Typical Government Operation

Our local CERT has refresher training as part of each monthly meeting.  We’re going over one chapter from the class in each meeting.  Tonight, being the second meeting of the year, is Chapter 2 (fire supression), and I’m the instructor.  I decided I’d check the FEMA CERT page, which has been hosting the training materials just to see if any changes had been made.  Instead of the usual page, I got the following:

Important Notice For CERT Program

CERT and Citizen Corps were transferred to the Office of Domestic Preparedness (now the Office of Grants and Training) in August 2004. FEMA continued to maintained the CERT website in support of our DHS partner. As of January 31st, 2006, FEMA will transfer the CERT website content to a new CERT/Citizen Corps site. We expect that Citizen Corps will have the new website available by February 15th. When it is, we will post the address here. CERT information, CERT questions and team registration will be handled at the new address.

EMI will continue to offer IS-317 Introduction to Community Emergency Response Teams.

I know it’s a fairly short interval (at least in government terms), but it means that none of the CERT training materials are available during the transition.  Anyhow, it boggles the mind a bit that they’d just leave it down like this.  They’ve had 17 months to perpare, and they still can’t coordinate handing off the site.

I’ve had customers for web work that would be ticked off if you had 15 minutes of downtime, much less 15 days.

(Edited last sentence to make more sense…)

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