In October Dale posted on the release of the National Response Framework (NRF), which at the time was roundly criticized both because it did not give adequate power to FEMA administrators (a major issue during Katrina and Rita response) and because it was weak on specifics and failed to take into account criticism from the emergency management community. At a press conference yesterday a revised NRF was released. And the response has been dramatically more positive thus far. The International Association of Emergency Managers, which derided the original NRF as a “public relations document” that lacked any usable specifics praised the new NRF. Russ Decker, the First Vice President of IAEM said in a press release that:

We are extremely pleased with the final National Response Framework (NRF) product. It is apparent that our counterparts in Washington were listening and genuinely interested in addressing the issues raised by local emergency managers. As result of the improved process, we believe the NRF is a document that local emergency managers will find very useful. This is the greatest compliment a local official can give a Federal document. We get many documents from Washington that go on a shelf, but this one will actually be used. We appreciated being included in the process and look forward to a continued dialogue on this and other issues.

More on this, no doubt, in days to come. But at least in this area it looks like DHS has finally gotten a bit more serious about distributed preparedness. The full range of documents DHS released yesterday can be found here.