Grant Details

The UASI Program assists high-threat, high-density Urban Areas in efforts to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.

The UASI program is intended to provide financial assistance to address the unique multi-discipline planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs of high-threat, high-density Urban Areas, and to assist these areas in building and sustaining capabilities to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from threats or acts of terrorism using the Whole Community approach.

Activities implemented with UASI funds must support terrorism preparedness by building or enhancing capabilities that relate to the prevention of, protection from, mitigation of, response to or recovery from terrorism in order to be considered eligible. However, many capabilities which support terrorism preparedness simultaneously support preparedness for other hazards. Grantees must demonstrate the dual-use quality for any activities implemented that are not explicitly focused on terrorism preparedness. Urban Areas must use UASI funds to employ regional approaches to overall preparedness and are encouraged to adopt regional response structures whenever appropriate.

In developing applications for UASI, recipients are encouraged to consider 2024 National Priority Areas identified for improvement including:

• Enhancing the protection of soft targets/crowded places
• Enhancing information and intelligence sharing and analysis
• Combating domestic violent extremism
• Enhancing cybersecurity
• Enhancing community preparedness and resilience
• Enhancing election security

In Texas, the Texas Office of the Governor is responsible for coordinating homeland security initiatives and UASI Program Funds. This agency is responsible for managing the financial and reporting aspects of the grant programs in accordance with established federal guidelines and allocating funds to local, regional, and other state government agencies.

Grantees will be required to complete the 2024 Nationwide Cybersecurity Review (NCSR), enabling agencies to benchmark and measure progress of improving their cybersecurity posture. The Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), or equivalent for each recipient agency should complete the NCSR. If there is no CIO or CISO, the most senior cybersecurity professional should complete the assessment. The NCSR is available at no cost to the user and takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete. For more information about the NCSR, visit: https://www.cisecurity.org/ms-isac/services/ncsr/