural disasters issues, the Stakeholders and Users suggested changing the
National Response Plan – both structural and substantive. Stakeholders advised Congress
that the National Response Plan was bureaucratic, internally repetitive, and insufficiently
national in its focus, misunderstood by emergency managers, and missing collaborative
operational capabilities among all stakeholders.
“The Federal government should recognize that the private/non-government sectors often
perform certain functions more efficiently and effectively than government because of the
expertise and experience in applying successful business models. These public-private
partnerships should be facilitated, recognized, funded [and]. . . the capability to
draw on these resources should inform and be part of Federal, State, and local systems and
response plans”.
White House report, the Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned,
February 26, 2006
NIMS compliancy…
The slides below depict the stringent and demanding criteria of the NIMS STEP evaluation
process, all phases of which were successfully completed by TractorFax. These slides
emphasize that the NIMS Support Center provides the Incident Management Systems
Integration Division with tools and services that contribute to the implementation of NIMS
across the country. The second slide gives the road map that should be followed once the
STEP process has been successfully completed.
What is the NIMS Support Center?
 A Cooperative Agreement for implementation of a NIMS Support Center
(NIMS SC).
 Partners: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), Incident Management Systems Integration
(IMSI) Division and the Justice & Safety Center, Eastern Kentucky University
(EKU).
 Core Team: Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), and G&H International Services, Inc.
(GHIS).
 Purpose: The NIMS SC
provides IMSI Division with
tools and services that
contribute to the
implementation of NIMS
across the country.
2

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TractorFax is NIMS compliant. TractorFax Technologies successful NIMS STEP Pilot
evaluation has been posted on the Responder Knowledge Base (RKB)
(https://www.rkb.us/) website under Operation Assessment section as “(1) Incident –
Resource Management”. The www.rkb.us website is the Nation’s premier resource websites
for Top Officials, Decision Makers, First Responders, the private sector and NGOs. NIMS
compliant TractorFax has also recently received approval by the InterAgency Board for
inclusion on the Standardized Equipment List (SEL) under three categories; please click on:
https://www.rkb.us/contentdetail.cfm?content_id=227516andquery=TractorFaxandoverrid
esubtype=137
The three SEL categories can be found in the window on the right labeled “Knowledge
Links” and listed under “Related SEL Items”. Grant writers should reference the TractorFax
approved SEL National Stock Number from the RKB web site as part of their grant writing
process.
A new era for emergency management practitioners has evolved from the process
described above. This new thinking places unmistakable emphasis on best practices for a
heightened level of readiness that includes the integration and coexistence of public and
private sector resources and people skills, prior to an event to support preparedness
efforts. The “top down approach”, as is recognized by Administrator Fugate, simply does
not work. TractorFax supports preparedness, beginning at the community level in a
“bottom up approach”, then in a continuum to state and regional levels, should the need
arise.
Currently those responsible for an effective response must locate and deploy scattered
public and private resources utilizing the antiquated and time consuming, processes of
spread sheets, white boards, pop-ups, links, post-it-notes, phone trees, and faxes as best
they can to accommodate their technology’s missing capabilities.
In their defense, emergency management practitioners cannot be experts in every resource
category. The reality is that only the actual end users are experts, and not only in FEMA’s

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120 resource typing definitions, but the many other available resources. TractorFax
eliminates the scrambling to locate desperately needed resources while navigating ever
changing vendor and product linguistics, especially complex, high end resources such as
heavy equipment. The system allows emergency management practitioners and
stakeholders to electronically identify, deploy and track all categories of resources, thus
dramatically expediting response and recovery.
Additionally, TractorFax allows users to upload key documentation into the system such as
Memorandums of Agreement (MOUs), pre-scripted mission assignments, Advanced
Readiness Contracts, Mutual Aid Agreements, owner’s manuals, etc. Hard copies of this
vital type of documentation can be difficult to locate, especially during an emergency.
TractorFax places them instantly at the fingertips of emergency managers.
Emergency planners will not have to wait for an event to occur before utilizing the incident
management system capabilities of TractorFax. The interoperable system supports the
National Response Framework’s ongoing unified goals; collaboration among all authorized
users, bi-directional communications, and private sector partnership integration to give just
a few examples.
TractorFax enables emergency management personnel and practitioners to collaborate
preparedness efforts in a bottom up approach that works, thus supporting the whole
community Concept of Operations. TractorFax provides access to a preplanned, centralized
inventory from the vast resources that government, business and NGOs, make available to
them prior, during, and in the aftermath of an event.
For more information about TractorFax please contact:
David N. Guthrie
National Marketing Director
TractorFax Technologies, LLC
12117 Goddard Avenue
Overland Park, KS 66213
Office: 913.851.3924
Mobile: 913.449.7795
dng@kc.r.com
www.tractorfaxtech.com * 400 Northport * #215 * Cabot, AR 72023 * Ph: 501.259.5007 * tractorfax@ymail.com