To better understand how the National Protection Framework fits into the overall national preparedness efforts, we need to look at the National Preparedness System and the National Preparedness Goal.

The National Preparedness System (NPS) was developed to provide the approach, resources, and tools to aid the whole community in its preparedness activities to achieve the National Preparedness Goal. While the NPS emphasizes the National Incident Management System (NIMS) as the basis for organizing operations during incident management, Protection capabilities are built, sustained, and delivered by a wide range of organizational arrangements. Also, the NPS includes determining what capabilities are needed, how they should be developed and sustained, and how they should be delivered.