Traveler Safety:
Your resources are changing
Kerry Geffert
Product Evangelist, Terra Dotta
The safety of our travelers is paramount for those of us in international education. Each professional or institution develops a list of resources which become the bases for recommendations and decisions regarding student, faculty and staff travel. One common resource is the Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs’ website, and their Travel Warning and Travel Alerts.
While a common resource for most of us, use of the Bureau’s website information has not been without its challenges. Differences among the various DOS safety and security messages was not always easily understood, leading to confusion regarding actions to take. Warnings issued for an entire country may not have allowed for regional differences in safety levels, Mexico being an example that proved challenging for many border state institutions. Such consternation soon should be reduced with a major change to the Bureau’s Consular Advisory System.
Anticipated for mid-January, the Advisory System will change from warnings and alerts to a 4-level Travel Advisory System. While an Advisory level will be assigned to each country as a whole, the new system will allow for different “levels of advice…. for specific locations or areas within a country.”1 For more information on these four levels, visit the DOS webpage Improved Consular Safety and Security Messaging.
Additional information on these changes is available to you online. A recording of a late November 2017 Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs webinar discussing the changes can be found on YouTube at https://youtu.be/yPc7J24Mw3I. In addition, NAFSA’s Government Connection will host a presentation by Carmella Donahue, Director of Outreach and Training at the Bureau of Consular Affairs, on January 23. To register for this free, online event visit NAFSA’s announcement. As the announcement indicates, you may want to “invite your international risk managers, legal counsel, and education abroad colleagues to watch with you in the same room.”
Clients of Terra Dotta’s AlertTraveler (AT) also will notice changes to both the Alert Severity Ratings and Alert Categories. These changes are reflective of changes recently made by our AT partner, iJet. An email was sent to all AT clients on January 6 to notify them of these and other upgrades. Clients now have the flexibility of configuring alerts based on both severity levels and categories, making information sent to your travelers even more appropriate to their individual situations. This upgrade increases the likelihood that your travelers will read and heed the advice given.
AT clients will notice a similarity between the levels of the new DOS Advisory System and those employed by iJet, an organization with more than 15 years of experience. One difference is the lack of a “do not travel” level from iJet. Comments, Ed Daly, iJet’s Editor-In-Chief/Editorial Intelligence, “iJet would never tell anyone ‘do not travel’. For various reasons it is not always possible for an organization or their people; sometimes travel is simply unavoidable. In those cases iJet provides their clients the intelligence and analysis they need to prepare, combined with on-going monitoring, and a vetted response plan in the event of a worst case scenario.”
Where does this leave campus officials responsible for the safety and security of their institutions’ travelers? If the Department of State advisories are a primary resource for travel decisions, a review of policies, procedures, and the criteria used in making decisions certainly is warranted. Fortunately tools are available to assist reviewers and travelers alike in making the best, most informed decisions regarding travel. If Terra Dotta’s AlertTraveler is not part of your current arsenal of resources, contact us at info@terradotta.com for a demo; we are developing several solutions to meet the varied needs of all campuses.
The world is full of wonders to be visited; however, not all of them may meet the risk standards set by your institution. In concert with private and governmental organizations such as the Department of State, iJet, and Terra Dotta, international educators and their colleagues have ever-improving resources available to make those decisions.
- U.S. Department of State – Bureau of Consular Affairs, https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/before-you-go/about-our-new-products.html.