291: Joint Information System/Center Planning for Tribal, State, and Local Public Information Officers

Public information consists of the processes, procedures, and systems to communicate timely, accurate, and accessible information to affected audiences. Armed with good information, people are better able to make good decisions and, by doing so; contribute to the overall response goal of saving lives and protecting property. Personnel tasked with gathering, verifying, coordinating, and disseminating public information at the federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial levels bear this considerable responsibility concurrently with other job assignments. These Public Information Officers (PIOs) must be provided with the opportunity to learn and practice the skills they will use on the job.

This course is designed for PIOs with experience in the field who will be working in a JIS/JIC. This is the third course in the Public Information Training Series. This course is delivered at the state, local, tribal, and territorial governments. Other courses are conducted as resident courses at the Emergency Management Institute (EMI). The courses build on each other enhancing students’ skills further at each level. This course uses Blooms Taxonomy as a guide to focus the course material to augment the knowledge and comprehension for new PIOs.

(This course is equivalent to E/L0387)

This course will outline the communications needed for different incidents and define the roles of the PIO within ICS.

Selection Criteria: The primary audience for this training is individuals who have public information responsibilities as their main job or as an auxiliary function at the federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial level of government, and in the private and nongovernmental sectors.