[Infowarrior] - ReallyReady.org

[Richard Forno]

http://www.fas.org/reallyready/index.html

In February of 2003 the United States Department of Homeland Security
released Ready.gov, an emergency preparedness web resource for Americans, as
a cornerstone of its multi-million dollar Ready Campaign.  As of March 2006,
Ready.gov has received more than 23 million unique visitors. Unfortunately,
Ready.gov contains information that is both inaccurate and incomplete.  The
Department of Homeland Security has been alerted both publicly and privately
of this problem. However, the modifications that have been made to the site
over the past three years, including an update in July 2006, have not
adequately addressed the errors.


A thorough analysis of Ready.gov by the Federation of American Scientists
reveals that numerous shortcomings remain. We therefore developed
ReallyReady.org, a emergency preparedness web resource with comprehensive
and correct information.


The Federation of American Scientists hopes to achieve two purposes with
ReallyReady.org:

   1. To provide clear and correct information to citizens interested in
preparing themselves and their families for an emergency
   2. To persuade the Department of Homeland Security to take a serious look
at Ready.gov and their policy on the accuracy of information and to make
important changes that will help Americans to prepare for terrorist attacks
or natural disasters.

 

We recommend that the Department of Homeland Security request the assistance
of scientific, military, and emergency response experts to make crucial
alterations to Ready.gov.  Until FAS deems Ready.gov acceptable, we will
ensure that the information on ReallyReady.org will remain updated, useful,
and correct.  We hope this site will demonstrate to the Department of
Homeland Security that their multi-million dollar site can be useful and we
hope they will update their site as quickly as possible.
Acknowledgements

ReallyReady.org could not have been created without the assistance of:

    * Hilary Styron and the National Organization on Disability¹s Emergency
Preparedness Initiative for their assistance with the content of ReallyReady
Disabilities
    * RAND Corporation for their study on "Individual Preparedness and
Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist
Attacks"