National Preparedness Requirements Harnessing Management System Standards

IntroductionIt may well be time for a fundamental change in national preparedness guidelines and their requirements, moving from centralized to decentralized governance via management system standards. Over the past decade, the federal government's national preparedness activism has had its roots in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 (HSPD 8). Issued in 2003, HSPD 8 requires a national preparedness goal with readiness priorities and targets that are measurable.1 Public Law 109-295 codified HSPD 8, requiring the president to complete, revise, and update a national preparedness goal to define the target level of preparedness.2 The law also established the national preparedness system, which was to include (1) target capabilities and preparedness priorities, (2) equipment and training standards, (3) training and exercises, (4) a comprehensive assessment system, (5) a remedial action management program, (6) a federal response capability inventory, (7) reporting requirements, and (8) federal preparedness. National planning scenarios are part of the system.3 The goal and system components are encompassed in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Preparedness Guidelines, last issued in 2007.4While a new design might accept the fundamental goals of HSPD 8, the aim is a shift from compliance rooted in the Guidelines components to the application of national or international management system standards for preparedness. The fundamental reason is that management system standards embrace what an organization itself must do to manage its processes or activities. As illustrated later in this article, management system standards foster flexibility, adaptability, and more localized decision-making as they rarely state specific "down in the weeds" performance criteria to judge performance. Instead, they set a condition the individual organization is to meet through its own specific performance criteria and management system.5 For example, a standard element might simply state, "communication and warning systems shall be reliable, redundant, and interoperable. " An organization then must ensure implementation to meet this element. Such a move is in contrast to what is basically a "one size fits all" approach that challenges preparedness accountability and federal oversight capabilities. Significantly, management system standards will provide real and usable benchmarks for organizational accountability based on national and international consensus understandings. And because management system standards are nationally and internationally developed, used, and revised, they can facilitate a whole-of-government (if not a whole-of-all-sectors) approach through stability and standardization common to individual organizations. Another benefit to a change to management system standards is that the federal government would no longer need to maintain the Guidelines and its voluminous supporting documents. State and local governments would not need to contend with changes in requirements and oversight as federal administrations come and go.The Basics: Management System StandardsStandards generally are a uniform set of measures, agreements, conditions, or specifications that establish benchmarks for performance.6 Management system standards address planning, implementation and operation, evaluation and the like. Drawing on information from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ISO, and the United States Standards Strategy, Table 1 summarizes the primary elements of the management system standards process and principles.7Table 1. Management System Standards Elements[Figure omitted. See PDF. ]Well-known management system standards are set forth in the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) 9000 (the international standard for quality management) and ISO 14000 (environmental management). …