CPT Guidelines Creation and NETwiki Management

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This page and all page sections are Program Guidelines

Before the first publication of the NET Guidelines on November 19 2013, Portland's many NETs were not consistently organized or administered. The Guidelines served to align the preparation and operations of disparate neighborhoods so that, in the event of a City-wide emergency deployment, PBEM could expect volunteers to deploy more effectively and harmoniously. The NET Guidelines serve as the program's "blueprints".

However, the Guidelines were difficult to update because they were published to a static PDF file. With the launch of the NETwiki, PBEM and NET volunteers can make changes more expediently. A few important notes, however:

• Not everything published to NETwiki is a guideline in the technical sense of the term. The NETwiki incorporates best practice articles, studies, reports, procedures, and other resources that PBEM volunteers may find helpful. In fact, most NETwiki content are not guidelines.
• It is important to note that guidelines, including the NET Guidelines, do not have the force of law, ordinances, administrative rules, or even bureau policies. "Guidelines" are a good fit for a volunteer disaster responder program because disasters are complicated and dynamic situations to respond to. Something as rigid as an ordinance might force a volunteer to choose between breaking a rule and doing the right thing in a response scenario.

This page describes how Community Preparedness Team (CPT) Guidelines will be created as well as how they will be documented on this NET Wiki.

Procedure for creation of or significant modification to CPT guidelines

Guidelines still matter, of course, and volunteers are expected to make every reasonable effort to follow them. Therefore, PBEM does prescribe a process for changing any NETwiki article, or article section, labeled a "guideline". This process does not apply to any other content present in NETwiki.

Creating new guidelines

1. Introducing prospective new guidelines:
   • A NET Team Leader must vet a request for a new guideline with their team and forward it to PBEM's Community Preparedness Manager (CPM);
   • Or, the CPM may propose a new guideline to the Board of Directors of Friends of Portland NET ("FPN Board").
2. All requests for a new guideline will be submitted to the CPM for consideration by email. The CPM will then undertake any necessary research and produce a draft of the new guideline for review by the PBEM Director.
3. If the PBEM Director approves the proposed guideline, the CPM will forward the suggested change to the FPN Board for review and approval.
4. If the FPN Board approves the new guideline by majority vote, the CPM will publish the changes to NETwiki and make an appropriate reference in the Guidelines Change Log.
5. The CPM has discretion to notify all or some PBEM volunteers by email of a change to guidelines, if the CPM considers the change significant enough to warrant doing so.
6. If modifications to guidelines produce new training requirements, affected members will have no less than six months to complete the requirements.

Editing existing guidelines

1. The process of editing existing guidelines will follow the same approval and codification processes as described in the section titled Creating new guidelines.
2. The approval process applies only to substantive guideline changes. The CPM has discretion to make housekeeping changes to guidelines such as (but not limited to) minor grammatical or semantic changes without a review, approval, and notification process.

Interpretation of guidelines

1. If a guideline is not sufficiently clear to resolve an immediate issue in the field, a volunteer will ask the CPM for clarification. If the CPM or other PBEM staff is not available and an interpretation must be made in the field during deployment, that interpretation will be made by the person occupying the highest position available in the incident chain of command.
2. If an interpretation has no immediate need, the NET Coordinator will process a clarified Guideline with PBEM recommendations for change through the review process defined in the section titled Editing existing guidelines.

Guidelines Change Log

NETwiki version 3.0 (in progress; started 2025.07.20)
Revisions: For NET Team Leaders, the team leader requirement to complete IS-242 moved to "optional training", as that class is now eight hours. Distinguishing between a position description for NET Team Leaders (a blue skies position) and volunteer Incident Team Leaders. New guidelines developed for editing Wiki content.
Revised by:
Approved by:

Published version 2.0
Revisions: Page 10: Addition to 100.15: “Generally, PBEM is responsible for overall program coordination of NET and supporting teams so that they may be successful as non-professional emergency responders. PBEM staff will not organize and lead individual NETs. The responsibility for leading a NET and convening regular meetings belongs to the community, and a NET’s solubility depends entirely on the participation of its local members.” Page 11: Added 100.25.b - “Only NET members in good standing officially constitute a “member” for the purposes of forming a team. However, non-operations NET functions (such as team meetings) may include community members interested in advising and assisting NETs with their mission at the discretion of the Team Leader.” Page 15: Changed 200.30.b to add (added text in bold) “Basic NET training will consist of no less than 25 hours of live training (i.e., online training does not qualify).“ Page 20: changed 300.20.e to read: “Expired NET IDs are no longer valid and do not represent a member’s up-to-date status in the NET program.” Page 21: Addition of text box that translates the hub abbreviations on NET IDs. Page 22: Section 400.10 changed to reflect how we give awards during the annual NET recognition event. Page 26: Addition of “Informing the PBEM NET Coordinator if he or she is leaving Portland for more than a week and appointing an ATL as the team contact during the absence.” Section 500.35.c: Elimination of: “Of the five members appointed to the Committee, the PBEM Director will appoint one as a Committee Chair.” Section 500.35: rewrote this section to reflect the current structure of the NLC. Added Section 600.25 on decedent care kits. Section 600.35 rewritten to reflect current partnership with Friends of Portland Fire & Rescue. Section 700.25 on neighborhood based curriculum added. Added Section 800.25.a regarding self-deployment. In Section 800: removed all of the comms info and made it its own section (Section 900). At the end of Section 800, added all the recent work done on SUV management (instead of making it an appendix). Added section 900 – NET Communications Operations and Protocols; removed radio info from Appendix A and placed in Section 900 in order to avoid duplicating information. Removed appendix concerning online resources, since we now have the NET Tumblr.
Revised by:	Jeremy Van Keuren, NET Coordinator	2016.08.20
Approved by:	Carmen Merlo, PBEM Director	2016.08.20

Published version 1.0
Revisions: Initial publication of the NET Guidelines.
Revised by:	Jeremy Van Keuren, NET Coordinator	2013.11.19
Approved by:	Carmen Merlo, PBEM Director	2013.11.19