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New National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators (NCSWIC) Program Manager: Cary Martin

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Author: The Office of Emergency Communications

The OEC Partnerships Branch is very excited to welcome Cary Martin as its newest team member. Cary will serve as the Program Manager overseeing the National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators (NCSWIC) program. In this role, Cary will work closely with the NCSWIC Chair, Vice Chair, and Executive Committee to oversee the day to day work of the NCSWIC Committees and working groups. Cary will oversee this important program, which brings together SWICs at least twice a year to share best practices and lessons learned related to emergency communications interoperability.



Cary has over 27 years military and Special Operations experience and an additional ten years of public safety experience as firefighter and search and rescue professional. During his career, he has worked as a U.S. Army, Special Forces Communications and Operations Sergeant deploying to numerous overseas assignments meeting a wide variety of communications and operational needs working with foreign and domestic partners to understand their doctrine and capabilities at the local and strategic levels in the context of C4I and the Joint functions of command and control, intelligence, fires, movement and maneuver, protection and sustainment. As First Sergeant, he developed performance standards and conducted performance appraisals, enforced workplace standards, resolved complaints informally, and recommended disciplinary actions, set goals, milestones, and expectations, and reported progress, problems, and accomplishments, and was responsible for the discipline, morale, and welfare of seven civilians, 43 noncommissioned officers and over 1600 students. He also was employed as a trained firefighter for the state of North Carolina and five years as a search and rescue professional for the state of Colorado which included mountain, ground, and swift water search and rescue.



Previously, Cary served as a Functional Manager for Region I and Region IV in the OEC Technical Assistance (TA) Branch. In that role, he conducted assessments of emergency communications capabilities nationwide to identify gaps and develop policies to improve Federal, state, local, and public safety interoperability. Among his most recent accomplishments was facilitating a major TA workshop in Region IV EMAC workshop. Twenty representatives from Regions IV and VI participated. Cary facilitated attendance by state level Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) Coordinators and homeland security officials. EMAC is a national interstate mutual aid organization that enables states to share resources during disasters, but does not formally include COMU personnel as part of its current mission scope. This engagement has furthered collaboration between SWICs and state EMAC officials and the typing of emergency COMU assets. This TA engagement also aims to establish SOPs for emergency communications regional response teams analogous to state Incident Management Teams. Due to his efforts the participating states have demonstrated initiative in pursuing this effort on their own. The requested TA included developing resource typing and draft EMAC Mission Ready Packages of asset requests and specifications.



As the OEC project lead for the Interoperable Communications Capabilities Analysis Program (ICCAP), Cary was key to the launch of six pilot observations in 2016. ICCAP was initiated by Deputy Secretary Mayorkis to deliver objective analysis of all modes of interoperable communications during planned events in 59 major urban areas. Cary has lead the ICCAP defining roles and responsibilities between Federal staff and vendor support, creating plans and templates for control and reporting, and scheduling the initial six pilots. He also developed an improvement plan for scoping and logistics meetings to ensure the Federal and vendor team captured and incorporated changes to the observation process.



Cary can be reached at cary.martin@hq.dhs.gov or (703) 235-3611.