New Coast Guard Emergency Management Credential announced Story By Cmdr. Phil Stitzinger and Steve Maynard Throughout our history, the Coast Guard has served the nation during a multitude of natural disasters, security threats, and border crises, as well as the pandemic. These incidents have reaffirmed the need for qualified emergency managers and incident management professionals. One way to ensure qualification is through professional credentialing, which serves to recognize accomplishments within the organization and among partner agencies, stakeholders, and across communities. The launch of the Coast Guard Emergency Management Credential (CGEMC) serves this purpose, and reservists can earn the CGEMC through both military and civilian experience within five mission areas outlined below: • Prevention: Avoidance, prevention of, or stopping an imminent, threatened, or actual act of terrorism. • Protection: Capabilities to safeguard the homeland against threats of terrorism and man-made or natural disasters. • Mitigation: Activities designed to reduce or eliminate the probability of a disaster and to reduce the vulnerability of people and communities to the negative impacts of a disaster. • Response: Actions to save lives, protect property and the environment, stabilize the incident, and meet basic human needs following an incident. • Recovery: Activities that restore critical community functions and begin to manage stabilization efforts. Developed and administered by the Office of Emergency Management and Disaster Response (CG-OEM), the CGEMC captures the related training, qualifications, and certifications of the Coast Guard workforce, and is comparable to other credentialing processes developed by states and international organizations. The CGEMC application guide, located on the CG-OEM Portal site, provides a one-page checklist of specific requirements. Components of the application include an experience memo, emergency management training hours (or a master’s degree in an emergency management-related field), a proctored exam, a letter of reference, documentation of professional contributions, and the completion of specific FEMA independent study courses. Reservists are highly encouraged to apply. Earning the CGEMC can be a long process, but recipients of the credential stand out as highly skilled professionals with a thorough understanding of the emergency management profession. For more information regarding the CGEMC, contact the CGEMC program administrator, Steven Maynard, at Steven. [email protected]. . New email retention policy starts Mar. 1 By Kathy Murray, MyCG Beginning March 1, the Coast Guard will automatically start deleting emails older than 10 years from the system for all but a specified group of senior leaders. The emails will be deleted based upon the dates they were sent or received. It’s part of an effort to align the service with federal laws regarding retaining data and records information management. Given newly available capabilities, the Coast Guard’s email system is now able to enforce records retention periods as required by the National Archives and Records Administration, as well as schedule appropriate archiving or removal. Microsoft Outlook is not an authorized record keeping system for the federal government and was never intended to be. As painful as it may be for some of us, we simply don’t own emails created on government systems and we must comply federally mandated laws that govern them. The law considers emails for a certain group of senior leaders to be permanent records, so they’re required to be kept indefinitely. At the Coast Guard, there are 55 of these executives and they know who they are. They’re designated as “Capstone Officials” based on their organizational role and overall responsibility. If you’re a non-capstone user, no action is necessary for this change to take effect. If you have a business need to retain emails or attachments beyond the 10- year period, your command’s Records Coordinator can advise you on best practices and storage, as outlined in COMDTINST 5212.12 (series). If you have additional questions about policy on records retention schedules for electronic media, including email and attachments, or questions on unit Records Coordinators, you may submit inquiries via email to the Office of Records Information Management (COMDT CG-611) at: [email protected]. . Issue 1 • 2023 . ReseRvist 29 CELEBRATING CELEBRATING 70 70 YEARS OF THE RESERVIST YEARS OF THE RESERVIST
