FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Program Management Office (PMO) was honored with the “Greatest Citizen Impact Award” for its IPAWS system by the American Council for Technology’s (ACT’s) Industry Advisory Council (IAC) at their Igniting Innovation Showcase in Washington, D.C.
IPAWS is a national alert and warning system available for use by state, local, territorial, tribal, and federal public alerting authorities to send emergency alerts to citizens. IPAWS receives and authenticates the messages transmitted by the alerting authorities, and at the same time, routes them through a single interface to various systems such as the Emergency Alert System for radio and television, Wireless Emergency Alerts or WEAs sent by participating mobile carriers directly to cell phones, NOAA Weather Radio and other public alerting systems.
The ACT-IAC Institute for Innovation, an association that promotes government and industry interaction to produce government information technology innovations, selected 30 organizations to participate in a one-day event to showcase their technologies.
Leadership and staff in FEMA’s IPAWS PMO conducted live WEA demonstrations throughout the day, and spoke to showcase attendees about IPAWS and its impact on public safety officials and the American people. During the showcase, ACT-IAC judges, comprised of both government and industry representatives, viewed each demonstration and attendees were allowed to vote for their favorite technical innovations.
Innovations were critiqued on several factors: demonstrates a leap in creativity by using innovative tools, methodologies, or processes to implement new solutions; develops an agile solution that shows the promise of inspiring successful replication, transferability, and scalability by other governmental entities; achieves tangible, quantifiable results; impacts and demonstrates significant cost savings/cost avoidance, productivity and performance, and leverages the ability to reach out to multiple stakeholders to formulate, build, and implement a solution.
