The DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Training and Exercise Bureau delivers educational courses and progressive exercises to fuel our public safety officials, regional and federal neighbors, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the public. Our team is in many ways, the face of HSEMA to our largest partners.
Our focus is simple; to provide forums for people to bolster their knowledge and practice applying their skills to deliver public safety services in times of the most need. The Training and Exercise Bureau offers a wide range of opportunities including online and classroom courses, and pride ourselves on designing the very best exercises in the industry. Our courses are open to the general public, but some are only offered to our first responders and public safety officials.
We also evaluate the District capabilities during exercises and actual emergency incidents to identify areas for improvement to correct and transform the way the District operates.
Training Course Requests:
The following courses or course types require approval from the State Administrative Agency (SAA):
- Incident Management Courses, including ICS 300 and 400, as well as All Hazards Position Specific courses
- Courses provided through partners of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (Ex: anything with a course code of AWR, PER, or MGT)
- FEMA G Courses
For courses offered in the District of Columbia, the DC HSEMA Preparedness Bureau houses the State Training Officer (STO) who is responsible for approving and coordinating these courses.
Exercise Coordination and Support Requests:
Exercising is an essential aspect of preparedness. It is the goal of HSEMA Preparedness to help ensure that exercises conducted within the District promote preparedness by strengthening partnerships, validating plans and training, and discovering areas for improvement in a controlled environment. HSEMA also sees it as important role to ensure that exercises are inclusive of all partners that may be impacted while reducing duplication of effort and exercise burden. To meet these goals, HSEMA is:
- Working to reduce “one-off” exercises hosted by or for the benefit of a single agency
- Asking those with exercise needs to coordinate them with HSEMA before reaching out to District partners
- Developing a 6-quarter planning calendar that will allow us to create an exercise focus for each quarter, as well as determine a lead agency. This calendar will also help us avoid scheduling on top of major events, and an additional quarter will be added every 3 months to ensure we are always looking 18 months out.
- Developing resources to support exercise design, evaluation, execution, and review
Questions for the HSEMA Training and Exercise Team?
HSEMA Learning Management System
The HSEMA LMS is the central portal for all Emergency Management related training for the District of Columbia. The LMS also serves as the system of record for tracking completion and issuing of certificates for FEMA G coded courses that are held within the District.
Courses offered in the LMS are generally open to anyone with an approved account, regardless of whether or not you live or work in the District.
Questions or Technical Assistance?