DHS Preparedness Certification

Does anybody besides me get a bad feeling about this? DHS to push ‘certification’ of private sector preparedness efforts. That’s right, the Federal government creating another ANSI spec for us to follow, and the management of which will be driven by the same people that helped rescue folks after Katrina. Of course at first the certification will be completely voluntary, and have various degrees to which you can claim certification. But what happens afterwards? Just like any other federal program, it will grow until even simple blogs like this must somehow guard what we say, and be guarded by lawyers lest somebody disagree with our practices. Now, I’m all for the concept of the government encouraging us to prepare, and to help people know how to prepare. But in looking at tools such as the DHS’s ready.gov compared to blogs such as us, or those in our blogroll, I know I can get a lot more practical information from the personal experience on the web. And it hasn’t been sanitized by every scared lawyer, by beuracracies such as the FDA. So speak up, and make sure this doesn’t become just another overarching act that limits peoples ability to share information.