§238 Office for Domestic Preparedness

Summary

Creates an Office for Domestic Preparedness inside the Department. The President must appoint a Director to lead it. The Office is in charge of preparing the United States for acts of terrorism. It must coordinate federal preparedness and work with State, local, tribal, parish, and private emergency responders on training, exercises, and equipment. It also handles homeland security communications, runs federal terrorism-preparedness grant programs (except those run by the Department of Health and Human Services), adds Strategy priorities into agency planning, and provides agency-specific training. The Office must work closely with FEMA (which leads nonterror disaster work), help the Secretary with risk analysis for State and local governments, bring in the terrorism parts of FEMA’s preparedness office, and help States and responders get interoperable communications technology. For fiscal years 2003 and 2004, the Director must run the functions that the Justice Department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness had before September 11, 2001, under the same rules, staff, assets, and budget that existed before September 11, 2001.