The State of Illinois participated in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Office of National Capital Region Coordination (NCRC)’s, Spring Ahead, a Federal and Mutual Aid multi-jurisdictional electronic validation demonstration leveraging Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201-compliant and FIPS 201-interoperable credentials.

CGN & Associates coordinated participants and technology support to deliver the State of Illinois portion of the demonstration. Illinois’ participation demonstrated the ability for state-wide emergency response officials to be validated using FIPS 201 interoperability standards.

A representative sample of Illinois-based emergency response officials from the emergency management, fire rescue, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure sectors reported to a simulated emergency operations center and presented smart credentials for electronic authentication and entry to the scene.

Also participating in the demonstration were Entrust, Inc. represented by Brent Crossland; Corestreet, Ltd. represented by Paul DeCrisanstis; and Salamander Technologies represented by Joseph Robinson, along with their partner, IdentiSys, represented by Joe Samuels. These companies provided on-site technical support for credential validation.

Illinois has developed the first state level, non-hosted, smart credential solution to achieve federal interoperability. Throughout the course of this project CGN & Associates managed stake holders and vendors, coordinated interagency cooperation, and oversaw intricacies in order to stand-up a credentialing solution to meet the new standards.

More than 30 organizations, in 20 locations across the United States, simultaneously participated in Spring Ahead, which consisted of eight scenarios.