Laying the Foundation to Building a Weather-Ready Nation

Building a Weather-Ready Nation is a high priority for the National Weather Service (NWS), its stakeholders, and partners. To successfully accomplish this endeavor, the NWS had to restructure its budget, reorganize its headquarters offices, and establish a governance framework (“NWS Playbook”) that defines how the Weather Services needs to operate to achieve maximum efficiencies and build a Weather-Ready Nation.

M2 Strategy is supporting the NWS Office of Organizational Excellence (OOE) in establishing the NWS Governance across the organization.  Our poster will briefly outline the current fiscal restrictions and environment that the NWS faces. Additionally, we will explain the need for the NWS to better implement change both internally and externally.  The poster will describe that one of the components that allows the NWS to successfully implement change is by establishing a governance framework.  We explain that the governance framework outlines how the NWS reaches very important decisions by leveraging private sector concepts such as Portfolio Management.  Utilizing this concept allows the organization to align its budget and resources to Weather-Ready Nation strategies and objectives as well as strengthening key external partnerships.  Additionally, we will show that the NWS Governance includes a strategic management process that describes how inputs from internal and external stakeholders are taken into consideration when developing strategic plans.  To summarize this abstract, the goal of the poster is to showcase the new NWS Governance framework, how that framework enables change within the NWS, and allows NWS to best serve the needs of its partners and the public.