FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate Keynotes Random Hacks Of Kindness, Disaster Relief Codejam
Event Brings Together Top Programmers to Develop Solutions to Disaster Relief Challenges
Release Date: November 13, 2009
Release Number: HQ-09-140
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate today keynoted the inaugural Random Hacks of Kindness, Disaster Relief Codejam (RHoK). RHoK is an initiative, sponsored by industry leaders such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! in conjunction with NASA and the World Bank that brings together disaster relief experts and software engineers to work on identifying key challenges to disaster relief, and developing solutions to these critical issues.
"FEMA is only one part of the national emergency management team and today's event was an extremely valuable opportunity to engage another important part of our team," said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, "From improving family emergency communications, to enabling first responders to make decisions faster, these technology experts hold a key to making our national emergency management team stronger."
Today's meeting between top tech representatives and FEMA is only the latest in a concerted effort by the FEMA Administrator to engage the technology sector as a critical component of the national emergency management team. Fugate previously has met with representatives at Microsoft, Google, and industry representative TechNet.
The two day "codejam" began today with top programmers from across the country coming together in an attempt to solve predefined problems identified by disaster relief experts and the programmers themselves. Administrator Fugate himself challenged the programmers to come up with an easy way for families to put together emergency communications plans online.
For more information on the event please visit: randomhacksofkindness.eventbrite.com/. You can also find out more about FEMA's efforts to engage the entire national emergency management team by following FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate on twitter at "CraigatFEMA" or by following the FEMA feed at "FEMAinfocus". You can also get the latest updates at www.facebook.com/fema or www.youtube.com/fema.
FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.
Last Modified: Friday, 13-Nov-2009 13:21:30