Governance Briefing — CISA issues Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce guidance v1.0

Executive briefing: On 19 March 2020, CISA issued Version 1.0 of its Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce guidance to support state and local COVID-19 shelter-in-place decisions and help operators identify personnel who should retain facility and travel access.

What changed

• Provided an initial, non-binding list of essential workers across 16 critical infrastructure sectors, including health care, IT, communications, transportation, food, energy, and financial services.
• Encouraged jurisdictions to use the list to inform access letters, travel permits, and facility credentialing during stay-at-home orders.
• Set expectations for periodic updates as sectors clarified operational needs during the pandemic.

Why it matters

• Organizations needed clear, nationally recognized criteria to keep critical staff on-site without conflicting with local restrictions.
• Supply chain partners, service providers, and logistics teams relied on the list to justify travel and delivery continuity.
• Gave security and HR teams a federal template for essential worker letters and badge provisioning.

Action items for operators

• Identify roles mapped to CISA’s essential worker categories and maintain documentation supporting on-site access and travel exceptions.
• Coordinate with legal and HR to issue access letters or credentials aligned with local orders and the CISA guidance.
• Review contractor and supplier access needs to ensure critical third parties are covered by equivalent essential worker designations.