In response to requests from both Members of Congress and Governors, in December 2006 SPF launched a new area of the program, executing Strategic Policy Forums for state leadership. This program brings SPF exercises outside Washington, gathering senior Executive and Legislative branch officials from the state and federal levels to play customized versions of SPF games. In this way, the state exercises connect our successful executive-legislative dialogues with Federal-state exchanges on strategic security issues of contemporary importance.

Program History
At the request of Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, the Strategic Policy Forum conducted one of its strategic level tabletop exercises as a pilot to the State Exercise Program. Senior officials from the state of Hawaii, including the Speaker of the Hawaii House of Representatives and the Mayor of Honolulu, participated, as did Federal executive officials such as Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Christopher Ryan Henry. Springboarding off the success of this pilot program, SPF conducted its second state exercise in Anchorage, Alaska on August 2007. The program continued in 2008 with SPF's invitation to return to Hawaii. In January 2008 it executed Pandemic Tempest, a new exercise crafted in light of participants' observations and lessons learned from the 2007 state and Congressional exercises in Honolulu.