[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
REFORMING FEMA: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY
COMMUNICATIONS, PREPAREDNESS,
AND RESPONSE
with the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT,
INVESTIGATIONS, AND OVERSIGHT
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 28, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-10
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi, Chairman
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California, PETER T. KING, New York
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts LAMAR SMITH, Texas
NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut
JANE HARMAN, California MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon TOM DAVIS, Virginia
NITA M. LOWEY, New York DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
Columbia BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana
ZOE LOFGREN, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
SHEILA Jackson Lee, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
Islands GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York
AL GREEN, Texas
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
VACANCY
Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Staff Director & General Counsel
Todd Gee, Chief Counsel
Michael Twinchek, Chief Clerk
Robert O'Connor, Minority Staff Director
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, PREPAREDNESS, AND RESPONSE
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas, Chairman
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
NITA M. LOWEY, New York MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana
Columbia DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee
DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin PETER T. KING, New York (Ex
Islands Officio)
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina
BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi (Ex
Officio)
Craig Sharman, Director
Nichole Francis, Counsel
Brian Turbyfill, Clerk
Heather Hogg, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANAGEMENT, INVESTIGATIONS, AND OVERSIGHT
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania, Chairman
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York TOM DAVIS, Virginia
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
VACANCY PETER T. KING, New York (Ex
BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi (Ex Officio)
Officio)
Jeff Greene, Director & Counsel
Brian Turbyfill, Clerk
Michael Russell, Senior Counsel
(iii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable Henry Cuellar, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Texas, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Emergency
Communications, Preparedness, and Response..................... 1
The Honorable Charles W. Dent, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Pennsylvania, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response........... 3
The Honorable Christopher P. Carney, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Pennsylvania, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Management, Investigations, and Oversight...................... 4
The Honorable Mike Rogers, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Alabama, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Management, Investigations, and Oversight:
Oral Statement................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, Chairman, Committee on Homeland
Security....................................................... 38
The Honorable Yvette D. Clarke, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York.......................................... 44
The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress From
the State of North Carolina.................................... 51
The Honorable William J. Jefferson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Louisiana.................................... 48
The Honorable Bobby Jindal, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Louisiana............................................. 40
The Honorable Ed Perlmutter, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Colorado.......................................... 46
The Honorable Loretta Sanchez, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California........................................ 42
Witnesses
The Honorable George Foresman, Under Secretary for Preparedness,
Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 15
Prepared Statement............................................. 17
The Honorable Matt Jadacki, Deputy Inspector General, Department
of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 22
Prepared Statement............................................. 24
The Honorable R. David Paulison, Under Secretary for Federal
Emergency Management, Federal Emergency Management Agency:
Oral Statement................................................. 8
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Appendixes
I. Letter:
The Honorable Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security............................................ 63
II. Questions and Responses:
Responses from Hon. George W. Foreman.......................... 79
Responses from Hon. R. David Paulison.......................... 82
Responses from Hon. Richard L. Skinner......................... 88
REFORMING FEMA: ARE WE MAKING PROGRESS?
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness and
Response,
with the
Subcommittee on Management, Investigations,
and Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Henry Cuellar
[chairman of the Subcommittee on Emergency Communications,
Preparedness, and Response] presiding.
Present from the Subcommittee on Emergency Communications,
Preparedness, and Response: Representatives Cuellar, Sanchez,
Lowey, Norton, Etheridge, Jefferson, Thompson, Dent, Jindal,
and Davis.
Present from the Subcommittee on Management,
Investigations, and Oversight: Representatives Carney,
Perlmutter, and Rogers.
Mr. Cuellar. [Presiding.] The joint hearing on the
Subcommittee on Emergency Communications and Preparedness and
Response and the Subcommittee on Management, Investigation and
Oversight will come to order.
The subcommittees are meeting jointly today to receive
testimony regarding the reorganization of FEMA, which was
mandated by the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of
2000.
The chair also would like to recognize that there might be
two to four members of the committee who do not sit on either
of the subcommittees assembled here today, the gentlewoman from
Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, and the gentleman from Washington, Mr.
Reichert.
And I believe we might have also Mr. Al Green from Texas
and also Mr. Jefferson from Louisiana that have asked to
participate in today's hearing. Consistent with the rules and
the practices of the committee, we are pleased to honor their
requests.
I now ask for unanimous consent to allow all four of the
congressmen and women to sit and question the witness at
today's hearing. Without objection, it is so ordered.
I would also note that Ms. Jackson Lee and Mr. Reichert and
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Green, they will be recognized for
questioning, once all the other members have been recognized,
in accordance with the rules of the committee.
At this time, my opening statement.
I want to say, first of all, to the witnesses, thank you
very much for being here with us. And on behalf of the members
of both subcommittees, we want to welcome you to our panel. We
are glad that you are here to share an update to give us a
status on the FEMA reform.
As we begin, I would like to highlight the importance of
this committee's rule that written testimony be received 48
hours in advance. I do understand that we all have time
pressures, and they are often precedent. However, to ensure
that the members are adequately prepared for each of the
hearing, I would ask that every effort is made to adhere to the
48-hour rule.
Mr. Paulison and Mr. Foresman, your leadership in trying to
reform our federal government, how we respond to disasters and
to make FEMA a more responsive and effective agency will prove
critical to our states, our local communities and the nation.
Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New
Orleans exposed significant flaws in our government's ability
to prepare for, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from
this type of event. It is our duty to ensure that this never
happens again.
On October 4, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Post
Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which made
substantial changes to FEMA and the Department of Homeland
Security, including making the administrative FEMA responsible
for all phases of emergency management, effectively rejoining
all preparedness and response activity within FEMA.
The purpose of this legislation was to establish FEMA as a
distinct entity within the Department of Homeland Security,
create a new leadership positions with clear position
requirements, new missions that restored some of the
responsibilities that had been removed. Finally, it enhanced
the agency's authority to undertake a broad range of activities
before and after disasters occur.
The reorganization has an effective date of March 31, 2007,
which is just around the corner. Efficient, timely and
effective implementation of the act is critical to homeland
security, and it is a high priority for our committee and the
American people.
The bill also included at least 44 deadlines for reports,
the development and strategic and plans and the creation of new
programs. FEMA and the department have already began missing
those deadlines, a lot of those deadlines that Congress
mandated in the legislation.
We certainly want to go into some details in a few minutes,
and I look forward receiving an update from the witnesses on
those particular deadlines.
Finally, we look forward to hearing updates on the
department's efforts in the following areas: one, the
restructuring of the emergency communication responsibilities
in the department; number two, evacuation planning; number
three, planning to minimize fraud, waste, abuse within FEMA;
number four, improvements to mass care and housing; number
five, improvements to help individuals with special needs.
As our witnesses will explain in details, FEMA and the
Department of Homeland Security are undergoing massive reforms
to their emergency management capabilities. While some progress
has been made, enormous challenges still remain.
And as members of Congress, we certainly want to work with
you to address those challenges. We are all in the same team,
and we certainly want to work with you to make this an
efficient, and effective, and accountable process, also.
The committee looks forward working with you during this
process, and I want to again thank you, thank the witnesses
again for their testimony.
Before I recognize the ranking minority member, let me just
say this. The format that we have here--I just want to make
sure everybody understands--we do have somebody--Mr. Jadacki,
thank you very much?this is not a ``gotcha'' type of
environment we want to set up.
We are interested in looking at some of the recommendations
in that way so the members can ask, instead of having somebody
sit down or walk out of the room, we can have somebody on the
same table and then ask the questions from the members. So,
again, this is a process or a stage so we can improve our
questioning, and that way we can get the questions in and
improve the process on that.
So, at this time, the chair now recognizes the ranking
minority member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Dent, for any statements that he might have.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, too, for
holding this hearing. I also thank you for the bipartisan
cooperation you have extended to me. It is very much
appreciated. And I look forward to working with you over the
course of this session on these issues.
First, thanks also to the witnesses. I look forward to
discussing the department's reorganization proposal and the
efforts under way to implement the lessons learned from
Hurricane Katrina.
Last Congress, this committee played the lead role in
crafting the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act of 2006. This
legislation includes a number of reforms to strengthen the
nation's preparedness and response capabilities.
For instance, this legislation would strengthen the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, by improving situational
awareness, incident command structure, ensuring that necessary
goods and services are procured in advance of an event,
strengthening operational planning, and improving customer
service.
I also understand that FEMA has already taken steps,
including 18 different assessments of its businesses practices,
to improve the agency's operations. I look forward to hearing
more about these improvements and other reform efforts that are
under way.
There are three specific areas I would like to discuss
today: one, FEMA's efforts regarding flood mitigation; two,
medical preparedness; and, three, evacuation planning.
First, I am particularly interested in discussing FEMA's
efforts to control, mitigate, and respond to the flooding of
local streams. Local authorities have advised me that many of
FEMA's flood maps are out of date. I am interested to hear how
FEMA is working to correct this problem, especially coming from
a state that probably has more flowing water than any of the
lower 48 states.
I am also concerned that FEMA is not doing enough to help
with the local stream remediation. What, if anything, is FEMA
going to do to coordinate with the Natural Resources
Conservation Service, an agency within the Department of
Agriculture, to promote remediation of streams that seem to
flood year after year?
In addition, I look forward to discussing the new Office of
Health Affairs and how this office will strengthen medical
preparedness. In my home county of Pennsylvania is the state's
largest hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital.
Last Congress, this subcommittee examined the ability of
the nation's emergency healthcare providers to respond to mass
casualties from a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other
emergency. Through that hearing, we learned that much work
remains to be done.
Emergency medical providers and public health providers
must be included in preparedness and response planning, along
with police, fire, and other first responders.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses how the new
Office of Health Affairs will ensure that our nation's
hospitals and doctors' offices are included in preparedness and
response planning.
And, finally, I am particularly concerned about FEMA's role
in evacuation planning for terrorist attacks or natural
disasters. I am concerned that the need to evacuate a large
metropolitan area, say New York City, for example, to less
urbanized areas would quickly overwhelm the resources of the
host areas, in terms of evacuee housing and treatment.
I am interested in learning how FEMA can encourage the
development of local evacuation plans that will incorporate
host communities, including their municipalities, first
responders, public and private hospital facilities, and public
utility companies, as well as the federal government and
others.
All of these groups must have a seat at the table to ensure
that there is a smooth, well-coordinated response to an
incident.
And, again, I thank the chairman and look forward to
today's discussion, and look forward to working in a bipartisan
manner over the course of the session.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Dent.
And I do want to say that we are going to be doing this
bipartisan. I think at the very beginning both Mr. Dent and
myself got together, and we talked about the different issues
that we are going to cover throughout the hearing process that
we are going to have.
And I think we reached an agreement I think on all of them,
so I certainly look forward to working with you. Thank you, Mr.
Dent.
At this time, the chair now recognizes the chairman of the
Subcommittee of the Management, Investigation and Oversight,
the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Carney, for an opening
statement.
Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Carney. Chairman Cuellar, I would like to thank you for
agreeing to hold today's hearing on the important and ongoing
reforms at FEMA. Thank you very much.
I would also like to recognize Chairman Thompson's
leadership on this issue, as well, even though he is not
present right now.
Undersecretary Paulison, thank you for coming in today. We
do appreciate it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on
the new FEMA, on the reorganization of the new FEMA, and on the
dealings it is had with the upper echelons of DHS. This issue
has been of obvious concern, since we witnessed the failures
that took place in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I plan on holding hearings in the Subcommittee on
Management, Investigations and Oversight to examine post-
Katrina reforms, particularly looking at DHS's headquarters and
senior management.
Many predicted that, in the rush to create DHS, the unique
needs of FEMA would be overshadowed, as it was removed from
president's cabinet status. Unfortunately, as part of the
second-stage review at DHS, FEMA was further weakened.
Secretary Chertoff decided to effectively break FEMA in
two, separating response from preparedness, and ultimately
creating a new directorate of preparedness.
On that note, I would also like to thank Undersecretary for
Preparedness George Foresman for agreeing to testify before us
and giving us some insight into the new responsibilities you
will be undertaking, sir.
I worry that the new responsibilities of what is now
referred to as the National Protection and Programs
Directorate, or NPPD, may not be focused enough.
For example, I find it perplexing that the new NPPD is
responsible for the US-VISIT program. It would seem to make
more sense to group US-VISIT within Customs and Border
Protection and not in the same directorate as the Office of
Cybersecurity and Communications or the Office of National
Capital Regional Coordination.
I am also looking forward to hearing from deputy inspector
general from the Office of Disaster Assistance, as well. I hope
that Mr. Jadacki will provide us with frank answers on the
deficiencies his investigations have uncovered.
Additionally, I hope that he will feel comfortable in
discussing potential shortcomings in the areas of all-hazard
preparedness and response, based on his experience at DHS thus
far.
I know that my colleagues and I plan on ensuring that the
FEMA reorganization is conducted in a manner that satisfies the
original intent of last year's Post Katrina Emergency Reform
Act, as included in part of the fiscal year 2007 Homeland
Security Appropriations Act.
I worry that the FEMA leadership in place when Katrina
struck and the subsequent response placed significant burdens
on many professional staff. The subsequent exodus of longtime
FEMA employees and the resulting workload has led to instances
of waste, fraud and abuse, as well as making FEMA weak in the
eyes of many Americans.
I hope that we can use the spotlight on FEMA reform in the
wake of Katrina to ensure that preparedness and response at the
federal level can be repopulated with highly professional staff
and that we can ensure that waste, fraud and abuse is fully
investigated and prosecuted.
Further, I am hopeful that the Committee on Homeland
Security and the various agencies and directorates of DHS can
continue to work with each other when it comes to oversight.
Cooperation is essential to ensuring that the needs of
Americans are met by FEMA in the event of a disaster, be it
natural or manmade.
I look forward to working with all of you in the future,
and I especially look forward to hearing from you today.
Thank you.
Mr. Cuellar. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I look
forward to working with you. I know we will be setting up some
other hearings together, hearings together to make sure we
provide that efficiency.
At this time, the chair now recognizes the ranking member
of the Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and
Oversight, the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Rogers, for an
opening statement.
Mr. Rogers?
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Chairman Cuellar and Chairman
Carney, for calling this joint hearing. I appreciate it.
I want to thank you gentlemen for taking the time out of
your schedules to be here. I know you have all got your plates
full, and I do appreciate you taking the time.
FEMA plays an important role within the Department of
Homeland Security. The agency employs an all-hazards approach
to prepare our nation for natural disasters and terrorist
attacks, and responds to the emergencies when they do occur.
Last year, Congress passed legislation to reform FEMA and
on January 18, 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff
announced the reorganization plan for FEMA, which will take
effect on March 31st. We look forward to hearing from our
witnesses about their plans to implement this reorganization.
One important result will be the merger of the Noble
training facility into the Center for Domestic Preparedness.
The Noble Training Center is a unique federal facility that
trains medical personnel to respond to incidents with mass
casualties. The Center for Domestic Preparedness, known as CDP,
trains first responders with live chemical agents.
Both facilities are co-located at the former Fort McClellan
Army Base in Alabama. According to the Secretary's
reorganization plan, the CDP director will report directly to
the assistant administrator of the new National Integration
Center.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the
status of this merger and how its placement within FEMA will
strengthen training for first responders.
Another key provision of the FEMA reform legislation is the
creation of the new homeland security education program. The
academy will leverage existing programs, such as the CDP, and
Naval Post-Graduate School to provide advance training to
senior federal, state, and local homeland security officials.
I am interested to hear from our witnesses where this
program will be located in the organization and how it will be
administered.
Also, in the 109th Congress, our subcommittee reviewed a
number of federal programs that were riddled with waste, fraud,
and abuse. For example, the subcommittee found that, if FEMA
had implemented some of the lessons learned from New York's
experience with September 11th aid programs, the extent of
fraud in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would not have been
so great.
The DHS inspector general also identified numerous examples
of fraud in federal disaster assistance programs. We will hear
today what FEMA is doing about this and what more it can do to
protect taxpayer dollars in the future.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Mike Rogers, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight
Thank you, Chairman Carney. I want to thank you and Chairman
Cuellar for holding this joint subcommittee hearing on the
reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
First I would like to welcome our witnesses, and thank them for
taking time out of their busy schedules to be with us today.
FEMA plays a vital role within the Department of Homeland Security.
The agency employs an all-hazards approach to prepare our Nation
for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, and responds to these
emergencies when they occur.
Last year, Congress passed legislation to reform FEMA.
And, on January 18, 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff
announced the reorganization plan for FEMA, which will take effect on
March 31st.
We look forward to hearing from our witnesses about their plans to
implement this reorganization.
One important result will be the merger of the Noble Training
Center into the Center for Domestic Preparedness.
The Nobel Training Center is a unique Federal facility that trains
medical personnel to respond to incidents with mass casualties.
The Center for Domestic Preparedness--known as the C--D--P--trains
first responders with live chemical agents.
Both facilities are co-located at the former Ft. McClellan military
base in Alabama.
According to the Secretary's reorganization plan, the C--D--P
Director will report to the Assistant Administrator of the new National
Integration Center.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the status of
the merger, and how its placement within FEMA will strengthen training
for first responders.
Another key provision of the FEMA reform legislation is the
creation of the new Homeland Security Education Program.
This Academy will leverage existing programs, such as the C--D--P
and Naval Post-Graduate School, to provide advance training to senior
Federal, state, and local homeland security officials.
I am interested to hear from our witnesses where this program will
be located in the reorganization, and how it will be administered.
Also, in the 109th Congress, our Subcommittee reviewed a number of
Federal programs that were riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.
For example, the Subcommittee found that if FEMA had implemented
some of the lessons learned from New York's experience with September
11th aid programs, the extent of fraud in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina would not have been so great.
The D--H--S Inspector General also has identified numerous examples
of fraud in Federal disaster assistance programs.
We will hear today what FEMA is doing--and, what more it can do--to
protect taxpayers' dollars in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield Back.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Rogers.
And, again, we want to thank you and thank also the
chairman of the full committee from Mississippi, the gentleman
from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, of course, the ranking member
from the committee, the gentleman from New York, Mr. King, for
their leadership that they have provided to the full committee
and to these subcommittees that we have.
Other members of the subcommittees are reminded that, under
the committee rules, opening statements may be submitted for
the record.
And at this time, I think you heard from us, and now we
would like to welcome the panel of witnesses. Our first witness
member is Mr. David Paulison, which is the undersecretary for
federal emergency management at the Department of Homeland
Security.
Our second witness will be Mr. George Foresman, which is
the undersecretary for preparedness at the Department of
Homeland Security.
And our third witness is Mr. Matt Jadacki, who is the
deputy inspector general from the Office of Disaster Assistance
and Oversight at the Department of Homeland Security.
And we are all pleased to have you. And, again, I do want
to emphasize the format is just a way to help us streamline our
questioning and to help improve the process.
I know sometimes people feel uncomfortable if you have the
GAO or the inspector general. Again, this is to help better the
process itself.
So without objections, the witnesses' full statements will
be inserted in the record. And now I ask each witness to
summarize his statement for 5 minutes, beginning with the
undersecretary, Mr. Paulison.
Thank you for being here, sir.
STATEMENT OF HON. R. DAVID PAULISON, UNDER SECRETARY FOR
FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
AGENCY
Mr. Paulison. Chairman Cuellar, thank you very much,
Chairman Carney, Mr. Rogers, the rest of the committee.
We appreciate very much the invitation to come. It is my
first opportunity to testify in front of the new Congress and
talk about the new FEMA.
Just before the reorganization was announced in January,
FEMA had already been making major reforms based on the lessons
learned from our response to Katrina and the 2005 hurricane
season.
It is often said that those who do not learn from the past
are doomed to repeat it. I am here to tell you that we have
learned from the past, and we have made major changes already
in the organization. Today, FEMA is better, it is stronger, and
it is more nimble than the FEMA of even a year ago.
Last fall, Congress passed a Post Katrina Emergency
Management Reform Act to authorize and encourage further
reforms. The Department of Homeland Security and FEMA took this
as an opportunity to review operations in the organization.
We have not just done the bare minimum required by law;
instead, we have developed a robust organizational structure
that will be better equipped to serve the American people.
Under this new structure, FEMA will have a strengthened
presence within the Department of Homeland Security, and many
of the functions necessary to prepare for, respond to, and to
recover from a disaster will be better aligned directly within
the agency.
FEMA will be headed by an administrator, two deputy
administrators, and a number of key assistant administrators.
And my written testimony includes the organizational chart for
you to review.
President Bush and Secretary Chertoff have asked me to
continue as the new FEMA administrator.
This new structure takes advantage of this opportunity to
improve our operations and our business processes. We do not
just have a deputy of the old FEMA and one for the new process;
we are truly realigning the functions where it makes sense.
Some of the existing FEMA offices will fall under the new
Preparedness Directorate, while some of the moving DHS programs
will report to a chief operating officer, and a few of those
offices will report directly to me.
This new FEMA will consult with and hear from new voices
that we have not had before. Under our new structure, we will
have now a disability coordinator, a senior law enforcement
adviser, a state and rural advocate, and a national advisory
council here in Washington.
But changing FEMA in Washington is not enough. This
reorganization has a major regional component, also. The
regions are truly where the rubber meets the road.
For the first time in recent memory, we now have full-time
regional directors in all 10 of our regions, and all 10 of
these people come with the years and years of experience in
emergency management. This new structure will also include
regional advisory councils and regional grant advocates to help
improve our communication with our tribal, state and local
governments, as well as the private sector.
All of these changes are set to go into effect on March
31st of this year, and we have been working with preparedness
to ensure a smooth transition, and we have been working since
last fall.
While there will be bumps along the way, we have a clear
process and clear procedures in place to move these reforms
forward while maintaining our ability to respond during the
period of change.
The president's budget reflects priorities set for this new
FEMA, incorporates a new structure. It demonstrates President
Bush's and Secretary Chertoff's commitment to build a strong
national emergency management system.
Looking back, it is hard to believe that we allocated only
$350 million in preparedness grants in 2001. In the last 5
years, we have allocated more than $16 billion to state and
local governments. In fiscal year 2008 alone, we have proposed
an additional $2.2 billion in FEMA grants to state and local
governments.
With the new structure and improved financial resources, we
would ask what the new FEMA means for American public. The new
FEMA will prove to the public that we are an agency that works
for all of our citizens. The new FEMA will capitalize on
partnerships among the federal, tribal, state and local
authorities, and we will do this because we will bring value to
them.
This new FEMA will manage our assets more efficiently and
effectively than we have in the past. And this new FEMA will
help the nation continue to build a cultural of preparedness.
The new FEMA will be ready to take a leadership role where
needed, provide support where appropriate, and be on hand
across the country before, during and after any major event.
I want to thank you for the time you have given me. And we
look forward to continuing to work with you in the upcoming
days and years. And I will be happy to answer any questions you
might have. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Paulison follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable R. David Paulison, Under Secretary,
Federal Emergency Management, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Chairman Cuellar, Ranking Member Dent, Members of the Subcommittee:
As this is my first opportunity to appear before the 110th
Congress, let me start by saying that I look forward to working with
this Subcommittee and the entire Congress in not only reorganizing the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and building what we are
calling a ``New'' FEMA, but also in returning later this spring to
highlight some of the key changes that have occurred in FEMA since
Hurricane Katrina and to present the President's FY-08 Budget
submission for FEMA. The budget reflects the President's commitment to
improving our Nation's response system, and the first step in what will
be a multi-year effort to significantly increase FEMA's core
capabilities and our capacity to better serve our Nation.
Background
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Florida and the Gulf Coast
States in late August 2005, and was followed soon afterwards by
Hurricanes Rita and Wilma. These disasters will long be remembered for
disrupting families, changing lives, and forcing Americans to rethink
vulnerability and risk assumptions. In addition to these impacts, the
hurricanes served as catalysts for significant changes in Federal
policy and the organization of responsible Federal entities, notably
within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in particular
within FEMA.
Most of those changes were included in Title VI of the FY 2007
Homeland Security Appropriations Act. Among other provisions, Title VI,
officially titled the ``Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of
2006,'' articulates expectations for FEMA, establishes new leadership
responsibilities, brings an expanded scope of missions, and allows FEMA
to undertake a broad range of activities involving prevention,
protection, response, recovery and mitigation both before and after
terrorist events, natural and manmade disasters. The Post-Katrina Act
contains provisions that set out new law, amend the Homeland Security
Act (HSA), and amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and
Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act).
I am pleased to appear before the Subcommittee today to describe
the New FEMA and the reorganization that is presently underway that
reflects the mandate established by Congress last fall.
The New FEMA
The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act reorganizes DHS by
reconfiguring FEMA with consolidated emergency management functions,
including national preparedness functions. The newly-constituted FEMA
will be established as a distinct entity, yet integral to DHS, similar
to the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Secret Service. As required by the
Act, the New FEMA will include the functions existing within FEMA as of
June 1, 2006 and those elements of the Preparedness Directorate that
were in the Preparedness Directorate as of June 1, 2006 and not
specifically excluded by the Act. The New FEMA will be headed by an
Administrator, I have been asked to serve in the newly titled position
of Administrator. As required by the Post-Katrina Act, the
organizational changes required for New FEMA will be effective on March
31, 2007.
Significantly, and consistent with our analysis of Hurricane
Katrina lessons learned, the New FEMA will not simply tack on new
programs and responsibilities. The Act clearly invites a thorough
assessment of the internal FEMA structure to incorporate lessons
learned from Hurricane Katrina and to integrate systematically new and
existing assets and responsibilities within FEMA. That is precisely
what we have done. The new organization reflects the expanded scope of
FEMA's responsibilities. It supports a more nimble, flexible use of
resources. It will strengthen coordination among FEMA elements and with
other DHS components. It will enable FEMA to better coordinate with
agencies and departments outside of DHS. And it will deliver enhanced
capabilities to partner at the state and local level with emergency
management and preparedness organizations and to engage the
capabilities of the private sector.
While the Act allows FEMA to be structured with not more than four
Deputy Administrators, at this time we will establish two Deputy
Administrators. One will be the Deputy Administrator and Chief
Operating Officer. This will be the principal deputy, with overall
operational responsibilities at FEMA. Harvey Johnson, currently the
Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of FEMA, will continue in
this role. The other will be the Deputy Administrator for National
Preparedness, a new directorate within FEMA.
Nine Assistant Administrators will report through one of the two
Deputy Administrators to the Administrator (see attached organizational
chart). Seven of the Assistant Administrators will report to the Deputy
Administrator and Chief Operating Officer for the following
directorates: Logistics Management, Disaster Assistance, Disaster
Operations, Grants Management and Operations, U.S. Fire Administration,
National Continuity Programs, and Mitigation. Two of the Assistant
Administrators will report to the Deputy Administrator for National
Preparedness: the National Integration Center (NIC) and the Readiness,
Prevention, and Planning Directorate.
National Preparedness
The Deputy Administrator for National Preparedness will head a new
directorate within FEMA, consolidating FEMA strategic preparedness
assets. It will include both existing FEMA programs and certain legacy
Preparedness Directorate programs. It will incorporate functions
related to preparedness doctrine, policy and contingency planning. It
will further contain the Department's exercise coordination and
evaluation program, emergency management training, along with the
Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program and the Radiological
Emergency Preparedness program.
The Deputy Administrator for National Preparedness will oversee two
major functional responsibilities: (1) Readiness, Prevention and
Planning; and (2) the National Integration Center.
While we are still working to finalize the organizational structure
of these divisions within the FEMA National Preparedness Directorate,
the Readiness, Prevention and Planning division will be the central
division within FEMA responsible for preparedness policy and planning
functions. This expanded division will likely include FEMA's
catastrophic planning activities and the following offices: (1)
Exercise & Evaluation; (2) Contingency Preparedness; (3) Preparedness
Doctrine & Policy; (4) Citizen Corps; and (5) the Chemical Stockpile
Emergency Preparedness Program and the Radiological Emergency
Preparedness program. The Readiness, Prevention and Planning division
will be responsible, among other functions, for coordinating HSPD-8
(National Preparedness) implementation, the National Assessment and
Reporting System, Nationwide Plan Review, the Federal Preparedness
Coordinator program, and coordinating with the approximately 2,100
Citizen Corps Councils in all of the States and territories and the
numerous governmental and non-governmental Citizen Corps partners. The
directorate will also work seamlessly with Grants Management and
Operations to develop the grant policy guidance and management and
operations metrics for the full spectrum of grants for which FEMA will
be responsible to administer. We also look to greater involvement in
the development of grants management and operations guidance from other
elements of DHS, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, the Transportation
Security Administration, and the Office of Intelligence & Analysis.
These components will assist FEMA by using their subject matter
expertise to develop substantive guidance and accomplish meaningful and
measurable progress toward our Preparedness goals.
Within FEMA, the National Integration Center (NIC) will provide
FEMA with the ability to elevate Preparedness and Emergency Management
knowledge and capabilities across all jurisdictions: federal, state and
local. The NIC will serve both as a center for training and doctrine
development and for the delivery of high quality training to first
responders from the Fire Academy, Emergency Management Institute, and
the Noble Center across the full spectrum of preparedness, response,
recovery and mitigation, as well as prevention in coordination with
other organizations within DHS. The NIC will also be responsible for
the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the National
Response Plan (NRP), as well as the annexes and supplements to the NRP,
such as the Catastrophic Incident Annex and the Catastrophic Incident
Supplement. In addition, the NIC will oversee the Training Division,
the Systems Support Directorate, the Center for Domestic Preparedness
and Noble Training Center, the NIMS Integration Center, the Emergency
Management Institute, and relationships with FEMA's training partners
and external associations. Working with Citizen Corps, the NIC will
also coordinate with the Corporation for National and Community Service
to establish a process to better use volunteers and donations and to
improve first responder activities with State, local and tribal
governments, as well as non-governmental organizations.
In carrying out these responsibilities, the Assistant Administrator
of the NIC will closely coordinate with the Administrator of the U.S.
Fire Administration, particularly with regard to efficient utilization
of the National Fire Academy campus assets in Emmitsburg, Maryland,
which are also transferred back to FEMA pursuant to the Act. I envision
that the functions and organization of the U.S. Fire Administration
will not substantially change with this reorganization. The U.S. Fire
Administration will remain responsible for the National Fire Academy as
well as for the data analysis, reporting, training and other
coordination activities currently being done there.
The offices currently within the Preparedness Directorate that will
not be transferred to FEMA are explicitly delineated in the Act and
include the Office of Infrastructure Protection, the National
Communications System, the National Cyber Security Division, and the
Office of the Chief Medical Officer.
Other FEMA Headquarters Elements
Also under this new organization, the DHS Office of Grants and
Training will be moved to the New FEMA and reorganized as Grants
Management and Operations with some elements moving to the National
Preparedness Directorate. The Training and Systems Support Division of
the Office of Grants and Training will be transferred to the NIC. The
Office of the Citizen Corps within the Office of Grants and Training
will be transferred into the National Preparedness Directorate's Office
of Readiness, Prevention and Planning. The Public Affairs, Legislative
Affairs, and Executive Secretary positions within the Office of Grants
and Training will transfer to their equivalents within Office of
External Affairs. The current Grants and Training Business Office and
Preparedness Programs Division will transfer into the immediate Office
of the Assistant Administrator for Grants Management and Operations. A
joint missions and planning team in FEMA with full participation of the
current leadership of the existing DHS Office of Grants and Training
has been meeting for the past several weeks to develop the mechanisms
to manage these programs with a view towards enhancing our support of
State and local partners and to operationalize the national
preparedness efforts already underway.
In addition to incorporating the Preparedness elements into FEMA,
the New FEMA will also sharpen our focus on building core competencies
in logistics, operational planning, incident management and the
delivery of disaster assistance. These new core competencies will be
evident in our organizational structure. For example, we will
establish: (1) a Logistics Management Directorate to fulfill the
mandate of the new HSA Section 636; (2) a Disaster Assistance
Directorate incorporating elements of the current Recovery division;
and (3) a Disaster Operations Directorate incorporating the existing
FEMA Response Division and elements from the Preparedness Directorate's
National Preparedness Task Force. These three entities within FEMA will
be headed by Assistant Administrators. FEMA will also maintain
directorates that focus more clearly on broader issues of preparedness,
protection and mitigation, including the National Continuity Programs
Directorate (formerly Office of National Security Coordination), and
the Mitigation Directorate. Both will be headed by Assistant
Administrators.
I am also pleased to report that FEMA will establish a Disability
Coordinator. The new position works with both the Disaster Assistance
and Disaster Operations Directorate, ensuring that we incorporate
considerations for the disabled in how we plan, respond and recover
from disasters. The selection will be made following consultation with
appropriate groups including disability interest groups as well as
State, local and tribal groups. The Disability Coordinator is charged
with assessing the coordination of emergency management policies and
practices with the needs of individuals with disabilities, including
training, accessibility of entry, transportation, media outreach, and
general coordination and dissemination of model best practices,
including evacuation planning. The Disability Coordinator will work
closely with the Department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties.
The Act also requires that a National Advisory Council be created,
the members of which will be appointed by the FEMA Administrator. The
Council has already been established and membership is being sought.
Also to be appointed within FEMA will be a Small State and Rural
Advocate who will work within the Office of External Affairs. The Small
State and Rural Advocate will be an advocate for the fair treatment of
small States and rural communities.
Under this reorganization, both the DHS Office of State and Local
Government Coordination and the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives
transfer to FEMA on March 31, 2007.
FEMA's headquarters administrative offices, which existed within
FEMA on the date of enactment of the Post-Katrina Act (October 4,
2006), including the Executive Secretariat, the Office of Chief
Counsel, the Office of Management (Human Resources, Information
Technology, Acquisition and Facilities Management), the Office of the
Chief Financial Officer, and the Office of Equal Rights, will report to
the Administrator through the Deputy Administrator/Chief Operating
Officer. Operational and policy offices, including a new Law
Enforcement Advisor to the Administrator and the Office of Policy and
Program Analysis, will also report through the Deputy Administrator/
Chief Operating Officer. FEMA will consolidate several former offices
into a new Office of External Affairs, which will incorporate the
Public Affairs, Legislative Affairs, Intergovernmental Affairs, and
International Affairs offices.
In the FY07 DHS Appropriations Act, $6.459 million was appropriated
for the ``National Preparedness Integration Program'' (NPIP). DHS will
be submitting an expenditure plan describing how the funding will be
used.
FEMA Regional Offices
The Act codifies and expands FEMA's regional office structure. The
ten Regional Administrators provided for in the Act will report
directly to the Administrator, and will be supported and coordinated by
an Associate Deputy Administrator at FEMA headquarters. At the regional
level, the Act provides for the creation of Regional Advisory Councils
and at least one Regional Office Strike Team. The Regional Advisory
Councils will provide advice and recommendations to the Regional
Administrators on regional emergency management issues and identify
weaknesses or deficiencies in preparedness, protection, response,
recovery and mitigation for State, local and tribal governments based
on their specialized knowledge of the region. The statute also
establishes area offices for the Pacific and Caribbean jurisdictions as
well as for Alaska in the appropriate regional offices.
The Act also transfers the DHS Office of National Capital Region
Coordination (NCRC) to FEMA. NCRC will continue its work with
stakeholders to address the unique challenge resolving inter-agency and
multi-jurisdictional issues of the National Capital Region. NCRC will
report to the Administrator through the Deputy Administrator/Chief
Operating Officer, but it will be supported as needed by the Associate
Deputy Administrator who works with the FEMA Regions.
The New FEMA Missions
As of March 31, 2007, FEMA will have the responsibility to lead and
support efforts to reduce the loss of life and property and protect the
nation from all hazards through a risk-based system that focuses on the
expanded comprehensive emergency management components of preparedness,
response, recovery, and hazard mitigation. The statute also addresses a
fifth component--protection; FEMA will work closely with the
Department's Office of Infrastructure Protection to help fulfill
protection responsibilities through training, grants, planning, and
other means.
Among the specific activities given to FEMA in the Act are the
following:
leading the nation's comprehensive emergency
management efforts (including protection) for all hazards,
including catastrophic incidents;
partnering with non-federal entities to build a
national emergency management system;
developing federal response capabilities;
integrating FEMA's comprehensive emergency management
responsibilities;
building robust regional offices to address regional
priorities;
using DHS resources under the Secretary's leadership;
building non-federal emergency management
capabilities, including those involving communications; and
developing and coordinating the implementation of a
risk-based all hazards preparedness strategy that addresses the
unique needs of certain incidents.
The Act added responsibilities, including ensuring first responder
effectiveness, supervising grants, administering and implementing the
NRP, preparing and implementing Federal continuity of government and
operations plans, and maintaining and operating the National Response
Coordination Center, among others.
Incorporating Preparedness Into the New FEMA
FEMA is focused on incorporating the concept of preparedness into
all of our programs and making the protection and preparedness missions
an integral part of a new, coherent Agency organization in support of a
comprehensive National Preparedness and Emergency Management System.
Given the desire to take advantage of this opportunity to identify and
incorporate the synergies that Congress envisioned for New FEMA, we
have established a FEMA--Preparedness--DHS Senior Leadership Team to
guide this transition effort. We have also established a number of
functional teams to address the major transition management issues in
the areas of personnel, finance, and information technology among
others. We are reaching out for consultation and collaboration to other
DHS components; the Federal interagency community; Congress; the White
House; key emergency management, law enforcement and preparedness
organizations; the policy community; and State, local and private
sector leaders. We anticipate completing the administrative actions
needed to integrate FEMA and preparedness organizationally by March 31,
2007, while full integration of FEMA and preparedness functions will be
an ongoing effort over the months following.
Our approach to the creation of the ``New FEMA'' is designed to:
Incorporate lessons learned and best practices into
the new organization with a focus on core competencies to build
a strong foundation for maximum effectiveness from the start;
Ensure a unified approach to the incorporation of
protection, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation
principles in foundational doctrines/documents such as the NRP,
NIMS, the National Preparedness Goal, and the Target
Capabilities List;
Employ new technologies where appropriate to enhance
capabilities and efficiencies of services. In strong
partnership with the Science and Technology Directorate using
their CAPSTONE IPT process, the new FEMA will provide clear
direction on the priority mission capability gaps so as to
focus technology solutions to meet the highest priority
incident management and first responder emergency
communications requirements.
Develop strong partnerships with other DHS components,
the Federal interagency community, State, local and private
sector leaders, and other non-governmental organizations in
support of a comprehensive approach to protection,
preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation efforts
incorporating performance-based operating principles;
Emphasize increased ability to fully address terrorist
and other man-made acts as well as natural disasters - a risk-
based all-hazards approach;
Strengthen the culture of customer service, reinforced
by best in class business practices for internal and external
delivery of service;
Support development of a more robust national
emergency management system and an expanded and coordinated
``Culture of Preparedness'' to engage all Americans and to
build on the efforts of Under Secretary Foresman in helping the
Nation address the multitude of challenges we face; and
Build strong regions as the essential field component
that engages most directly with State and local partners,
disaster victims, and the general public to both increase State
and local preparedness and response capabilities to incidents
when they occur.
What It All Means
At the end of the day, one could logically ask the question: What
does a ``New'' FEMA mean for the American Public?
In my view, it means that we will offer the American public a FEMA
that will in fact, become the Nation's preeminent emergency management
agency. The New FEMA will develop operational core competencies and be
strengthened by a dedicated and professional workforce that will be
fully capable of:
Leading the Nation to better prepare against the risk
of an all-hazard disaster;
Marshalling an effective national response and
recovery effort;
Reducing the vulnerability to life and property;
Speeding the recovery of communities and individual
disaster victims; and,
Instilling public confidence at the time that is
needed most--in the hours and days following a disaster.
New FEMA will be in touch with America, and be valued across all
jurisdictions--Federal, State, local and tribal, and by the private
sector and other non-governmental organizations, as an engaged, agile
and responsive leader and partner in preparedness and emergency
management.
Should a disaster appear imminent, or even strike without warning,
we will be prepared to work immediately with State and local officials.
FEMA senior and regional staff will be in constant contact with our
partners in State and local government as well as our colleagues in the
Department and throughout the Federal government. We will preposition
equipment and supplies and we will know what we have and where it is.
Items will be moved to disaster scenes even before a request or a
declaration is made, so that if they are needed, they are ready to
deploy and use. We will execute the plans that we will have developed
as collaborative partners in advance.
When the immediate threat has passed, FEMA will be on the ground
immediately to assess requirements for Federal assistance and then
quickly provide that response and recovery assistance to State and
local governments and individual disaster victims. Mobile facilities
will arrive to register victims so that an individual assistance can be
quickly available where needed. We will be able to help more people
more quickly, and with greater protection against waste, fraud and
abuse.
First responders will also be better prepared, as they receive
additional funds through grants and training that contribute measurably
to enhanced preparedness, whether through the U.S. Fire Administration
or by other FEMA staff. Planning for disasters will also improve as
State and local officials receive hands-on assistance from FEMA staff.
The public will have greater confidence in the abilities of their
tribal, State and local officials as they see more and more of their
leaders trained and certified in emergency management, and more and
more of their first responders receiving similar and expanded training
that meets their own needs.
In short, the ``New'' FEMA will be more agile, significantly
stronger, and leaning more forward to deliver assistance more
effectively than before. We have heard you and are acting on what you
have asked us to do. FEMA will be ready to take a leadership role where
needed, provide support where appropriate and be on-hand across the
country before and after any major event--that I commit to you.
Thank you for your time today and I look forward to answering your
questions.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay, thank you.
I am going to ask all of the witnesses to summarize their
statements, and then after that we will go onto questioning.
Again, thank you very much, Mr. Paulison, for being here
with us and for your testimony.
I now recognize the undersecretary, Mr. Foresman, to
summarize his statement for 5 minutes. Thank you, and welcome.
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE FORESMAN, UNDER SECRETARY FOR
PREPAREDNESS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Foresman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
Clearly, we are here to discuss the department's progress
in implementing organizational changes directed by Congress
that reflect both the maturing nature of the Department of
Homeland Security in the face of a much better understood risk
environment in the 21st century, as well as the lessons that we
have all collectively learned from Hurricane Katrina.
In an interconnected and interdependent global economy,
managing risk requires adaptability to a wide range of
individual scenarios. These scenarios unite to create a very
complex risk environment when it comes to protecting America.
This risk environment is dynamic. And DHS's approach to
managing this risk environment must be equally dynamic.
This means making tough-minded assessments and recognizing
that it is simply not possible to eliminate every threat, to
every individual, in every place, at every moment. Simply put,
we cannot completely eliminate risk in our lives. Therefore, we
must attempt to manage it in a sensible way that offers the
best possible level of protection to our citizens, our
infrastructure, and our economy.
So how do we do this? Well, I can tell you that there is no
one action alone that will allow us to effectively manage all
of America's risk. The work that Chief Paulison and the men and
women of the new FEMA undertake is a vital component in
response and recovery when events occur.
So is the work of the Coast Guard, Customs and Border
Protection, US-VISIT, our Office of Infrastructure Protection,
Cybersecurity and Communications, to name just a few, along
with a host of other DHS and non-DHS entities.
Fully protecting America, as was envisioned when the
Department of Homeland Security was created, is about
understanding current risk and assessing the likely future risk
in the 21st century.
It is in this vein that the secretary took the opportunity
presented by the congressionally directed organizational
changes that have resulted in the organizational changes that
Chief Paulison has just talked about, but the secretary also
used this as an opportunity to assess the overall structure of
the department, which led to the creation of the National
Protection and Programs Directorate, or the NPDD, and the
Office of Health Affairs.
These changes are illustrative of the continuing maturity
of DHS, as the threat and the risk environment continues to
evolve. The National Protection and Programs Directorate
comprises the Office of Infrastructure Protection, the Office
of Cybersecurity and Communications, Intergovernmental
Programs, all legacy preparedness directorate functions, along
with US-VISIT, and the new Office of Risk Management and
Analysis.
The Risk Management and Analysis Office will lead the
department's efforts to establish a common framework for
addressing the overall management and analysis of the homeland
security risk. This program will develop a coordinated,
collaborative approach to risk management that will allow the
department to leverage and integrate risk expertise across
components and external stakeholders.
Because of the department's exceptional understanding of
this complex, strategic risk environment, we are developing
tangible actions in amalgamating activities across the
continuum of government and private-sector partners, in terms
of the creation of the NPPD.
The secretary is placing US-VISIT into this new directorate
in recognition of the fact that US-VISIT has evolved from
simply a border control program that addresses a specific,
congressional mandate to a program that is now an asset for the
entire department and, frankly, an asset well outside of the
department.
Furthermore, US-VISIT will support coordination for the
directorate's mission and strengthen DHS management oversight
of its important activities. When one fully considers the
mission of US-VISIT, it is evident that its movement within the
NPPD will strengthen the overarching mission of the department:
to protect our nation from harm and protect our nation from
those who would seek to do us harm.
NPPD is a service tool for the entire department, in the
context of protecting America's critical infrastructure, key
resources and people, specifically synchronizing these
activities across the department.
Mr. Chairman, ranking members, members of the committee, I
would say to you that progress is being made on many fronts in
securing our borders, fusing intelligence, improving response
and recovery, and many other activities. Each continues to
contribute to protecting our nation.
However, these achievements represent the obvious steps
that were recognized in the post-9/11 and post-Katrina
environments. When our approaches to their implementation was
virtually ``everything goes'' approach, what we called in the
old days in the fire service ``surround and drown,'' our
national resources are not limitless.
Protecting America is about making wise and informed
choices. It is about allowing the capabilities of any one part
of our national homeland security apparatus to be interwoven in
order to integrate and synchronize our national protection
efforts.
In closing, I want to acknowledge the tremendous progress
that has been made by components of the current Preparedness
Directorate that will soon realign to FEMA. What is important
is: They are not leaving the department. Their reporting simply
will be different within our organizational structure.
This is purpose for America, because it will allow the
department to remain united and resolute to address the
challenges in protecting this nation in the face of a very
complex and evolving, 21st-century threat environment.
Thank you for your time this morning, and I look forward to
your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Foresman follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable George W. Foresman, Under Secretary
for Preparedness, Department of Homeland Security
Good morning Chairmen Cuellar and Carney, Ranking Members Dent and
Rogers, Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you to discuss the National Protection and Programs
Directorate (NPPD).
Strategic Risk Environment
Secretary Chertoff and the Department continue to progress in many
areas to manage our full environment of 21st century risk. Our mission
is straightforward and guided by five goals:
Goal 1. Protect our Nation from Dangerous People
Goal 2. Protect our Nation from Dangerous Goods
Goal 3. Protect Critical Infrastructure
Goal 4. Build a Nimble, Effective Emergency Response System and
a Culture of Preparedness
Goal 5. Strengthen and Unify DHS Operations and Management
Transforming these broad goals into actual results is a complex
undertaking. As Congress acknowledged last week with the passage of
House Resolution 134, more than 200,000 Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) employees are working tirelessly along with their partners across
government and the private sector to protect America, its people, and
its infrastructure.
The risks that we face come in many forms. Recent attention to the
lessons of the August '06 British Air plot and Hurricane Katrina remind
us of the wide range of hazards we face. These were headline grabbing
events. Equally important but maybe lesser known are situations where
vulnerabilities of infrastructure and information technology systems
have manifested themselves.
In an interconnected and interdependent global economy, managing
risk requires adaptability to a wide range of individual scenarios.
These scenarios unite to create a very complex risk environment when it
comes to protecting America. The risk environment is dynamic and DHS's
approach to managing this risk environment must be equally dynamic.
This approach is focused on the most significant risks, we apply
resources in the most practical way possible to prevent, protect
against, and respond to manmade and natural hazards. That means making
tough-minded assessments, and recognizing that it is simply not
possible to eliminate every threat to every individual in every place
at every moment.
The Department manages risk across a broad spectrum transcending
borders and multiple hazards. Discipline is required to assess threats,
review vulnerabilities, and weigh consequences; we then have to balance
and prioritize our resources against those risks so that we can ensure
that our Nation is protected.
Throughout our Nation's history, natural disasters have served as
lessons for how to prepare for and respond to the next earthquake,
tornado, flood, or hurricane.
Decades of experience in dealing with a sheer number of natural
disasters globally, has provided sufficient data to understand their
risk. By contrast, there have been far fewer terrorist events globally
making our comprehension of risk less substantial.
DHS is focused on those possible terrorist events that pose the
greatest potential consequences to human life and to the continuity of
our society. At the top of that list is the threat of weapons of mass
destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are weapons that, if used,
could have a devastating effect on this country. Preventing the
introduction and use of those weapons has to be the number one focus in
the years to come.
We also must continue to guard against infiltration of this country
by international terrorists who have the capability and intent to cause
damage to the functioning of this country by engaging in multiple
deadly attacks on people and our economy. And the illustration of this
kind of a scenario is the plot in London that was uncovered last
summer. Had it been successful, it would have cost the lives of
thousands of people and had the potential to have raised a significant
blow against the functioning of our entire system of international
trade and travel.
But even as we look at these dangerous threats, we have to be
mindful of something else: the potential for home-grown acts of
terrorism. We have to recognize that there are individuals who
sympathize with terrorist organizations or embrace their ideology, and
are prepared to use violence as a means to promote a radical, violent
agenda. To minimize this potential emerging threat, we have to work
across Federal, State and local jurisdictions to prevent domestic
radicalization and terrorism.
Risk is interdependent and interconnected--across communities to
nations and must be managed accordingly. For example, a port closure or
multiple port closures will not only have an impact on that port area,
but also impact manufacturing facilities thousands of miles away that
depend on the timely delivery of materials. One of the best examples of
this interdependency is petroleum refinery capacity along the Gulf
Coast following Hurricane Katrina. The day before Hurricane Katrina,
Houston, Texas produced 25 percent of the Nation's petroleum. The day
after Hurricane Katrina, with the facilities closed along the Gulf
Coast, Houston was forced to produce 47 percent of the nation's
petroleum. These examples demonstrate how significant supply chain
interdependencies are in managing a full range of risk. So we
understand that managing risk requires us to look at a broad continuum
across a wide geographical area.
The National Protection and Programs Directorate must be prepared
to meet these challenges.
NPPD Mission and Overview
The NPPD will comprise the Office of Infrastructure Protection
(IP), the Office of Cyber Security and Communications (CS&C), the
United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-
VISIT) program, the Office of Intergovernmental Programs, and the
Office of Risk Management and Analysis. This new Directorate will allow
the Department to serve as a focal point in enhancing the protection of
America by interlacing key programs based on risk.
Currently, there are multiple components within DHS working
independently to reduce our comprehensive risk. Three of these
components will be located in NPPD--IP, which addresses physical risks;
CS&C, which addresses cyber risks; and US-VISIT, which addresses human
risks. All three of these offices use the same approach in reducing
risk by utilizing data gathering, data analysis, and dissemination of
information to operators.
The overarching responsibilities of NPPD are to enhance the
protection of national assets, key resources, and people by countering
threats whether they are physical, cyber or human. This will be
accomplished by advancing the Department's risk-reduction mission and
through identification of threats and vulnerabilities to infrastructure
and people. In addition, NPPD will synchronize risk-mitigation
strategies and Departmental doctrine for protecting America.
The NPPD responsibilities include:
Promoting an integrated national approach to homeland
security protection activities and verifying the approach and
strategy via program metrics to assess performance and outcomes
against mission goals;
Protecting people and the Nation's critical
infrastructure;
Ensuring operable and interoperable systems and
networks to support emergency communications through a full
spectrum of conditions;
Promoting cyber security
Standardizing risk management approaches applied
across the Department to ensure polices, programs, and
resources are driven by a consistent methodology; and
Enhancing the security of citizens and people
traveling to the United States through the use of biometric
capabilities.
NPPD will serve the public through these major program activities:
Infrastructure Protection (IP): IP is focused on securing the
nation's critical infrastructure through the identification of threats,
consequences, and vulnerabilities and through the development of
mitigation strategies. Additionally, this activity provides the primary
defense against attacks on our nation's critical infrastructure and key
resources through robust real-time monitoring and incident response.
Cyber Security and Communications (CS&C): CS&C defends the Nation
against virtual or cyber attacks, and incorporates cyber security,
promotes operable and interoperable communications for emergency
communications. CS&C identifies cyber-based threats, vulnerabilities,
and the consequences of successful attacks. It also ensures the
availability and interoperability of information technology (IT) and
Communications through the National Communications System (NCS) and the
Office of Emergency Communications (OEC).
As part of CS&C, the OEC will work closely with NCS, FEMA, other
DHS components, and our Federal, State, local, and tribal partners to
improve emergency interoperable communications nationwide. The OEC
consolidates the Interoperable Communications Technical Assistance
Program and the Integrated Wireless Network program to better integrate
the Department's emergency communications planning, preparedness,
protection, crisis management, and recovery capabilities across the
Nation.
United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology
(US-VISIT): Through its deployment of biometric capture and watch list
matching capabilities to State Department visa-issuing posts worldwide,
U.S. air, land, and sea ports of entry, and U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) immigration benefit offices within the
U.S., US-VISIT supports safe and legitimate travel to the United
States. It helps prevent document fraud and identity theft that
threaten the integrity of the immigration process and the safety of
foreign visitors. US-VISIT also provides key information to law
enforcement, border officials, and other decision makers about persons
they may encounter in the line of duty, thus protecting their safety
and that of U.S. citizens.
Risk Management and Analysis Office: The Risk Management and
Analysis Office will lead the Department's efforts to establish a
common framework to address the overall management and analysis of
homeland security risk. This program will develop a coordinated,
collaborative approach to risk management that will allow the
Department to leverage and integrate risk expertise across components
and external stakeholders.
The Office of Intergovernmental Affairs: Handles communications and
coordination activities among State, local, and tribal disciplines
across the spectrum of issues confronting all 22 agencies and
components of DHS. Daily activities regularly involve contact with, for
example, the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration,
Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection/Border Patrol, USCIS,
FEMA--the entire gamut of service providers at DHS--on a host of issues
that impact our State and local partners. The Office of
Intergovernmental Affairs will liaise with the Secretary, senior DHS
leadership and their counterparts across the Nation at the State,
local, tribal and territorial levels.
National Protection Planning Office (NPPO): The NPPO will develop
doctrine for synchronization of national and regional-level protection
plans and actions across Federal, State, local, and private sectors
regarding the assessment of both physical and cyber critical
infrastructure and key resources. It will develop and coordinate
performance metrics to measure progress in reducing the risk to
critical infrastructure and key resources. The NPPO will work with
other DHS components to synchronize approaches to methodology and
develop doctrine for DHS-wide operational planning. This office will
perform cross-sector analysis, such as understanding the potential
cascading effects from one sector to another, and recommending
approaches to reduce impacts. In addition the NPPO will work across
jurisdictions and across borders.
Preparedness Progress to Date
Mr. Chairman I understand the importance of this Subcommittee
having the most current, up-to-date information and I would like to
highlight for you some important progress made by the Preparedness
Directorate as we transition into the NPPD.
Risk Analysis for Grants Process: The Department has made
refinements to the data inputs for the risk methodology, taking into
account expert judgment, and feedback from Federal, State, and local
partners--all with the goal of better understanding risk associated
with populations and critical infrastructure.
For example, for critical infrastructure, we looked at nine
different variables for each of 260,000 assets in 48 asset classes in
FY 2006; and in FY 2007 drew upon a comprehensive national process
involving States and sector-specific agencies to arrive at a much more
concise list of 2,100 nationally critical assets, streamlining the risk
analysis used in the grants determination process.
The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP): The NIPP is a
comprehensive risk management framework that clearly defines critical
infrastructure protection roles and responsibilities for all levels of
government, private industry, nongovernmental agencies and tribal
partners. Seventeen Sector Specific Plans have been completed and are
currently being reviewed by the Department as part of the NIPP
progress.
Chemical Regulation Authority: DHS was given the authority by
Congress to implement risk-based security standards for chemical
facilities that present high levels of security risk. This new
authority will allow the Department to recognize the significant
investments that responsible facilities have made in security, and the
ability to ensure that high-risk facilities have adequate safeguards in
place.&
Buffer Zone Protection Plans: In 2006, 58 percent of identified
critical infrastructure had implemented Buffer Zone Protection (BZP)
Plans, up significantly from our FY 2005 percentage of 18 percent. The
Department worked in collaboration with State, local, and tribal
entities by providing training workshops, seminars, technical
assistance and a common template to standardize the BZP plan
development process.
Cyber Security and Communications (CS&C): DHS' CS&C is aligning to
form a cohesive organization to ensure the security, resiliency, and
reliability of the Nation's cyber and communications infrastructure in
collaboration with multiple public and private sectors, including
international partners. Under CS&C the Department has expanded its
focus on critical cyber exercising, grants, and management activities.
Interoperability: In December, DHS released the findings of the
national baseline survey, which was the first-ever nationwide
assessment of interoperability across our country. We engaged more than
22,000 State and local law enforcement, fire response, and emergency
medical service agencies in developing the baseline. The results of the
survey show that two-thirds of first responder agencies report using
communications interoperability to some degree in their operations.
While this is promising, the results also demonstrate that while the
necessary technology is largely available, much work needs to be done
in the areas of governance, standard operating procedures, training and
exercises, and usage. In addition, this baseline survey:
Determined the capacity for interoperable
communications among law enforcement, fire, and EMS agencies
across the Nation;
Established a process and mechanism to facilitate
regular measures of communications interoperability;
Generated data to help emergency response agencies
make better-informed decisions about how to most effectively
allocate resources for improving communications
interoperability; and
Gathered information to inform future efforts for
education, incentives, and planning needed to continue
improving interoperability capabilities across the country.
Tactical Interoperable Communication Scorecards: DHS issued
scorecards for the 75 largest Urban/Metropolitan Areas. These
scorecards measured the ability of Urban/Metropolitan Areas to provide
tactical (within one hour) communications capabilities to first
responders. This process included the creation of a Tactical
Interoperable Communications Plan peer evaluation, full-scale exercise,
and after action reports. Key findings include:
Policies for interoperable communications are now in
place in all 75 urban and metropolitan areas;
Regular testing and exercises are needed to link
disparate systems effectively to allow communications between
multi-jurisdictional responders (including State and Federal);
and
Cooperation among first responders in the field is
strong, but formalized governance (leadership and strategic
planning) across regions has lagged.
The Nationwide Plan Review: DHS completed visits to 131 sites (50
States, 6 territories, and 75 major urban areas) and reviewed the
disaster and evacuation plans for each. These reviews will allow DHS,
States and urban areas to identify deficiencies and improve
catastrophic planning.
Collaboration with the Private Sector: DHS has engaged the private
sector on a number of preparedness and risk mitigation strategies:
International Cooperation: Partnerships with the World Bank, World
Economic Forum, and United Nations on forums focused on public-private
partnerships in disaster risk reduction.
DHS also engaged with key allies on cyber security information
sharing, as well as other multilateral and international standards
organizations such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation,
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, and International
Telecommunication Union, to raise awareness about cyber security and
telecommunications standards.
Ready.gov Business: DHS collaborated with the business community on
Emergency and Business continuity planning, and on private sector
preparedness.
Chief Information Office: Last year the Preparedness Directorate
was faced with the Department-wide challenge of bringing all of the IT
systems within the Directorate into compliance with Federal Information
Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements. The effort to reach FISMA
compliance required a full-scale remediation effort to achieve security
certification and accreditation for the complete inventory of
Preparedness systems. The Preparedness FISMA grade went from being just
8% compliant in June 2006, to 99 percent compliant in October 2006.
This type of progress is significant, but I think we all agree that
there is more to do--as we all desire a safer, more secure America.
Organizational changes within the Department withstanding, this mission
remains unchanged.
Change is never easy and one thing that we intuitively know about
this environment that we find ourselves in today is it is anything but
static. We are building on the significant momentum realized and
progress achieved, to promote the ideals of what the Department was
established to do--provide for the protection of America and those who
live within its borders.
Closing
Mr. Chairman, events such as Hurricane Andrew, the Midwest Floods,
the bombings of the World Trade Center and Murrah Federal Building, and
more recently September 11th and Hurricane Katrina have granted
professionals across the Federal interagency community, as well as at
State, and local levels an immense amount of experience in managing
response and recovery efforts.
Traditionally, response and recovery involves dealing with defined
aspects of an emergency, such as location, size and scale of damage,
number of people involved, facilities and infrastructure affected.
Prevention and protection present a much more nebulous and
imprecise environment.
Therefore, it necessitates an approach to securing our nation that
includes the broadest range possible for the full 21st century
continuum of risk. NPPD's strategic risk management responsibility
encompasses a large spectrum of risk, which includes both economic
ramifications and risk to human life. It is not confined to physical
borders or corporeal infrastructure.
And at the end of the day--whether our threat comes from our
enemies abroad or at home, or from nature, the American people expect
that local, State, and Federal government and the private sector are
going to cooperate to deal with the challenges that confront them.
These early stages of coordinating the expansive spectrum of risk for
protecting the Nation will help to catalyze a national transformation
for how we prepare America for the risks of the 21st century.
I would like to thank the Subcommittee for its time today and I
welcome your perspective on the themes I have articulated.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you again for your testimony and being
here with us.
I now recognize Mr. Matt Jadacki, deputy inspector general
of the Office of Disaster Assistance Oversight, to summarize
his statement for 5 minutes.
And welcome.
STATEMENT OF MATT JADACKI, DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Jadacki. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the
subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss FEMA
reforms and its major?challenges.
It was DHS's failures after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the
Gulf Coast that brought to light to Congress and the general
public some of the longstanding problems within FEMA. Many of
the problems existed for years but had not received attention,
because FEMA had never before dealt with such a devastating
disaster.
Today, I will highlight some of the management challenges
FEMA needs to address in order to successfully implement the
congressional reforms, improve its response and recovery
capabilities, and meet the needs of American citizens in times
of crisis.
We cannot overlook that FEMA is still recovering from the
effects of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. As a result of the
disaster, FEMA's systems were strained and experienced staff
left in droves, while workloads increased. These strains
continue today.
However, FEMA has embarked on a number of internal
assessments to improve its operations. Staff levels have
increased, and, more importantly, FEMA is establishing a solid
management team, with extension emergency management experience
to implement these reforms.
Is FEMA making progress? Yes, but much more needs to be
done.
The Gulf Coast hurricanes revealed shortcomings in FEMA
disaster relief operations and programs, including disaster
housing, mission assignments, grants and acquisition
management, the National Flood Insurance Program, internal
controls, fraud detection and prevention programs, and command
and control issues under the National Response Plan.
My testimony addresses these areas, but there are many
additional challenges facing FEMA that will require
considerable effort and resources.
One of the most significant problems FEMA faced in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was assisting, sheltering, and
evacuating housing evacuees. Never before have so many people
been displaced for such an extended period of time.
FEMA's existing programs were inadequate, and efforts to
house victims in travel trailers and mobile homes were not
well-managed. The number of victims also overwhelmed FEMA's
system for verifying identities and providing individual
assistance payments. The result of FEMA's efforts to speed up
the process resulted in widespread fraud.
In February 2006, we reported on weaknesses in FEMA's
registration intake controls and made recommended actions to
improve them. FEMA has improved the intake process and
increased systems capability, but the changes are untested and
may not be sufficient to address existing deficiencies. We will
continue to work with FEMA to find solutions to be better
prepared.
FEMA also faces significant challenges in management
oversight of its disaster assistance grants program, as well as
the DHS grants program that will become part of FEMA on April
1, 2007. Compounding the challenge or that grant programs of
other federal agencies that assist states and local governments
in improving their abilities to prepare for, respond to, and
recover from acts of terrorism or natural disasters.
Congress continues to appropriate and authorize funding for
grant programs within and outside DHS for similar, if not
identical, purposes. We have identified at least 36 federal
assistance programs that may duplicate FEMA's grant programs.
As part of its expanded role and responsibility for grants
management, FEMA must coordinate and manage grants that are
stove-piped for specific, but often related, purposes to ensure
that the grants are contributing to our national preparedness
goals and recovery from disasters, rather than duplicating one
another or being wasted on low-priority capabilities.
Acquisition management involves more than just awarding a
contract. It is critical to fulfilling a mission need through a
thoughtful, balanced approach, that considers cost, schedule
and performance. The urgency of FEMA's mission will continue to
place demands on its ability to effectively manage
acquisitions.
In 2006, FEMA spent a large percentage of its budgets on
contracts. We have focused substantial efforts on FEMA's
contracting and have identified numerous problems. FEMA is not
well-prepared to provide the kind of acquisition support needed
for a catastrophic disaster, due to inadequate acquisition
planning and preparation for many critical needs, lack of
clearly communicated acquisition responsibilities among FEMA
and other federal agencies, and insufficient numbers of
acquisition personnel to manage and oversee contracts.
The National Flood Insurance Program has issues, also. As a
result of the Gulf Coast flood, the National Flood Insurance
Program paid claims in excess of $20 billion, most of which was
borrowed from the Treasury Department. Heavy borrowing,
financial uncertainty, outdated flood maps, and other problems
continue to plague the program.
In addition, the National Flood Insurance Program is now on
the Government Accountability's high-risk list.
Fraud prevention and detection, in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina, information sharing was poor to nonexistent. There is
a need for data-sharing in three areas: real-time data exchange
among the agencies to simply the application process to victims
and to help identify eligibility of applicants for disaster
assistance; direct access to FEMA data by law enforcement
agencies to identify and track convicted sex offenders and
suspected felons, and help locate missing children; and
computer matching to help prevent duplicative programs and
identify fraud.
FEMA is moving in the right direction on these issues. And
I look forward to talking about that.
In summary, the management challenge that I have described
above are not all-inclusive. Integrating the preparedness
programs, meeting the reporting requirements of Congress,
improving accountability, increasing transparency, and building
a solid logistics capability are also critical improvements
that will require significant resources and effort.
FEMA leadership is making progress is resolving these
challenges. We will continue to review FEMA's progress, help it
focus on critical issues, and facilitate solutions to
significantly improve its ability to carry out its mission and
to coordinate disaster response and recovery efforts.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I will be
pleased to answer any questions you or other subcommittee
members may have.
[The statement of Mr. Jadacki follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matt Jadacki
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittees.
My name is Matt Jadacki. I am the Deputy Inspector General for
Disaster Assistance Oversight in the Office of Inspector General for
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Thank you for the
opportunity to discuss the major management challenges facing the
reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
With the creation of DHS in 2003, FEMA was absorbed and became part
of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate. In the
aftermath of the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes, FEMA received much
criticism for its handling of the disaster. To address perceived
deficiencies, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management
Reform Act of 2006 as Title VI of the FY 2007 Homeland Security
Appropriations Act. These management reforms enhanced FEMA's mission
and role as the federal government's disaster coordinator.
The legislation transfers most Preparedness functions and programs
to FEMA. Preparedness is one of the cornerstones of emergency
management at the federal, state, and local level. The new legislation
enables FEMA to restore the nexus between emergency preparedness
functions, and response, recovery, and mitigation efforts. Together
with this reorganization, a renewed focus on an all-hazard approach to
disaster management will strengthen FEMA's ability to effectively
prepare and respond to future natural or man-made disasters.
The Reform Act also elevated FEMA's standing in DHS and afforded
FEMA statutory protections as a distinct entity in the Department by
preventing transfers of FEMA assets, authorities, personnel, and
funding. We believe this is a step in the right direction. However,
along with the increased responsibilities come additional burdens to
FEMA's infrastructure, particularly its support organizations.
FEMA is still recovering from the effects of the Gulf Coast
hurricanes. FEMA's systems were strained as a result of the disaster
and experienced staff left in droves while workloads increased. These
strains continue, but FEMA is making progress. FEMA has embarked on a
number of internal assessments to improve operations. Staff levels have
increased and, more importantly, FEMA is establishing a solid
management team with extensive emergency management expertise to
implement reforms. In addition, improvements to information systems are
planned and Congress has provided additional funding to enable FEMA to
carry out its mission.
My testimony discusses a number of management challenges FEMA needs
to address in order to successfully implement the reforms, improve its
response and recovery capabilities, and meet the needs of American
citizens in times of crisis.
Management Challenges
DHS's failures after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on
August 29, 2005, illuminated longstanding problems within FEMA. Many of
the problems existed for years, but had not received attention because
FEMA had never before dealt with such a devastating disaster. The total
cost of Federal response and recovery efforts could reach $200 billion
or more. The Gulf Coast hurricanes revealed that FEMA has shortcomings
in managing assistance and housing for evacuees, information systems,
contracts and grants, and implementing the National Flood Insurance
Program. We are planning additional work to assess FEMA's readiness to
respond to future catastrophic disasters.
DHS, including FEMA, has learned many lessons from Katrina and has
taken steps to improve their ability to respond to catastrophic
disasters in the future. For example, DHS and its Federal partners
revised the Catastrophic Incident Supplement to the National Response
Plan to establish a better-coordinated strategy for a federal response
to a catastrophic disaster. In addition, FEMA is working to improve its
ability to house large numbers of evacuees and supply commodities to
disaster victims more quickly. However, these catastrophic housing and
logistics plans must be thoroughly tested and exercised before the next
disaster strikes.
Disaster Housing
One of the most significant problems FEMA faced in the aftermath of
Katrina was assisting, sheltering, and housing evacuees. Never before
had so many people been displaced for such an extended period of time.
FEMA's existing programs were inadequate and efforts to house victims
in travel trailers and mobile homes were not well managed. The number
of victims also overwhelmed FEMA's system for verifying identities and
providing individual assistance payments. The result of FEMA's efforts
to speed up this process resulted in widespread fraud. In February
2006, we reported on weaknesses in FEMA's registration intake controls
and recommended actions to improve them. FEMA has improved its intake
process and increased the system's capacity, but the changes are
untested and may not be sufficient to address existing deficiencies. We
will continue to help FEMA find solutions to be better prepared for the
next catastrophic disaster or even multiple disasters.
In response to Katrina, FEMA purchased more than 24,000 mobile
homes, 143,000 travel trailers, and 1,700 modular homes. The current
inventory at staging areas is 63,597 units. Some of the modular homes
were not well maintained and deteriorated over time. There are
currently 91,402 trailers and mobile homes occupied by disaster
victims. Some of the modular housing units have been sold and FEMA is
considering selling others through the U.S. General Services
Administration. As disaster victims return to permanent residences,
hundreds of mobile homes/travel trailers are returned to FEMA each
week. Because of the deactivations and excess inventory, FEMA is
running out of storage space and is considering options to donate and/
or sell the units.
Mission Assignments
To help with response to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA issued
approximately 2,700 mission assignments totaling about $8.7 billion to
Federal agencies. FEMA historically has had significant problems
issuing, tracking, monitoring, and closing mission assignments. FEMA
guidance on the assignments is often vague, and agencies' accounting
practices vary significantly, causing problems with reconciling
agencies' records to FEMA records. FEMA has developed a number of new
pre-defined mission assignments to expedite some of the initial
recurring response activities. In addition, FEMA's Disaster Finance
Center is working to find a consensus among other Federal agencies on
appropriate supporting documentation for billings. We are conducting a
review of mission assignments to DHS agencies, and other Inspectors
General are reviewing mission assignments to their respective agencies.
Grants Management
FEMA faces a significant challenge in management/oversight of its
disaster assistance grant program as well as the DHS grant programs
that will become a part of FEMA on April 1, 2007. Compounding the
challenge are the grant programs of other federal agencies that assist
states and local governments in improving their abilities to prepare
for, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism or natural
disasters. Congress continues to appropriate and authorize funding for
grant programs within and outside of DHS for similar, if not identical,
purposes. We have identified at least 36 federal assistance programs
that may duplicate FEMA grant programs. As part of its expanded role
and responsibility for grants management, FEMA must coordinate and
manage grants that are stovepiped for specific, but often related
purposes to ensure that these grants are contributing to our national
preparedness goals and recovery from disasters, rather than duplicating
one another or being wasted on low-priority capabilities.
Given the billions of dollars appropriated annually for disaster
and non-disaster grant programs, FEMA needs to ensure that grants
management internal controls are in place and adhered to, and that
grants are sufficiently monitored to achieve successful outcomes. FEMA
also needs to ensure that, to the maximum extent possible, disaster and
homeland security assistance goes to those states, local governments,
private organizations, or individuals eligible to receive such
assistance and that grantees adhere to the terms and conditions of the
grants awards. Regarding its management of first responder grants, FEMA
will need to build upon the Preparedness Directorate's efforts to
refine risk-based approaches to awarding these grants to ensure that
areas and assets representing the greatest vulnerability to the public
are as secure as possible. FEMA must incorporate sound risk management
principles and methodologies to successfully prepare for, respond to,
recover from, and mitigate acts of terrorism and natural disasters.
Acquisition Management
Acquisition management involves more than just awarding a contract.
It is critical to fulfilling a mission need through a thoughtful,
balanced approach that considers cost, schedule, and performance. The
urgency of FEMA's mission will continue to place demands on its ability
to effectively manage acquisitions. In 2006, FEMA spent a large
percentage of its budget on contracts. We have focused substantial
effort on FEMA's contracting and have identified numerous problems.
FEMA is not well prepared to provide the kind of acquisition support
needed for a catastrophic disaster. FEMA's overall response efforts
suffer from:
Inadequate acquisition planning and preparation for
many crucial needs;
Lack of clearly communicated acquisition
responsibilities among FEMA, other federal agencies, and state
and local governments; and
Insufficient numbers of acquisition personnel to
manage and oversee contracts.
FEMA is making progress establishing pre-disaster or standby
contracts for goods and services required in the aftermath of a major
disaster. When the federal government procures goods and services after
such an event, opportunities for open competition are limited, as is
all too often its ability to get the best possible prices. There were
numerous and widely publicized sole source and limited competition
contracts after Hurricane Katrina. While FEMA eventually recompeted
most of the major contracts, it needs to continue its efforts to
establish competitive contracts for the next catastrophic event.
We recently reported that FEMA hastily awarded a $100 million
contract to establish base camps in the gulf area to house and feed
response workers. Because of a shortage of trained and experienced
contracting staff, unclear contract terms and conditions, and other
problems with the contract, there were contractual deficiencies,
excessive billings, and questionable costs of $16.4 million.
FEMA did not place enough contracting staff in the field offices to
handle the enormous workload necessitated by Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita. Contracting officials were responsible for the administration and
oversight of numerous large-dollar contracts over a wide geographical
area. Contracting staff rotated in and out of field offices, resulting
in inconsistent instructions to contractors and haphazard contract
administration. Contracting personnel were often inexperienced, and
their performance reflected the lack of proper training to perform
assigned responsibilities, especially in a high-volume, emergency
environment. Some contracting officers were not experienced in writing
the types of contracts needed and were unable to analyze proposed
contract costs to ensure reasonableness. Many Contracting Officer's
Technical Representative, or COTRs, were too inexperienced to recognize
unauthorized and excessive billings and poor or unauthorized contract
performance.
FEMA has already made improvements to their contracting capability,
such as increasing the number of standby contracts in place and ready
to be executed when disaster strikes. DHS has also created a Disaster
Response/Recovery Internal Control Oversight Board to address many of
the problems. In addition, FEMA has begun a hiring initiative aimed at
restoring staff levels to 90 percent of capacity. FEMA recently
reported that it plans on hiring 41 new employees for its procurement
division.
Additional Acquisition Challenges
We will soon conduct a review of FEMA's overall acquisition
management structure to identify improvements that can make FEMA better
prepared for the next catastrophic disaster. Much of our work will
focus on the following areas:
Organizational Alignment: In the transition into DHS,
seven agencies, including FEMA, retained their procurement
functions. DHS established an eighth acquisition office, the
Office of Procurement Operations, under the direct supervision
of the Chief Procurement Officer, to service the other DHS
components and manage department-wide procurements. Until
recently, FEMA had an unusual procurement structure with two
heads of contracting activity. This structure created
redundancy and inefficiency.
Policy and Guidance: FEMA has not had an active Policy
Office since 1999. This has been a major barrier to the
successful, cohesive acquisition operations. Interpreting,
implementing, and monitoring acquisition policy are essential
functions. They ensure that the organization complies with law
and policies. The absence of current policy and standardized
performance measures make it difficult to establish where the
agency stands when compared to other federal agencies.
Acquisition Workforce: Hundreds of staff left after
Hurricane Katrina struck. FEMA now has a campaign to hire a
large number of qualified replacements. The individual
assistance and technical assistance section of FEMA has
recently completed its hiring effort. After such a large
expenditure of staff, time, and resources to hire the right
individuals, retention is crucial. Hurricane season is
approximately 4 months away, and these new employees must be
able to function effectively by that time.
Knowledge Management and Information Systems: Outdated
and non-existent information technology tools are another of
FEMA's management challenges. FEMA does not have an IT strategy
that addresses the needs of the agency--particularly with
regard to workflow routing, financial management, and document
management. The lack of a DHS-wide IT strategy has forced early
technology adopters within the acquisition community to create
job aids that are not shared and deliver varying levels of
support. This situation has forced each DHS Head of Contracting
Activity (HCA) to develop an IT standard applicable only at
their organization. This allows for discretion, which can be an
empowering force yet, at times, can be contrary to overall
Department-wide mission and goals.
To improve the overall acquisition management functions, FEMA needs
to address the conditions described above. We will advise FEMA as our
work continues and offer recommendations for improvement.
National Flood Insurance Program
Floods are among the most frequent and costly of all natural
disasters. They result in the loss of many lives and much property each
year. FEMA is now faced with National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)
issues ranging from outdated flood maps to the question of whether
damages are the result of flooding from storm surge or hurricane winds.
Many NFIP related questions need to be addressed before the next
catastrophic flood.
As a result of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the NFIP paid
claims in excess of $20 billion most of which was borrowed from the
Treasury. Heavy borrowing, uncertain financial solvency, outdated flood
maps, and other problems continue to plague the program. In addition,
the NFIP is now on the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) high-
risk list. We have several ongoing or planned NFIP reviews and will
continue to monitor activities under this program.
Information Technology
FEMA made progress in several IT areas, particularly short-term
adjustments to prepare for the 2006 hurricane season. These
improvements focused primarily on increasing National Emergency
Management Information System (NEMIS) capacity and online system access
and strengthening verification of registration data. NEMIS is the
enterprise-wide automated system that integrates hardware, software,
telecommunications, applications software, and operational procedures
to handle the processing and management of disaster victim assistance
to individual citizens and public assistance. FEMA and its program
offices have addressed our recommendations by documenting training
resources, developing a plan to implement an enterprise architecture
(EA), gathering requirements for new business tools, and improving
configuration management.
Despite these positive steps, FEMA has not documented or
communicated a strategic direction to guide long-term IT investment and
system development efforts. FEMA also has not performed crosscutting
requirements gathering to determine business needs, which would allow
Information Technology Services Division (ITSD) personnel to analyze
alternatives to customize NEMIS. We note several resource challenges
FEMA faces in accomplishing these tasks, including personnel needs,
time limitations, and funding constraints. For example, high-level
officials acknowledged the need for staff who can effectively and
efficiently manage system development efforts, especially as key
personnel are allocated to assist in disaster and emergency response
activities. Further, FEMA officials told us that funding constraints
have also prevented the creation of sufficient training and testing
environments. Therefore, constrained by limited resources, FEMA focused
its efforts on short term fixes, e.g., preparing for hurricane season,
and has made little progress in addressing long-term needs, such as
updating strategic plans, defining cross-cutting requirements, and
evaluating systems alternatives.
Fraud Detection and Prevention
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, information-sharing was poor to
non-existent. There is a need for data-sharing in three areas: (1)
real-time data exchange among agencies to simplify the application
process for victims and to help verify eligibility of applicants for
disaster assistance; (2) direct access to FEMA data by law enforcement
agencies to identify and track convicted sex offenders and suspected
felons, and help locate missing children; and, (3) computer data
matching to help prevent duplicative payments and identify fraud. FEMA
is moving in the right directions on these issues. For example, FEMA
has granted direct access to its data to the Hurricane Katrina Fraud
Task Force for the purpose of investigating fraud. However, progress is
slow and much remains to be done. FEMA and the federal community are
not yet ready to meet the data sharing requirements of the next
catastrophic disaster.
Congress provided approximately $85 billion dollars to multiple
federal agencies for Gulf Coast disaster response and recovery. In the
area of housing there were four primary agencies that provided housing
assistance: DHS, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS). A recent USDA audit revealed that more
than 44% of disaster victims received housing assistance from more than
one federal agency. GAO estimated that DHS improperly disbursed between
$600 million and $1.4 billion in disaster assistance after Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita.
The Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act, which establishes
procedural safeguards for computerized matching of Privacy Act-
protected information, impeded federal Inspectors General from
immediately performing computer matching to identify Hurricane Katrina
disaster assistance fraud because of the review and approval process.
Computer matching is the automated comparison of two computerized
databases. Computer Matching can be used to identify relationships that
indicate possible instances of fraud. In contrast to manual searches,
computer matching allows auditors to quickly and inexpensively analyze
massive volumes of data. If Inspectors General had been empowered to
match their agency's respective disaster assistance files with those of
others providing assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they
could have helped mitigate improper payments and identify and recover
erroneous payments in a timely manner.
The President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency/Executive
Council on Integrity and Efficiency reported to Congress that the
requirements of the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act
hindered several proactive fraud investigations relating to Hurricane
Katrina from being initiated. A computer matching agreement generally
takes several months to execute, thereby forcing law enforcement,
including the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force, to rely on manual
searches within numerous disaster assistance databases to help detect
fraud.
An exemption for federal law enforcement agencies, including
Inspectors General, from the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection
Act to support efforts to identify and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse
following a disaster should be considered by Congress. Such an
exemption would greatly facilitate the efforts of the federal law
enforcement community to obtain and analyze federal disaster assistance
records for the purpose of promoting integrity in federal disaster
assistance programs and facilitate the detection, prevention, and
prosecution of disaster benefit fraud.
Review and Revision of the National Response Plan
The National Response Plan (NRP) is being extensively revised to
incorporate lessons learned from the response to Hurricane Katrina. We
have observed a genuine effort to reach out to all stakeholders, both
public and private, to invite participation in the review and revision
process. Our primary concern, however, is the ambitious timetable to
complete the revisions by June 2007. Ultimately, the result of this
effort cannot be measured until the revised NRP is fully exercised or
used during a large-scale disaster.
In our Performance Review of FEMA's Disaster Management Activities
in Response to Hurricane Katrina (OIG-06-32), we reported that there
was confusion at the Federal, State, and local level regarding the NRP
and the Incident Command Structure and who was in charge. We
recommended a clarification of the roles of the Principal Federal
Official, the Federal Coordinating Officer, the Federal Resource
Coordinator, and the Disaster Recovery Manager, to provide a clear
distinction for the types and levels of response activities for each
position or combination of positions and the type of events that would
warrant their engagement. Further, we recommended that these officials
be provided with the necessary training to complement their
qualifications for serving in these positions. These recommended
changes are critical to create an efficient and cohesive response to a
catastrophic event.
Based upon two recent audits undertaken in relation to Hurricane
Katrina and the NRP, we offered two primary suggestions to the NRP/NIMS
Steering Committee:
Address Public Safety and Security in both the
Catastrophic Incident Annex and the Catastrophic Incident
Supplement to further describe the operational strategy that
guides the delivery and application of Federal law enforcement
capabilities and resources for public safety and security
during disasters.
Describe the role of federal Inspectors General in the
NRP's Financial Management Support Annex and note that FEMA may
designate as oversight funds up to one percent of the total
amount provided to a Federal agency for mission assignment.
We will continue to monitor and advise FEMA as it makes the
necessary revisions to the NRP.
The management challenges I have described above are not all
inclusive. Integrating Preparedness programs, meeting the reporting
requirements of Congress, improving accountability, increasing
transparency, and building a solid logistics capability are also
critical improvements that will require significant resources and
effort. FEMA leadership is making progress in resolving these
challenges. We will continue to review FEMA's progress, help it focus
on critical issues, and facilitate solutions to significantly improve
its ability to carry out its mission to coordinate disaster response
and recovery efforts.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement.
I will be pleased to answer any questions you or other Committee
Members may have.
Mr. Cuellar. All right, thank you very much for being here,
for all three of you all.
Again, I thank all the witnesses for their testimony. I
will remind each member that he or she will have 5 minutes to
question the panel to make sure everybody has an opportunity to
go through the process, including the members that are not part
of the committees, that we have consented to allow them to ask
those questions.
At this time, I will now recognize myself for questions.
The purpose of the FEMA--this goes to Mr. Paulison?the
purpose of the FEMA reform legislation enacted last fall was to
strengthen FEMA's organizational capacity for both preparedness
and response. Effective preparation and response requires
effective partnership. The partnerships among federal agencies,
as outlined in the National Response Plan, and among federal,
state and local governments, including nonprofit entities such
as the Red Cross and, of course, the private sector.
Mr. Paulison, has FEMA clearly defined the roles, the
responsibilities, and the expected outcomes for each of the
organizational components, as well as your partners, under this
new organizational structure that we have set up?
Mr. Paulison. I think the question you laid out is right on
target and very apropos for what we are talking about. The
developing partnership is one of the most important things that
this organization has to do, and we are in the process of doing
that.
The fact that we only had two of our regional directors'
offices filled when I took over this organization created a
lack of that partnership-building out in the regions, where,
like I said earlier, the rubber meets the road.
The people we brought into manages these regions, people
have decades of experience in dealing with emergency
management, and they have very clear direction from me that
they are to be out on the road developing these partnerships,
not only with the state organization, but the other federal
agencies that are in their region.
And we are doing the same thing here in Washington. We are
developing partnerships inside of DHS. Mr. Foresman and I have
been working very closely together in this transition, but also
with other agencies that have been kind of distant to us in the
past.
We have put pre-scripted mission assignments in place with
the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services,
Department of Transportation, all those other agencies that we
have to deal with. We know very clearly that we have to have a
solid relationship with them.
The last place you want to develop relationships is in the
middle of a disaster. They have to be done ahead of time, and
that is what we are doing.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Jadacki, I am going to ask you to respond in a second,
but let me ask my second question. And this goes to the
undersecretary, again, Mr. Foresman.
As a former homeland security director for Virginia, you
served as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council
task force on state and local homeland security funding.
The task force recommended the department develop an
automatic grant tracking system that would allow for tracking
of the distribution and the use of homeland security-related
funds. And you and I have talked about our state experience.
And I think some of the members here also have the state
experience.
When you testified before this committee last March, you
mentioned that the department was in the process of creating
such a system. Can you please tell me if this new grant
tracking system has been deployed, so we can all see exactly
where the grant funding is in the allocation process?
Mr. Foresman. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question. And
it has not yet been deployed.
And one of the things internal to the department and the
whole idea being amalgamating all of the grant activities
across the department, Dave experienced prior to moving into
his current job, when he was the U.S. fire administrator. We
had fire grants that were administered through a grants
management activity in the department. We had an existing
relationship with the Department of Justice to administer many
of our homeland security grant programs.
We continue to work the effort with the chief information
officer inside of the department. But we are not yet ready to
go primetime with that, and that is one of the things that Dave
and I have talked about, as we go through this transition.
There is infrastructure in place. It is just a matter of
change. Now, this is going to have a big impact on states, too,
because we have to be able to move the money through the normal
linkages, down to the state treasuries. And it is not as simple
as saying we are going to put a new grants management tracking
system in place and it gets done overnight.
I will just mention very briefly that the other piece that
we have is not only at the federal level, but at the state and
local level, because I think one of our biggest frustrations
that we probably collectively share between the executive and
legislative branch is to have real-time data, in terms of the
actual rate of expenditures and reimbursements, remembering
that the majority of these are reimbursement-based programs, to
have an actual level of understanding of where we are on any
given day.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. We certainly want to sit down and talk
to you, to see what we can do to help you move the process,
because I think, for a lot of members, especially the ones that
have served at the state level, understand why this is very
important. So we do want to follow up.
And, again, on a comment period from Mr. Jadacki, can you
just briefly respond on both of the questions that I just gave,
I mean, I just asked?
Mr. Jadacki. Yes. First, in my opening statement, my
written testimony, the concern with the support for the grants
management, as well as other support organizations, as these
new programs come in, there is a lot of responsibility on the
back end.
Once the grants are awarded, it is a reimbursable process.
People need to keep an eye on what the money is being spent on,
looking out for the safeguards, whether there is fraud, waste,
abuse involved in some of those programs, too. There is
financial considerations and reconciliations that need to be
done.
FEMA currently has, in the disaster area alone, even in the
Gulf area, about 30,000 new grants for public assistance-type
activities. You take that and combine it with the new grants
coming in from the preparedness, it is going to create an
enormous burden on the staff of FEMA overseeing these grants.
And, you know, if we don't have those safeguards in place,
we are not doing the oversight that is needed, then it becomes
a potential for some problems later on.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. I was just asking members, because I do
want to follow up on this. And we are going to set up a meeting
later on, on this specific issue, with the indulgence of all
the members.
And certainly, Mr. Jadacki, we want to sit down and, again,
sit down on how we can make this work on this, because this is
a very important issue to us.
At this time, I would like to recognize the ranking member
of the Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness
and Response, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Dent, for
questions.
And then, after that, instead of going--I am sorry, Mr.
Dent, but I think you are going to give your time over to Mr.
Rogers?
Mr. Dent. We will swap.
Mr. Cuellar. You are going to switch the time.
Mr. Rogers. I thank the chairman for accommodating my
schedule.
And I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, as well.
Let's cut right to it. You all heard my opening statements.
I am interested in CDP and Noble training facility merger. Tell
me about the status, please.
Mr. Paulison. Actually, the merger will work very well.
Both of them are on the same campus. The Noble Training Center
will report into CDP.
As you know, I put the Noble Training Center together while
I was the U.S. fire administrator. I also spent quite a bit of
time at CDP, after touring the site back when I was a fire
administrator, when we thought we were going to manage that at
that particular time.
So the merger is going to go well. They are pretty much
side by side. There is a lot of economies of scale I think we
can develop, by using the same contractors, sharing facilities,
doing things like that.
They do two different things. One is more of an education
piece. The other is more of a training piece, like you said,
with first responder training. But the only live agent training
place that we have that is as robust as that is, it is being
funding well, and it is going to operate well. We are excited
about the merger.
Mr. Rogers. Do you have any idea about how we can expand
those services off campus more? Is there any plan in place to
do that? As you know, my district is very rural, as many
districts are, and they are primarily covered by volunteer fire
departments and rescue squads.
And while the Center for Domestic Preparedness is a
wonderful resource for professional departments to send
personnel, a lot of these volunteers can't take time off from
their cotton mill job to go up there and spend a week for
training. So are there any plans to be more aggressive in
outreach?
Mr. Paulison. There is several plans that have been going
on for a while, even before we were inheriting some of these
processes, just at National Fire Academy.
We know that most of the classes there were two weeks, and
we know it is extremely difficult, not only for volunteers and
smaller departments, but even some of the bigger departments,
to let their officers go for that amount of time, so we have
cut those classes down to one week, where they do a week at
home over the Internet, and then come to the campus for a week.
And then, also, for some of the smaller departments, we
have what we call weekend classes for the volunteers to come
in. We will have state classes, where a particular state sends
people in to train in a very compressed, short amount of time.
We can take a lot of that on the road. We turned all of our
training materials over to state agency to train there and
still get the same credit. The difficult one is going to be
what CDP does with live agent training. That has to be a very
controlled environment.
Mr. Rogers. Yes, I understand that.
Mr. Paulison. And I am reluctant to take that on the road.
Mr. Rogers. Tell me about this new National Integration
Center. How is it going to oversee CDP? How will that work?
Mr. Paulison. It is just going to be a process of where
they report through the system. That is where most of our
training stuff is going to fall, under that area, so I want to
have all the training systems that we have in one block.
I think it is going to be helping us to coordinate better,
making sure that we are not overlapping training issues, that
we are not duplicating what we are training at emergency
management institute, at the fire academy, at CDP, at Noble, to
making sure we are spending our money as wisely as possible.
That is what the oversight is going to be.
Mr. Rogers. My last question is money, about money. The
president's 2008 budget has proposed cutting CDP by $3 million.
And the $5.5 million that Noble received this year is not even
included in the new merged budget. How are you going to make
that work? Is there some effort to change that proposal?
Mr. Paulison. The $5.5 million for Noble, I understand, was
in the 2008 budget. I was just looking at it. I was not
familiar with the CDP issue, but I will look at that, and I
will brief you privately on that.
Mr. Rogers. I would love to hear that. Thank you.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield the
balance of my time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania as a
thank you for his courtesy.
Mr. Dent. Thank you.
Gentlemen, as was mentioned earlier in my remarks, floods
cause more damage and economic losses in the United States than
any other natural disaster. And flood maps are being used to
identify areas at greatest risk for damage and to support
mitigation efforts and provide affordable flood insurance.
It is my understanding that flood plains have changed
dramatically overtime, but that flood mapping has not kept up
with that change. And I guess my main question, Mr. Paulison,
is could you please discuss steps that FEMA is taking to update
these flood maps?
Mr. Paulison. Yes, we are very aggressively changing our
flood mapping and modernizing those flood maps, taking some
that are accurate and changing them to digital so they can be
better used on the Internet, and others are actually redoing
the mapping itself to making sure they are accurate, because
what you said is right on target. A lot of the flood plains
have changed.
The other issue we are dealing with is with the
certification of a lot of our levees. If a city or area is
protected by a levee, and that levee is certified, we act as if
they are not in a flood plain, and then they don't have to have
insurance or very minimal insurance.
If that levee is not certified, then our flood management
system has to respond as if there was no levee at all. So we
are in the process of working with the Corps of Engineers and
some of the private levees to make sure those levees are
certified.
But I think, to get to your question, we are doing very
aggressively trying to map this entire country to making sure
we have at least 80 percent of the United States covered with
modern flood maps.
Mr. Dent. Well, thank you, and I will save my questions for
the next round.
Mr. Cuellar. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Dent.
This time, I recognize the chairman of the Subcommittee of
Management, Investigation, Mr. Carney, for questions.
Mr. Carney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Paulison, if another Hurricane Katrina were to strike
today, God forbid, what is FEMA certain it could do well, and
why? And what key gaps remain, and why?
For example, some problem areas in Katrina were mass care
and shelter, evacuation of special needs populations, operable
and interoperable communications logistics, and reconciling the
need for quick assistance, while protecting against fraudulent
claims. How are we coming there?
Mr. Paulison. We very carefully looked at what didn't work
well during Katrina. Based on what I personally saw, my
experience dealing with hurricanes over the last 30 years, the
reports that came out of Congress, out of the White House, out
of the I.G.'s office, our of the GAO--and I could go on for
probably several more--but the themes were consistent.
Communications break down, not so much equipment, but
processes in place, logistics, not having the right things at
the right place at the right time, victim registration, having
people in every state in this country, not knowing who they
were, where they were, or what their needs were.
So we have looked at those very carefully. The
communication piece, we have worked very hard to put together
what we call a unified command system, where we will work out
of our joint field office to make sure we are all sharing
information, and not just at the state and local level, but
also inside the federal government itself.
So I know what HHS is doing; they know what we are doing;
we know what the Department of Transportation is doing. So if
we order buses, we know if they are going to show up or not.
Working with our logistics system, FEMA did not have the
right amount of supplies. We now have enough supplies in place
in our warehouses to take care of a million people for a week.
We have also signed an MOU with the Defense Logistics Agency,
which is our back up.
We are also bringing in logistics experts to manage
logistics. I am taking it out of operations and having a
standalone division. I think it is that important.
We didn't have the ability to track our supplies. I bought
20,000 GPS units and put a tracking system in place, so I can
tell the governor, right down to the very street corner, where
their supplies are, and that is an important business tool for
that governor to have and those local communities to have.
And then victim registration. We could not register people
as quickly as they were coming out of the city. We now have the
capacity to register over 200,000 people a day.
We took five of our mobile command posts and turned those
into registration units, where we can out to where people are,
instead of expecting them to try to find us. And they are
equipped with satellite-based laptop computers, satellite-based
cell phones.
So we can actually sit down and say, ``Here, call the 1-
800-621-FEMA number, and register, or sit down at this table
and we will register you for you on this laptop computer.''
Those are some of the things we have put in place that did not
work well at all.
So if we have another Katrina, you are going to see a
different type of response. And I know I am taking up a lot of
your time, and I think this is important.
The system that we have used in the past of waiting for
local government to become overwhelmed before the state steps
in and waiting for the state to become overwhelmed before the
federal government steps in doesn't work.
We have to go in as partners, and that is what we did in
the last?now, the hurricanes in Florida this last month was not
a Hurricane Katrina, but we were in that state with supplies
before the governor even picked up the phone and asked for
them, and that is what we are going to do.
We are going to be a much more nimble, much more leaning-
forward organization than we have in the past. Now, we are
raising some eyebrows with that, but it is the right thing to
do, and that is the way we are going to operate.
Mr. Carney. I appreciate the agility with which you are
approaching this problem. Mr. Foresman, could you comment on
that question, as well? How are we doing?
Mr. Foresman. Mr. Chairman, I think we are doing quite
well. And, you know, I think the one thing that we get
confronted with sometimes is we look insular inside of the
beltway to what we are doing to change the organizational
structure in the department, realign FEMA.
But I think the broader piece of the challenge that we are
going to face over the next 10 years is: What are we doing to
reform the whole national approach to how we manage emergencies
and disasters?
You know, as Dave has acknowledged, they have made
tremendous progress with logistics management, with their
coordination structures. But, ultimately, events such as
Katrina, several thousand FEMA employees, tens of thousands of
federal employees, are not going to replicate or replace nearly
15 million state and local government officials who are out
there on the ground.
So I think that, as we continue the national dialogue, we
have to look at our whole approach beyond just organizational
changes in Washington. And what is it that we want a 21st-
century environment to look like?
And then, what are expectations that we are going to set
for our partners at the state and local level, as well as the
private sector? Because, frankly, a lot of issues that we have
traditionally seen over the years is not because of the
inability of government to respond; it is because of the
inability of the populace to be prepared so that government
doesn't always have to be everything to everybody in the midst
of a catastrophic event.
Mr. Carney. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Carney--go on next, but I do
want to recognize the chairman of the full committee, Mr.
Thompson, for him to speak. Thank you.
Mr. Dent?
Mr. Dent. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Just to follow up, Mr. Paulison, on the flood maps, when do
you expect the flood maps, that they will be accurate, that
they will accurately reflect the flood plains? Can you give us
some kind of a time line on that?
Mr. Paulison. I am trying to think--I think it was 2010,
but let me get the accurate date for you. And what I would
really like to do is to bring our flood mitigation people into
your office, and sit down--
Mr. Dent. That is fine.
Mr. Paulison. --and give you a briefing on where we are on
that. And I think it was 2010. My staff are sitting behind me.
And correct me if I am wrong. That was our goal, to have about
80 percent of the country finished.
Mr. Dent. I think they are nodding 2010. Okay.
Mr. Paulison. Again, if that is incorrect, I will get back
with you on that.
Mr. Dent. All right.
Mr. Cuellar. Could you, when you set that up, because I am
also interested on this, could you just let us know, so we can
at least somebody from my office there?
Mr. Dent. Sure. We would love to have a joint meeting.
Mr. Paulison. I couldn't hear that.
Mr. Dent. The chairman just asked if his office could be
included in that discussion. That is certainly--
Mr. Cuellar. And any other members--yes, just let the staff
work out, and we will--because I think there are a lot of
members who are very--
Mr. Paulison. The more information we can give you, the
better. We want this organization to be very transparent, so I
would be happy--even coming back in front of the committee, if
you would like.
Mr. Dent. Because this is such an enormous issue in my
state. Flooding is just huge.
And, also, how is FEMA working with the Natural Resources
Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture to
promote the remediation of local streams that flood on a
recurring basis?
Mr. Paulison. Yes, that is one of the groups we are working
with, along with the Corps of Engineers and others, as we go
through this flood mapping, to make sure that we are working in
concert with the flooding issue.
And I think you said it very correctly, that one of our
biggest disasters that we have across this country every year
is flooding, you know, trying to move people out of the flood
plain, trying to better mitigate those flood issues, dealing
with the streams and rivers that we have. It is a big issue.
And we all need to work together. And we are working with them.
Mr. Dent. And it is also my understanding that, while FEMA
may have the funds available for stream remediation, it is
unable to fix flood damage. And, meanwhile, the National
Resources Conservation Service is authorized to fix the damage,
but lacks the funding.
And I guess the question is, is that true? And, if so, what
can the two agencies do to negotiate an agreement to allow an
exchange of funds? And do we need legislation to require that,
to enable that kind of cooperation?
Mr. Paulison. Again, I am not familiar with their budgeting
and what funding they have or don't have, but I will get that
information to you.
Mr. Dent. That would be great. And I would like to find
out, too, if we would actually need legislation--
Mr. Paulison. Absolutely.
Mr. Dent. --to allow that type of cooperation to occur. And
on the issue of medical preparedness, in addition to
implementing the reforms in the Post-Katrina Emergency
Management Reform Act of 2006, the department's restructuring
proposal would also create a new Office of Health Affairs.
What will be the role of the new Office of Health Affairs?
And how does this expand upon the current role and
responsibilities of--Mr. Foresman, actually, this question is
for you.
Mr. Foresman. Congressman, two things. One, when we created
the chief medical office--when Secretary Chertoff created the
chief medical officer's role as part of the 2SR process, it was
in clear recognition that there are probably three buckets of
medical activity.
Bucket number one is simply occupational health for more
than 270,000 federal employees, including law enforcement
officers and TSA screeners who are getting hurt every day, and
getting this level of consistency across the department on
that.
The second piece and the more complex piece of it is, when
you look at health and medical preparedness, HHS has a role in
it. You talk about pandemic. DHS has the overarching national
incident management responsibilities, but HHS is the lead
health and medical issues.
Making sure that the coordination between what we do in the
department, what other federal agencies, state and local
agencies do is absolutely critical. And this office will
address that.
And then the third piece, and probably one of the more
critical pieces, the grant programs that are administered by
the Department of Homeland Security that will now be
administered through FEMA, the $16 billion that they have
talked about, a large percentage of those have activities that
are complementary to the many billions of dollars being
administered through Health and Human Services.
So the Office of Health Affairs is really designed to make
sure that there is coordination on grants, there is operational
coordination between what our programs are doing, and, frankly,
gives the secretary, in his overall incident management role,
the capability to have scientific expertise to translate
medical speak into incident management speak, when we have an
event going on.
Mr. Dent. Thank you. And I will yield back.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dent.
At this time, the chair would like to recognize the
chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Mississippi,
Mr. Thompson, for a statement or questions.
Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Thompson. Well, I have a full statement for the record,
Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your indulgence.
Let me welcome our three guests. Some I see weekly almost.
Mr. Paulison--I have a question, if I might, Mr. Chairman.
It speaks to whether or not we have any FEMA contracts with
ambulance providers as a backup to any potential emergency over
and above the normal response patterns?
Mr. Paulison. If you recall, we had one last year in
Louisiana. That contract has expired. And we are working to
look at what we need in place, not only for the southeast
United States, but also, do we need something like that for the
rest of the country?
I don't want to get into contract specifics right now, to
give some stuff away, but we are working on that issue. And it
is an issue that we--you know, I can brief you privately
instead of publicly on where we are with that particular--what
we are going to do with that contract.
Mr. Thompson. Well, if you would--
Mr. Paulison. Yes, sir.
Mr. Thompson. --at whatever venue you can provide that,
because, if we had the need today, we would not be able to do
that.
Mr. Paulison. I think we would. I know there is no contract
in place. But with the relationships that we have with the
major ambulance suppliers around the country and the ability to
move those resources, I think we could respond.
It is not like we want it to be. We would rather have
something solid in place. And that is what we are going to--and
we will have something in place before hurricane season.
Mr. Thompson. Okay. A couple other issues. One of the
issues was that, when people were told after Hurricane Katrina,
``Call FEMA, here is the 800 number,'' they would call, and the
line would be busy. How have we resolved that issue?
Mr. Paulison. That was say a major problem that--and I
briefed the committee just before you stepped in.
What we have done, we increased the capacity of our call
centers to handle 200,000 people a day, 200,000 calls a day. We
would be able to register that many. We have also put systems
in place where, if we have a known disaster coming in, like a
major hurricane or Katrina, we will preposition people in the
congregate shelters to register people as they come in.
But, also, we have taken five of our mobile command posts
and turned those into mobile registration centers, where they
can literally go out to where people are and register them, if
there is no phone service. And like we found out during
Katrina, people couldn't get in their cars and drive, because
they were underwater.
So we have taken major steps to solve that problem, and it
was a big issue.
Mr. Thompson. Let me give you a current issue that is
happening in both Mississippi and Louisiana. I am being told
that there is a housing initiative being put forth that says,
in essence, for those people living in travel trailers, the
next step is to put you in some other temporary housing, but it
has to be on wheels, rather than a permanent structure. Are you
aware of any of that?
Mr. Paulison. No, sir, I am not. There is nothing inside of
FEMA doing that.
Right now, we have about 90,000 families in travel trailers
and mobile homes across the Southeast, Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, primarily the bulk of those. But there is no plan in
place--
Mr. Thompson. So beyond the travel trailer situation, FEMA
is not involved in any housing initiative.
Mr. Paulison. The only thing we are doing is working with
HUD to find out what we are going to do with people in the long
term. You know, we have the people in Houston and the rest of
the country that are in apartments. We would like to turn that
over to HUD. And we are working to do that.
The ones in the travel trailers, yes, we would like to get
them out of there, but there is simply no housing in a lot of
those areas. But there is nothing that I am aware of like you
are talking about.
Mr. Thompson. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I would, Congress
allocated a significant amount of money. Are you familiar with
the Katrina cottage concept?
Mr. Paulison. Yes, sir. There was $400 million that
Congress allocated. We have put that out for bid, so to speak,
amongst the states, and we are working with them now. We picked
those projects that we want to fund, and we are working with
primarily Alabama and Mississippi.
Mr. Thompson. So that is a FEMA project, right?
Mr. Paulison. That is correct. That is a FEMA fund, yes,
sir.
Mr. Thompson. All right. That is what I have reference to.
Mr. Paulison. But it has nothing to do with wheels. It is
the projects the state has submitted--
Mr. Thompson. I understand. But what I am told is that
product that is on the street is proposed as temporary housing,
that actually costs more than comparable, permanent housing.
I hope you will look at whatever comes in and make a
determination that we are not putting on the street another
travel trailer elite, rather than something that taxpayers can
get a better bang for their buck. I am told that part of the
reference is that this Katrina cottage has to have the ability
to have wheels and axels, or something like that, on it.
Mr. Paulison. That would not be a FEMA initiative at all.
If there is anything like that, that would come from the locals
or the state that is building whatever they are going to be
building. There were several different projects--
Mr. Thompson. Well, but it is FEMA money. And if we are
going to put another travel trailer situation in, and it cost
more than a permanent structure, we have a problem.
And I want you to understand that I am being told in my
state that that is what is forthcoming, that it will basically
be a glorified travel trailer called the Katrina cottage. As
the head of the agency, I would really want you to look into
that and report back to this committee what your findings are.
Mr. Paulison. Yes, sir. We will do that.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
At this time, the chair will recognize other members for
questions that they may wish to ask the witnesses.
In accordance with our committee rules and practice, I will
recognize members who were present at the start of the hearing
based on the seniority on the subcommittees, alternating
between the subcommittee and between the majority and the
minority. Those members coming in later will be recognized in
the order of their arrival.
At this time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes a
gentlewoman from California, Ms.--oh, I am sorry, the gentleman
from Louisiana, Mr. Jindal?
Mr. Jindal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the
chairman of the overall committee, as well, for conducting this
hearing.
I want to thank our witnesses, as well. It doesn't surprise
anybody, I don't think, that we in Mississippi or Louisiana are
intensely interested in the topics raised today. Mr. Paulison,
I certainly appreciate your being here and sharing your time,
as well as your colleagues.
I have several questions. In my given time, I will try to
get through as many of them as I can. I will start first,
Secretary Paulison.
To date, FEMA has paid about $4.5 billion in public
assistance to Louisiana. Of that, $2.69 billion has gone to the
hardest-hit areas, yet there is still $2.4 billion that has not
yet been allocated by the state.
I know there are a couple of different types of
bottlenecks, one in terms of getting public work orders
approved by FEMA, and then secondly getting that money, once it
has been sent to the state, to the actual agencies and
individuals on the ground.
I know these dollars sound like a lot. On one hand, we can
say it is great $2.69 billion has been paid out. On the other
hand, there are tremendous needs, whether it is rebuilding
schools, whether it is rebuilding public parks and other
facilities, whether it is rebuilding a crime lab in New Orleans
and facilities, and I suspect my colleague from Louisiana may
follow up with some of these examples, as well.
My first question is, what can be done to break both of
these bottlenecks so these funds, first, get to the state and
then, secondly, from the state to these impacted agencies even
more quickly?
Mr. Paulison. We put an expedited process in place to make
sure the public worksheets move much more quickly than they
have in the past.
We put a tracking system in place, a Gantt chart-type
system, where we can actually track where those public
worksheets are. So we move them through our system quickly. And
then we allocate the dollars to the state.
Once the state get those dollars, it is up to them to then
process it for the local communities, either the cities or the
parishes, wherever the project is going on.
We have tried to work with them to help them expedite that
process. I know it has been slow. But, again, once we allocate
those dollars to the state, it is--and I am not going to say,
``It is not my fault.'' We are not going to do that. We are
going to continue to work with them. But it is much more
difficult once we give the dollars to them.
Now, the state is being very careful. I mean, they know
that my friend sitting next to met at I.G. and the GAO is going
to be watching very carefully of how they spend those dollars,
so the state is making sure that the dollars are being spent
properly, being allocated properly, and being accounted for
properly.
And that is, I think, part of the slowdown of the system,
from my observation.
Mr. Jindal. Well, and I don't think any of us certainly
wants to encourage fraud or misspending of these dollars. But
one of the things we strongly encourage, maybe some kind of
combination of you and the I.G.'s offices providing those
assurances to the state.
One of the things we continue to hear as their concerns,
but what we feel from local officials is they feel like they
are duplicating a lot of effort, that they are having to fill
out the same forms more than once, and they had assumed, once
they had gotten approvals from FEMA, once they negotiated the
cost estimates and gotten the preliminary work done, they
thought they were done, only to learn they had to start all
over.
Once the money had been released to the state, they learned
they had to start--and my understanding is that some of these
processes are new since Katrina. They weren't in place before
Katrina. And, again, none of us wants to see these dollars
wasted or abused, because these are dollars that we need to
rebuild our state.
And I understand that there is a limit on what you can do
once the dollars get obligated. I also encourage you to try to
expedite the public worksheets. I know, at one point,
everything above a million dollars was coming back to D.C. And
I know you all have done some things to expedite that.
I know my time is running short. My next question for
Secretary Foresman involves--my next question involves the
Urban Area Security Initiative. My understanding is the
department decided to cut four cities, including Baton Rouge,
from the list of 35 metropolitan areas eligible to share $747
million in the Urban Area Initiative grants.
The department said that they made their recommendations
based on the 2000 census estimates, but that they did not take
into account the post-Katrina population surge. Baton Rouge is
now, by some estimates, the largest city in Louisiana, and
certainly I would encourage you to look at that new data.
One question is whether the department will allow the Urban
Area Security Initiative to adjust their risk assessment
boundaries to look at local or operational or key regional
infrastructure that falls just outside that 10-mile attachment
area.
I know there were a lot of us that were shocked that Baton
Rouge wouldn't make that cut. If anything, it seems like it
took on even greater importance, not a decreased importance,
after the storm.
Mr. Foresman. Congressman, let me address both parts there.
First, in the context of some reasonable level of adjustment,
where we found this past year--and there were a number of
jurisdictions that applied, too, in the 2006 process that were
so-called sustainment communities--where there were major
facilities outside of that radius that had an significant
impact, such as a large dam that would flood an entire city,
something of that nature, we did show the common sense
flexibility, in terms of doing the analytical work for 2007.
You asked a very reasonable question, in terms of the
population. It is one that actually the secretary also asked.
So what I would offer to you, in terms of the official
assessment, the population and the combination of threat and
the vulnerability assessments didn't raise the profile of Baton
Rouge to the level for inclusion in the program.
I asked the team to run it unofficially, and they put in
the best numbers that we had, based on our discussions with the
local officials when we had the meetings that you helped
organize and others, the information that we were able to get
from Dave and the team. And it still would not have gotten them
into the urban area program.
Mr. Jindal. I might follow up with you. I know my time is
running short. I will come back in my next round of question--
Chief Paulison, just one of the things that you may want to
think about before we get to our next round is just--I have
some follow-up questions. I have some concerns about some of
the money we saw spent in contracts. I just want to make sure
we have those safeguards going forward.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Jindal.
At this time, I would like to recognize for 5 minutes the
gentlewoman from California, Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to both
of the chairmen for calling this I think what is a very
important follow-up, so we can ensure that, when we have
natural disasters, things are taken care of.
I come from the state of California. As you know, most
people usually worry about earthquakes when it comes to
Californians, but we really worry about the fires that come.
And I think our state, at in Southern California, has been in a
drought for the last 6 years or so, so we are very concerned
that we will have natural disasters.
Just as we had a slide the day before yesterday in San
Francisco, in a very--what is concerned a very urban area, all
of a sudden we find people out on the streets.
So very concerned about the whole issue of all-hazard and
disasters. And it seems to me that having FEMA, quite frankly,
in the Department of Homeland Security, I have seen so many
situations where everybody is telling me, ``We are so focused
on terrorism, we may not be focused on the reality of all these
hazards.''
Mr. Jadacki, do you believe that there has been a problem
in focusing on all-hazard missions in the department?
Mr. Jadacki. I think initially, when the department did
start back in 2003, there was a focus on terrorism. You know,
we are right in the heels of the 9/11 event. And I personally
worked for FEMA and sort of--and their chief financial--money.
And I know, working with the?when the department was
forming, that there was a lot of emphasis on the terrorism-type
attacks, and there was less emphasis placed on the all-hazards,
the earthquakes, the floods, the hurricanes, and those types of
things.
So, yes, I did see a focus more on terrorism.
Ms. Sanchez. Was this the case prior to Hurricane Katrina,
or was that being fixed at that point? And has it been fixed
since? Or do you still think we need more to do? And what would
those improvements look like, to make sure that this
department, in particular, is taken a look at?
Mr. Jadacki. I think that the hurricanes in Florida after
2004, and then subsequent Hurricane Katrina and the other
hurricanes, were a wakeup call. I think everybody recognizes
now that we can't just focus on?you know, a natural disaster,
whether it is a natural disaster or a manmade disaster, it is
still going to result in a response effort, a recovery effort,
and it is still going to need the resources of the federal
government.
So I think they were a strong wakeup call. I think some of
the FEMA reforms that were put out last year recognized that,
the merger of some of the preparedness functions as a
cornerstone of sound emergency management is a step in the
right direction. I think the focus is where it should be, on an
all-hazards approach right now.
Ms. Sanchez. I get very worried about that issue. And I
know, as Californians, we are considered one of the most
prepared areas, having always thought about the earthquake. And
I know, in my car, I have my little emergency kit in case I am
in my car when something strikes, or you go home, and I have
the big trash can that has everything in it.
But I just worry that somehow--and walking, even doing the
walk around my district these days, people aren't focused on
the fact that we may not get to them in the first 3 or 4 days.
And I think just a real focus on getting back to, ``Everybody
has to take care of themselves for the first few hours,'' is
important for all hazards.
As the chairwoman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction
over border security, Mr. Foresman, I am very interested in the
progress of US-VISIT. And, quite frankly, I am surprised to see
that the US-VISIT program was moved into the National
Protection and Programs Directorate within the department.
Why was that moved? And wouldn't it make more sense to have
US-VISIT somehow closer to the operational piece of Customs and
Border Protection or maybe a policy office on border programs?
It just seems like it is sort of removed. And we have been
having so many problems with the US-VISIT.
Mr. Foresman. Congresswoman, thank you for the question.
Really, I think there are three pieces to this. First, when
the initial startup of US-VISIT, when it was envisioned, it was
very much of a border activity, and I think US-VISIT is, in
many ways, one of the great successes of the department.
US-VISIT has emerged from being simply a border management
tool to being an identity-and information-sharing tool that has
utility, not only for Customs and Border Protection, but the
more than 700 million prints, for instance, that they have in
that US-VISIT database, are prints that are important to the
FBI, as they do investigations.
They are important to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
We have a pilot project where the Coast Guard is doing some
validation and taking some prints down in some of the water
patrol areas.
So, as we look at the organizational structure of the
department, the decision was made that it is a service provider
across the entire department. And it is not simply a border
management tool. It is an identity management tool.
And, in the same way that the infrastructure protection
directorate services all aspects of the department, whether it
is Dave and the folks at FEMA, Thad Allen and the Coast Guard,
or our state and local partners, we wanted to make sure that we
had it at a department-level function.
Now, the second, more practical piece of it--and is
straightforward--is that US-VISIT needs to--we need to ensure
their full integration in department activities.
We continue to go through a wide-ranging maturity process
in the department. And this gives us a better ability to ensure
its representation of issues, its recognition of issues, its
issues are being adjudicated at the senior levels of the
department, but the primary reason being that it is a service
provision organization.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you. And I see, Mr. Chairman, that I
have run out of time, so I will wait for the next round. Thank
you.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you very much. Thank you again.
At this time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes the
gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Clarke.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and to both
chairman, for holding this very important hearing today.
In the last Congress, we took the very strong and necessary
step of reforming the management of FEMA and, along with it,
the entire Preparedness Directorate of the Department of
Homeland Security. While I was not a member of Congress at the
time, I wholeheartedly support these actions as vital to the
overall process of fixing the tragic failures of the federal
response to Hurricane Katrina.
Among the greatest decisions was to improve FEMA status
within the DHS and move preparedness functions under their
management. This will allow FEMA to focus on how best to
prepare our cities and states to avoid the worst in disastrous
situations, before they begin, rather than starting from
scratch when reacting to rapidly deteriorating situations.
However, when major functions of government are moved from
one area to another, oftentimes confusion ensues. And it is
nearly inevitable. And important programs sometimes have great
difficulty in coming up to speed.
As part of the department shifting of programs, it is
transferred the Office of Grants and Training to FEMA, while
creating the new Office of Risk Assessment and the newly named
National Protection and Programs Directorate.
Which of your offices will oversee important, risk-based
grant programs, like the Urban Area Security Initiative, the
State Homeland Security Grant Program, and the other grant
programs for first responders? That is sort of my first
question.
Mr. Paulison. Each of the departments inside Homeland
Security has a risk area to do that. Undersecretary Foresman's
side will be that agency that makes sure all of those are
blended together and oversee all of the risk-based assessment.
So we will be kind of a customer of theirs, but yet we will do
a lot of our own risk assessment.
We are in one department, and we do work very closely
together. And this department is finally starting to gel into
one agency. So, yes, we have risk-based areas. The Coast Guard
does some of their risk, Border Patrol, all of them do that.
And I don't want to speak for you, George, but they are
going to be the blender of all of this, kind of synthesizing
all of the risk-based stuff to make sure we are all on the same
page.
Mr. Foresman. Congresswoman, let me just briefly follow up
for you. You know, I think the one clear picture is that--and
the chief talked about this--the grant programs will realign
into FEMA. And they, in essence, are becoming the service
provider for the provision and the administration of these DHS
grant programs that have been in place for a number of years.
We have made significant improvements over the course of
the past year in terms of our grant activities, but one of the
big things that we have found is we went through the grant
process. How we assess risk for port security and how we did it
for the Urban Area Security Initiative, and how we were
applying it to transit security were dramatically different.
We were using dramatically different databases. And that
doesn't allow us to do apples-to-apples comparison. And what we
need to be able to provide to you all, as our overseers, is the
ability to come in and say, ``There are tough choices that have
to be made. We have done a quantitative risk assessment. The
level of risk for this is this; the level of risk is this for
this. We need to make hard choices about where we are going to
put your resources.''
So this doesn't diminish anybody's role in risk, but rather
it creates a coalesced picture across the department.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you for your response to that. And I just
wanted to sort of touch on the issue that was raised by
Congresswoman Sanchez, the US-VISIT program.
And I can understand the whole security aspect of it, but I
think some of what gets lost--because I represent a
constituency where you have a lot of first-and second-
generation Americans with roots outside of the U.S., and they
just want to see their families.
And what I didn't hear in your response was that part of
the US-VISIT. You know, how are we really facilitating those
who are lawfully coming to the United States--I mean, New York
City, that is a major way for us to raise revenue and tourism
and things of that--and I am sure across this nation.
I didn't hear anything in your response about the
visitation aspect of it. Could you give us some insight into
that, please?
Mr. Foresman. Congresswoman, yes, I can. And, you know,
part of the challenge we run into is we have a lot of names for
things that leave a little bit of a misnomer.
But US-VISIT is the program by which we inform the ability
of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement to make a wide range of decisions. And as a
practical matter, what US-VISIT does is it gives us the ability
to bring people in to an overseas location, issue a travel
document for them to be able to lawfully come to the United
States.
It gives us the ability to validate that they are not on a
terrorist watch list somewhere, so that, when they get to this
country, they can get entry into this country quickly, and they
go see their family. Our number-one objective is to ensure the
free and appropriate movement of people inside and outside of
the United States, but with an eye towards a much higher level
of security than we had prior to 9/11.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have run out of
time. If you have time later, thank you.
Mr. Cuellar. Yes. And I believe we asked and we will be
probably going into a second round for additional questions on
that. But at this time, thank you, Ms. Clarke.
And at this time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes
the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter.
Thank you for being here with us.
Mr. Perlmutter. Good morning, Mr. Chair. And I apologize,
because some of these questions you may have already answered,
and I have been going in and out.
But the first question really sort of adds onto the US-
VISIT questions that you have been getting. I mean, my
understanding of US-VISIT was to track who is coming and who is
going from this country. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Foresman. Yes, sir, it is.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. How are we doing on the who is
leaving the country side of the equation, in terms of tracking
people who, you know, have a visa for a year, or three months,
or whatever, and then they overstay their welcome? How are we
doing on that side of it?
Mr. Foresman. Congressman, we have still more progress to
go, in terms of doing that, but our number-one objective is to
keep bad people out of the country so that we don't have to
respond to an event.
Having said that, we have a number of pilot projects that
we have been doing in selected airports with the US-VISIT from
an exit standpoint. As we look down the road to the exit
program and broader implementation of the exit program, we are
going to look at it in the context of the three modes.
Air, which is going to be organizational and structurally
reasonable easy to do; maritime, in terms of those folks who
are leaving through maritime ports. But in the context of land
exit, that is particularly difficult, because, you know, about
80 percent of the people who exit the United States exit the
United States by land border crossings, and then they enter the
next morning when they come back to work.
And so this is going to be a little bit of a challenge, and
we continue to look at the technology issues, the governance
issues. But as we are moving forward, we are looking at some of
the pilot projects so we can beta test some processes and
procedures and technologies.
But as we have had discussions, as the secretary said very
clearly, we have not abandoned exit. But what we have done is
put in place a strategy that will allow us to get there without
spending a whole lot of dollars without getting the desired end
result.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay, I guess, you know, there are sort of
two parts, who is coming, who is going. Part of that is, you
know, we want--under homeland security, you know, the missions
are, you know, stop attacks, respond to disasters, and then
immigration, kind of, you know, who is coming and who is going
from this country.
And part of the immigration question is?you know, in
Colorado, we talk about 11 million people who are here without
proper documentation. And, you know, some of my fellow
congressmen and women fall down on the subject on one side, and
others fall the other way.
But a big chunk of those 11 million people are people who
have overstayed their visas. And so, you know, I guess what I
am saying, both from an immigration standpoint, plus we just
need to know who is in our country, you have to finish that
exit side of this thing.
And, you know, otherwise, it is not finished and it is not
a complete project. And I still sort of question why US-VISIT
is sort of in the FEMA part, you know, of all of your agencies.
You know, why isn't it more over on the immigration kind of
section of the--now, maybe that is for you guys to decide how
you want to have your organization, but it just didn't really
make sense to me.
Mr. Foresman. Congressman, let me just clarify. It is not
in the FEMA part of the organization.
Mr. Perlmutter. Where is it?
Mr. Foresman. It is in the National Protection and Programs
Directorate. And the preparedness functions that were
previously under my domain, some of those activities, such as
the fire administration and the grants and training activities,
are going to be realigned to FEMA, but the National Protection
and Programs Directorate includes things like infrastructure
protection, cybersecurity, risk management.
And so, again, as I had said in my opening statement, this
is about how we managed risk. No one thing manages the full
spectrum of risk. This will allow us to use US-VISIT across a
wide range of activities in the department.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay.
I mean, I have a whole bunch of questions. You had
questions about dams--Mr. Dent was asking you about in
Pennsylvania. One of the things that came up a lot last year,
that some of our dams across the country are aging, you know,
particularly in the Northeast, what kinds of steps is FEMA or
DHS taking to work with the Army Corps of Engineers to go in
and check all of these, whether they are old, kind of earthen
dams, or, you know, dams from the 1930s that were part of the,
you know, the various projects that were going on?
Mr. Paulison. FEMA doesn't have direct responsibility over
the dams themselves, but we do cover the flood plains that are
around the dams. If a dam or levee is certified, then for
insurance purposes those people are not required to have flood
insurance, because they are considered not to be in the 100-
year flood plain.
If, however, as we are seeing now more often, because, like
you mentioned earlier, a lot of the dams are getting very old,
a lot of levees are getting old, we are finding out that some
of them cannot be certified, but we are working with the
states, and with the local communities, and with the corps to
give them time to inspect the levees, bring them up to speed
before we put a requirement in that people buy flood insurance.
I think we are giving them up to 2 years to do that, to
come up with those reports, to make sure that we are making the
right decisions. But we don't work with them very closely. We
don't have direct responsibility over repairing the dams or
anything like that, but we do work with them to make sure that
the people around there are protected and understand exactly
what the risks are for living inside of a levee or inside of a
dam situation.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter.
At this time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes the
gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson.
Mr. Jefferson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning.
We live with a lot of the problems that others are talking
about here every day. And I want to talk to you about four or
five different areas in the short time that I have.
The most important is the flexibility of the Stafford Act,
with respect to the various ranges of assistance that are
provided there. The travel trailers that we so much sought for
temporary, transitional housing now themselves present a hazard
because they have been around so long, and no one believes that
they could ever withstand a hurricane season themselves.
We just saw the tragic loss of life of a woman there?a
tornado that came through in the travel trailer. She died.
There are 60,000 more families in our state that are living in
travel trailers now.
And there have been all sorts of ideas about how we could
make the transitional housing more flexible, but they aren't
allowed under the Stafford Act. For instance, many of the
people who had apartments or buildings that were damaged during
the storm have requested--came to us with ideas about how they
could use their own money to get their places back in shape,
and then have a lease agreement with FEMA to house people, to
help them to restore their investment.
They would have been in regular housing then. It would have
restored a long range of--hopefully, rental housing in the
area, but that wasn't possible, because of the Stafford Act. It
didn't--the flexibility for it.
The second is the individual assistance limits now are
$26,200. I don't know how they arrived at that number or how
long it has been in place, how long it should be in place, but
I would like to know how you feel about that, because a lot of
us are bumping up against that now. And the 18-month
requirement also is there, which also is an issue of
flexibility.
The issue of whether the assistance goes directly to the
states or whether parishes--in our case, parishes; other
places, counties--ought to be to let you deal with that. I know
there is a concern about how many entities you deal with, how
many entities report to you. And the states are more
conveniently able to do that, just one entity to report.
But there is always this tension between the seat of state
government and the effects in places out there, usually large
cities, and it is just a tough thing. And the real desire to
fix things is on a local level more than any other place, and
there aren't other competing claims.
The last thing, outside of staff, I just--I did my--is the
issue of prepositioning, or let's call it advance contracting
issues. We had this big concern about all these outside, big
contractors coming in.
And the issue wasn't just about recovery. It was about
recovery for whom and also by whom. And so there is a big
concern about our local Louisiana folks, and getting work down
there, and going forward with all this recovery, in the early
part, debris removal, all that was very much a concern of ours.
And we had the big non-compete contract folks who had been
apparently prepared for this sort of thing. What is FEMA doing
to think about the local folks getting prepared on a list--be
called upon when these disasters strike?
I will leave it there for the moment. And if you are able
to get through those, maybe I will get back to another one. But
if I can just leave--the three Stafford Act issues, and the
last one is on the issue of advanced contracting for small
business.
Mr. Paulison. Yes, a lot of questions there. I will try to
remember all of them.
Your observation of the travel trailers is right on target.
It is one of those things that keeps me awake at night. These
travel trailers that we use, FEMA used to house people in right
after Katrina, was the only tool they had in their toolbox to
use.
However, they are not designed for long-term living. And
now families have been in there for 18 months, some a little
less, but most around--18 months for round numbers. It concerns
me about some of the issues you have talked about, about storms
coming through, tornadoes.
We have had several fires in them, some at no fault
whatsoever to the trailer itself, but just the fact that they
are living in very small quarters. It makes it very difficult.
The travel trailers that we have are not the right answer.
But, again, it is the only tool we have for people who wanted
to live there in Louisiana, in Mississippi, and to a lesser
extent Alabama and Texas.
The problem with--and particularly with Louisiana--is there
is no place for them to go if they want to stay in the state.
There is no public housing available; there is no low-income
housing available.
I was in one of the travel trailers the last time I was
down there, visited with a woman, her daughter. I went inside
and sat down in those very small quarters.
She was telling me the story where they were in an
apartment. They were getting by. She works full-time. Her
daughter works after school. She is in high school. And they
were able to make their payments. They were paying $600-a-month
rent.
So the hurricane came through, destroyed their apartment.
They moved into one of our travel trailers in Acongria Park.
Her apartment has been rebuilt, and she wants to move back. But
now the landlord is charging $1,800 a month. And can't afford
to do that.
And she said, ``I am ready to be on my own. I have a job.
My daughter has a job, and there is no place to go.'' So the
answer is find some type of housing for them to go into.
Mr. Jefferson. --if an apartment owner was now able to say,
``I will fix back my place, and I will keep my rent such and
such, if you will give me a lease for these folks,'' isn't that
a partial answer to this issue, of getting folks out of
dangerous, temporary housing?
Mr. Paulison. Part of the 80 percent of the people we have
in travel trailers are in their own driveway, backed up while
they are rebuilding their house. But we have a 20 percent
portion that are in our congregate trailer parks, so to speak.
And those are the ones that I am concerned about, because I
am not sure what the answer is for them right now, quite
frankly. This is going to be a longer conversation, and I don't
want to use up all your time.
The individual assistance is set by you, by Congress, by
law, and it is the $28,200, I believe, right in there, for that
particular type of thing. That amount of money is not under our
control.
However, what we have done is, the people in the travel
trailers and mobile homes, that money is not decremented off of
their $28,2000. And so we are putting a lot of people into the
403 program that would normally have been in the 408, which
comes off of that piece of it.
The Stafford Act directs us to go through the state and not
directly to locals with the dollars. It has to flow through the
state, because the state does pick up the cost share for that
particular piece.
What we have done with the contracts--and we did not have a
place before, and I know we are already over time, but I think
this is an important issue.
The contracts, particularly the IE tact contracts that were
put in place quickly after Katrina, the contracts were not
written as we would have written them if we had more time. They
should have been in place ahead of time. They were not.
However, all those contracts have been redone. There is now
significant guidelines in there for local contractors and small
business and women contractors to use. And the tornadoes in
Florida we just had, 90 percent of the work went to local
contractors.
And that is the process we want to use, because I agree
with you 100 percent, based on what I learned in hurricanes,
particularly through Andrew. The quicker you can get businesses
back up and running, and get people jobs, the quicker the
community is going to come back. And that is what we want to
do, also.
Mr. Jefferson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Yes, sir, Mr. Jefferson.
This time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes the
gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Etheridge.
Mr. Etheridge. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
And, gentlemen, thank you for being here.
This is a critical time and an important issue, because we
are now approaching March the 1st. And within 90 days, we will
be in hurricane season. And, you know, when people have major
disasters, as far as they are concerned, and you have just been
talking about Katrina, and that will continue to be a topic for
a good while, it doesn't matter to them whether it is manmade
or natural.
They are more likely to be hit by a natural disaster,
whether it be a hurricane, tornadoes we have had this year,
floods, or earthquakes, in a large extent, than for a manmade
one.
I still remember President Bush in New Orleans saying to
then-FEMA Director Brown, ``You are doing a heck of a job.''
And I think then we all pretty much understood somebody didn't
get it, and we weren't prepared, and we weren't ready.
So my question--and I think the American people have
figured it out. And Congress has stepped in and tried to help
with resources and reordering some of the--Mr. Paulison, we are
glad to have you aboard, because you understand it, and you
have been there.
So my question, as you know, a lot of hurricanes tend to
land in two or three places in this country. One is in Florida;
the other is in North Carolina.
And I understand that planning is going on in FEMA to
develop procedures for a response from recovery of disasters,
whether it be tornadoes, et cetera. And you know, as I do, that
we had a plan on paper before Katrina. And all of a sudden, it
was on paper, and that is all it was.
My question to you is, now, lessons learned thus far from
Katrina, and you remember as I do that, in the 1990s, FEMA was
a very proud agency in this federal government, and I want to
see it get back to that, because we had our hits in the 1990s,
and we have been fortunate the last couple of years.
What steps are you taking to restore the professionalism
within FEMA, which I think is a critical piece? And, secondly,
can you describe some of the efforts being made at FEMA to
ensure that the plans are put in place that are actually
workable?
For example, have there been dry runs for new practices and
procedures to ensure that they will work in a real disaster?
Because, you know, one of the things that we talk about--plans,
and, you know, historically, we used to do a lot of dry runs.
And I think that is absolutely imperative at the state level,
if they are going to be our partners, and the local level,
because many of those folks, as you and I know, are volunteers.
Mr. Paulison. First of all, I agree with you 100 percent. I
want to make this agency an agency that America is proud of
again, and that is what we are going to do.
The first question you asked was about professionalism. I
am bringing in the most professional, experienced people that I
possibly can into this organization. I mentioned earlier, the
10 regional directors that we have in place--actually, I have
nine in place. The other one will be in place in a couple of
weeks. We have already hired him; we are just going through the
background checks right now.
We will have all 10 regions in place, regional directors in
place, the first time anybody is in our memory that we had all
10 of them filled, and not just filled, but filled with people
who have 20 and 30 years of experience dealing with disasters.
I am also bringing that same type of expertise into the
FEMA headquarters, into the management here, to make sure that
we have people who understand what is going on, people who get
it, who have been there and done that.
The second thing is, on that piece of it, is making sure I
have a very strong mix of career people inside this
organization, so as we go from administration to
administration, we don't have the ups and downs we have seen in
the past.
My staff meetings, for instance, sir, are about two-thirds
career people and one-third politicals, to make sure that they
are involved in making the decisions for this organization,
because they are the ones that understand what is really
happening.
There are no guarantees in life. But at the same time, I
believe that exercises, especially particular hurricane areas,
are extremely important, and that is what we have been doing.
Undersecretary Foresman's shop that part of we are inheriting
is doing it, doing an unbelievable job of making sure we are
out there, doing exercises, working with the states.
I have personally attended exercises all up and down the
East Coast and also in the Gulf Coast, to sit down with the
governors to walk through those hurricane plans, to make sure
that each department head understands what their
responsibilities are.
I think that is the key: having a good, solid plan in
place, to exercise that plan, and train on that plan. And that
is all we can do right now, until we are actually tested.
Mr. Etheridge. Have we had an exercise this year yet?
Mr. Paulison. We have not had the national exercise yet,
but the states have already started doing those, doing their--
that was then they are start doing those exercises.
Katrina was a wakeup call for everyone, not only in the
federal government, but also all the state emergency managers.
If you talk with them--and I meet with them on a regular basis,
and I know Undersecretary Foresman does, also--they are asking
themselves, ``What if that was my state? What if that was my
city? What would I have done? And how would we have
performed?''
Mr. Etheridge. Well, I thank you.
And, Mr. Chairman, I would say that the situation, as it
relates to the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, are still a
challenge for this country and a natural disaster, and it will
be until it is fixed. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Etheridge.
At this time, members, we do have--we are going to do a
short round of second questions, so, even though you do have
your 5 minutes, if you can keep it within 5 minutes--make sure
you keep it under 5 minutes.
But let me go ahead. I will go ahead and recognize myself
for one question, and then I will have a couple questions, real
short ones. But instead of responding, if you can just get that
in writing, unless the members are interested. They might be
interested, also, in copies of that.
Mr. Jadacki, the inspector general has focused on
substantial work on FEMA contracting and has identified
numerous problems. And what we are looking at is, of course,
the acquisition issues that have come up, whether there has
been clearly communicated acquisition responsibilities among
FEMA, other federal agencies, state, local governments, whether
there has been sufficient numbers of acquisition personnel to
manage and oversee this type of contracts.
In your opinion, has FEMA made--what sort of strides has
FEMA made in addressing those shortfalls, when we talk about
contracting and acquisitions? And I think you are familiar with
reports and articles, et cetera, et cetera.
Mr. Jadacki. Yes, right, painfully familiar. We believe
FEMA's--they are going in the right direction.
One of the outcomes of Hurricane Katrina was the obviously
lack of staff, the lack of attention to procurements in a
couple different areas. Obviously, there was not enough
contracting officers to get the required number of contracts
out on the streets.
The other issue that was discussed earlier is the fact that
there weren't pre-scripted, you know, contracts in place before
the disaster occurred, so, as a result, a lot of ad hoc
contracting was taking place, sole-source-type things, limited
competition, letter contracts, authorizations--
Mr. Cuellar. And have they now developed those--and I don't
want to say I am an attorney, but I want to say form contracts,
that basically you can use?
Mr. Jadacki. Right. For the major contracts, they have gone
back and re-competed those. And we understand now there is a
number of contracts in place with the requirements, with
pricing, some of those types of things in place, with a normal,
typical, after-disaster activities, like ice water, logistics,
some of those types of things.
We understand that they are making great strides in
attracting and hiring procurement staff. As a matter of fact, I
sit on a board that meets every two weeks just to go over the
capabilities. We also have a group under my office that is
dedicated to reviewing contracting activities. And we are with
them on a weekly basis.
So one of the big issues that we have, though, is defining
the requirements. Like, what exactly do we need? And do we have
the people trained to identify those needs?
For example, base camps. We identified a need early on that
there is a big need for base camps to house either the disaster
victims or the response workers. Now, we can do the contract,
but somebody familiar, you know, that needs to be familiar with
how base camp works, what the types of supplies you need to
have, and those types of things.
So it is not only the acquisition process of signing a
contract. It is the oversight; it is defining the requirements
and those types of things, too.
FEMA is making great progress in doing that, as well as the
department And, currently, we are in process, and we hope to
have something out by the end of March. We are actually going
to provide a scorecard and assessment of where we are right
now, because we think it is important to establish a baseline,
so when you ask the same question next year, ``Where are we
at,'' we have that baseline, we can assess the capabilities.
Mr. Cuellar. Will you get that status report to both
committees?
Mr. Jadacki. Right. We are shooting to get something out by
the end of March, so it will be included in our semi-annual
report, but we will make sure we get that report.
Mr. Cuellar. All right, thank you.
I have two questions, Mr. Paulison, but if you can just--
because I want to certainly keep this under time. But what are
your thoughts on FEMA's practice of decertifying levees?
And I know Mr. Dent asked about this and another member,
for the new digital flood maps and it is economic impact on
communities throughout the country, including I know one
country that I represent in my congressional district. They
brought this up more than once.
And, again, the second part of a question is, can you tell
me what programs FEMA has within its resources to assist
communities that have leveraged local funding for the
production of this maps, in addition to, I believe the $1.5
billion allocated by the federal government for this program?
And I believe--you know, the Texas-Mexico border, where I
am at, I think they have about $9 million alone. I just want to
see those--you know, I have a little question on the
certifiable infrastructure that is currently being developed
and not going to be included in these new maps, which will
require, in the opinion of a lot of my constituents, remapping
an additional federal and local funding in the coming years.
In other words, can we get it right the first time, instead
of having to go back again?
Mr. Paulison. The issue of decertifying levees is a
significant issue, because it does put a financial burden on
those people who are now required to have flood insurance.
However, the whole idea of the flood insurance program is
to protect people and to make sure that they can get some type
of reimbursement if their home is destroyed. So not having
flood insurance, when they are inside of a levee system that is
not certified, it is much cheaper to have the flood insurance
than to not have any afterwards.
What we saw during what happened in Louisiana and New
Orleans, where a lot of people did not have flood insurance,
and the insurance companies went through there and said, ``Hey,
the damage was not wind, it was flood,'' they ended up with
nothing.
So, yes, it is difficult. It does cost money. But at the
same time, it is the right thing to do to have that flood
insurance. And I know it puts a burden on people.
As far as programs, we do have programs that can?we have
pre-mitigation dollars that communities can apply for. We also
have it across the board, where every state gets the same
amount of money. And then we have the post-disaster mitigation
funds that they can apply for after there is a disaster to help
them with that.
And that, generally, if a state gets a declaration, that
generally applies to all the counties, and the states can apply
for those dollars.
Mr. Cuellar. Could you just give us?provide an outline to
the committee staff so we can?all the members get a copy of the
outline?
Mr. Paulison. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. Cuellar. And so that we could have a checklist, and we
can go back to our communities and say, ``This is what we have,
and this is what is available.''
Mr. Paulison. We can do that. And, also, again, I would
like to repeat, I would like to have the opportunity to come
back or to meet with your group here or in your office or
something and bring our flood mitigation people in to walk
through all the programs, because it does get complicated.
Mr. Cuellar. Right. Why don't we go ahead and work that
with--I know Charlie--Mr. Dent had asked that question, and we
will follow up on that.
Mr. Paulison. We would love to do that, yes, sir.
Mr. Cuellar. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
At this time, I will recognize Mr. Carney from
Pennsylvania.
Mr. Carney. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In testimony before this committee last year, the
International Association for Firefights discussed how FEMA
called up over 1,000 firefighters to serve as, ``community
relations officers,'' tasking them with the distribution of
informational flyers.
According to their testimony, ``Rather than deploy these
highly skilled and highly trained professionals to relieve
local first responders, our members sat in hotel rooms in
Atlanta.''
Mr. Paulison, what are we doing to ensure that we use first
responders in the best way possible?
Mr. Paulison. And we did that. We had plenty of first
responders responding as firefights. What we didn't have was
people who could go out with public relation people to talk to
people, to tell them what the issues were, where to go to get
help.
In the past, we have hired people to do that. And we ended
up with people we didn't really want going to people's homes.
And this was my idea, so I will take the heat for it. My idea
was to go out and solicit firefighters, who already have
background checks--we know what their characters are--and ask
them to come in, not to do firefighting work, but to come in
and help us with the public relations people, with the public
assistance people, to go out and go to where people are.
They are used to sleeping on the ground. They are used to
being under some very difficult conditions. And we actually got
4,000 volunteers that we put in there.
And, yes, they had to go through sexual harassment
training. They had to get trained on what to do and what not to
say, and to get some basic training on FEMA programs. I think
the program was a success.
Now, firefighters being firefighters--and I was one for 30
years--they wanted to do more than that, and they wanted to go
out there with their turnout gear, and they wanted to go out
there with their medical kits. But we had people to do that. I
needed people to do a certain job, and I couldn't think of a
better group to ask to come in and do that than firefighters.
Mr. Carney. Did they know they were going to do that before
they came down?
Mr. Paulison. Oh, absolutely. It was so clear. And we made
it clear to their chiefs; we made it clear to the firefighters
exactly what they were asked to come in to do.
We paid them. We reimbursed their department, paid them if
they were volunteer firefighters. We reimbursed their
departments if they were on a paid department, to make sure
there was no loss of income from the individual communities
that donated those firefighters.
But they were asked to come in to do a specific job, and I
asked them to do that because of the character of that group of
people. So I didn't have to go out and just hire people off the
street that I had no idea what their backgrounds were.
Mr. Carney. I don't dispute the character of these first
responders at all.
Mr. Paulison. And I will do it again, despite the heat that
I know I will get if I do.
Mr. Carney. Yes, I am a former first responder myself, back
in the day. What are we doing to make sure we have these folks
credentialed?
Mr. Paulison. As far as--
Mr. Carney. Do we have a national credentialing system in
place?
Mr. Paulison. It is a system we--it is not totally in
place. It is a system we are working on. We know it is an
issue.
When you asked for mutual aid, as particularly when you go
through the IMAC system and you are getting somebody from
another state, you need to know that the person you are getting
does have the qualifications to do the job and has some basic
certifications.
During Hurricane Andrew, I had 3,500 people show up at my
doorstep and said they were firefighters. I didn't have a clue
whether they were or not. We have put people on the street. I
did not know. On September 11, 2001, we had the same thing in
New York City.
We had people crawling on that rubble pile, we didn't know
who they were. We can't allow that to go on. So we are working
on, not only credentialing some type of system--and every state
has different credentials. What does it mean to be a police
officer? What does it mean to be a paramedic? What does it mean
to be a firefighter?
So we have to come to some consensus on what is going to be
acceptable in the middle of a disaster, of who can come into
help, so you know who they are, and they know they can do their
jobs.
Mr. Carney. Do you have a sense of time frame when that
might be completed? How far along are we in this process?
Mr. Paulison. I think we are pretty far along in the
process. It is getting everybody to buy into it. I can't give
you a time frame right now.
I can tell you that we are working on, also, on making sure
what you order is what you get. If you order a fire truck, you
know what you are going to get. If you order a water tanker,
you know what you are going to get. So those types of things
are in place.
Mr. Carney. Good. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Carney.
This time, gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Clarke?
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to
revisit with you, Mr. Foresman, the whole issue of the US-VISIT
within the National Protection Directorate, and get a sense of
whether, in fact--with the Customs and Border Protection
segment of homeland security and what that means.
And I am going to give us a scenario to you. It has to do
with people who want to have their visitation expedited. And
there are a whole host of reasons, but many that I hear about
are medical emergencies or weddings or funerals. And if, for
instance, in my district, your name happens to be Muhammad,
there is this lag time.
So I want to get a sense of, is that due to scrutiny that
comes from your end? Or is it due to scrutiny that happens in
some other part of the agency? But what is the lazing? And how
do we facilitate visitation, entrance and exit from the United
States of America?
Mr. Foresman. Congresswoman, thank you. Part of what I
would offer to you, that when an individual who is not a U.S.
citizen lives outside the borders of the United States chooses
to make a visit to the United States, they are?not only is the
Department of Homeland Security involved, but the Department of
State is involved.
The role of US-VISIT is to provide the backbone so that,
when that person presents themselves overseas to a U.S.
official and says, ``There is a wedding that has come up. There
has been a death in the family. I want to go see Washington,
D.C.,'' the US-VISIT responsibility in that process is to be
able, as they capture those prints from that individual, to get
it into the database, to retain it in the database, and make
sure that we have the opportunity, if you will, to run it
against the database to make sure that, frankly, it is not
someone using it as a pretext to get into the country.
You know, one of the great advantages that the secretary
talks about is, when terrorists are planning to commit an
attack overseas, and they are sitting in a safe house in
Afghanistan or Iraq, when our forces go in there, they are
dusting those computers. And those prints are going into that
VISIT database.
And we want every terrorist to think about that, if they
are going to try to come to the United States, are they going
to get caught because their print is on file? But, conversely,
I would offer to you that the process by which we adjudicate
the prints process, when a person presents themselves overseas,
is typically less than a day and, in some cases, it is much
quicker than that.
Ms. Clarke. And then the second part is, do you interact
with the portion of Homeland Security that is CPB?
Mr. Foresman. I apologize for not addressing that.
Absolutely. But we actually interact with a wide range of
stakeholders, in terms of Customs and Border Protection and
Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, Coast Guard, and, frankly, a whole host of
non-DHS entities, as well.
And what I was saying earlier is that US-VISIT has become
an identity management resource as much as it was designed to
be a border security measure.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Ms. Clarke.
This time, the chair will recognize for 5 minutes the
gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I met with--we had a big meeting of first responders, and
FEMA, and DHS Friday, this past Friday when I was back in my
district. And one of the--just as Mr. Carney was asking you
questions about credentialing, that came up in our meeting,
about there seems to be difficulty in developing some kind of
protocol, so that, you know, our first responders or, you know,
the right people can get through the perimeter, you know, of a
disaster area, a disaster zone.
So what, if you could sort of go through that with me
again, what is being done to sort of--to develop a protocol so
that we don't have, you know, confusion--there is always going
to be some level of confusion at a disaster, and I am not
asking for perfection.
But how are we dealing with credentialing so that, you
know, legitimate first responders can get to the site to help
people?
Mr. Paulison. There are a couple things. One is the issue
of self-dispatching, which causes 90 percent of the confusion.
When people start coming into a disaster area, and they
have not been invited in, they just feel like it is the right
thing to do, one, you don't know they are coming in, two, you
may not have the wherewithal to even take care of them.
But I mentioned Hurricane Andrew, I had 3,500 firefighters
show up. I couldn't even feed my own firefighters, much less
the 3,500. We have to house them. You have to find a place to
store their equipment, to dispatch them, to deploy them, you
know, there is a whole series of things.
How do you get them radios where they are all on the same
frequency? It takes a tremendous amount of resources away from
the local community, if they don't come in self-sustaining. So
that is an education issue that we have been working on with
the first responder community that, unless you are invited in,
you don't just show up because you feel like you want to do a
good thing.
The second is--
Mr. Perlmutter. Let me stop you for a second. But don't
you?I mean, and I understand, you need to have order. You know,
you have to bring some order to the chaos that exists when
something like this happens.
But on the other hand, you want all hands on deck. And so,
I mean, you have to balance, develop some general protocol so
that those people who want to come in and help you?you know,
let's say in Denver. We have the national convention,
Democratic National Convention coming. So, you know, hopefully
we are not going to be a target. We have to prepare as if we
are going to be.
But we want all hands on deck to be available from every
part of the Denver metropolitan area, in case there was
something bad happens. So, I mean, that is the kind of thing I
am talking about. I want you to be able to reach out to as many
people to get as much help as you can.
Mr. Paulison. But If you get too much help, they get in
each other's way. And I know this is a debate we could probably
have, but what your area is doing right now is making sure that
those processes are in place ahead of time.
They are doing a great job of--they will be working out of
a united command post. All of the departments around that area
that would normally respond in are a part of that process, are
being kept informed. And if there is something that happens,
they know that they are going to respond and where they are
going to report to.
And that works very well when you have a noticed event like
you are talking about, where we know there is an event
happening, and something could go wrong, so we are going to be
prepared for it.
It is the no-notice events we have difficulties with and
are not prepared like we should have been, like in Hurricane
Katrina. We didn't have those systems in place. A lot of the
communities are now putting those in place.
Right now, we don't have a credentialing system, per se. If
you show up in uniform with a fire truck or with a police car,
you are pretty much going to get in. What we want to do is make
sure, if you do come in like that, you have some kind of card
or some way to identify that you are who you say you are and
you do have the training and the credentials to do the job you
have come in to do. And that is the system just not in place
yet.
Mr. Foresman. Congressman, if I might, let me just maybe
put two points behind what Dave has talked about.
From a practical matter--and, you know, I just talk with
this, with 25 years perspective in the business. Dave and I
have been doing this our whole lives.
You know, some issues are not federal issues, and
credentialing is one of those issues where, are we giving the
tools to the states and the communities to do it? And,
absolutely, we are.
Here in the national capital region, one of the offices
that we will transition out of the Preparedness Directorate's
office to the Office of National Capital Region Coordination,
we have been working on a broad-based credentialing program
across the national capital region, so that a firefighter from
Montgomery County, Maryland, and a firefighter from Fairfax
County, Virginia, will have a common credential, a common set
of standards.
And so what I think I would offer as maybe the second part
to it is, there is a lot of work that is being done at the
state and local level. A lot of the $16 billion in grant funds
that DHS has given out since its inception have been targeted
towards developing credentialing programs.
And the Emergency Management Assistance Compact that
provides for interstate and mutual aid, you know, we started
this process 10 years ago, when I was in my other life. And I
would just offer to you that there is good progress being made.
It is not only about identification. It is about tracking.
I mean, we have a tremendous issue with first responders out of
New York City, about whether they were at the site of the World
Trade Center, when they were at the site, what they were
exposed to at the site, and when we talk about first responder
safety, credentialing, and the backbone to doing it.
High priority, this pilot project inside the national
capital region, is helping our efforts elsewhere, and this fits
into the broader national effort.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you very much.
Mr. Cuellar. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter.
At this time, I would recognize for 5 minutes the gentleman
from Louisiana, Mr. Jefferson.
Mr. Jefferson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With respect to the issues I explored with you earlier, I
really wasn't--I know what the law is on those things. My
question really was whether, with respect to the limitation on
individual assistance, with respect to--amount $26,200 in the
18 months, whether now, looking back over everything, and--of
the size and scope that we have had here, one of the--with some
internal review, help us to understand whether or not that is a
good number now. That is the one thing.
The second thing was, with respect to the flexibility of
the Stafford Act, it wasn't so much that I didn't understand
that the states--that the law now says you will do it with the
states, but whether you would not, under some circumstances, be
more expeditious to get aid to people, if we could not do every
little town that was affected, but the counties or parish
governments, when you deal with one entity there, as opposed to
all the numerous towns that might be in a parish in a country,
and therefore still have less folks to talk to and get answers
from, but to whether--because we saw some things take place
down there, in St. Bernard and other places, where people tried
to self-help early on, get involved, and solve some problems,
and then they ran up against the issues with reimbursement and
everything else.
So it wouldn't make sense to think about it being done in
the most affected areas, as opposed to--maybe way up in some
other place, where there are a lot of competing legislative
interests that take place, and everyone tried to grab onto some
part of the other sources.
And so I was really asking--I would really like you to
think about that and help us to work through it and maybe
submit something to the committee on that, so we could get some
ideas about it. And in each one of those instances that I
mentioned before, and particularly--and you answered the
contract issue, I think.
On the technical assistance on evacuation, I would like to
know what you are doing, as you take a re-look at everything,
to--I know evacuation--state and local responsibility, or the
planning of it. But you can help with technical assistance, to
make sure that they are doing the best job they can.
I would like to know what you are doing in that area now
that is new and different from what was done before.
And the last thing is, with respect to HUD, and the
coordination between HUD and your office, a lot of folks who
think that, particularly for the longer-term recovery, when it
comes to housing, most of the responsibility with HUD rather
than with FEMA. I would like to know how you feel about that,
if you feel it is just a coordination issue, or whether it
really ought--responsibility ought to fall somewhere else.
Mr. Paulison. Excellent questions. On the individual
assistance, Congress did raise the amount last year to--I think
it is $28,200 or $28,300. So Congress did raise that.
Whether that is the right amount or not, you know, I guess
it depends on the disaster. There are a lot of programs, things
like Mr. Jadacki pointed out, that perhaps overlap what FEMA
does, and we are trying to look at all of those programs and
provide dollars to people and help to get them back on their
feet again.
FEMA's job isn't to make people whole. It is to get them
through this disaster and back on their feet, to give them a
few dollars in their pocket. I mean, $28,000 is not going to go
a long way towards rebuilding your house, if you don't have
insurance or no other program.
So, you know, I am not a social expert, so I can't tell you
whether that is the right amount or not. That is why Congress
sets those dollars for us.
On HUD, FEMA should not be in long-term housing business.
That is not where our expertise is. That is not one of our core
competencies. That is a HUD issue, as far as I am concerned.
And we have been working with them.
How do we put a program in place or use their existing
programs to take on that long-term housing piece, what we
consider long-term? You know, anything more than a few months
should not belong to FEMA. That is not what we do. We are to
respond to an emergency, help the state, help the local
communities get through that thing, get some people some
temporary housing.
And then, if there are longer-term needs, it needs to be
somebody else. But that is not a FEMA core competency.
On the evacuations, a major issue. I think that, like I
said earlier, Katrina was a wakeup call for everyone. Hurricane
Rita going into Houston, when they did the major evacuations,
Houston did the right thing. They got people out. It was ugly,
but it worked.
They learned a lot of questions from that, how to do
contraflow better, how to move more quickly and where to put
people.
We are now in the process of looking at each of the states'
evacuation plans and how they are going to work. New York City
just did a tremendous, comprehensive disaster plan for the city
of New York, probably 300 and some-odd pages.
We are working with them to take that plan and make a
template that we can use with other communities, not
necessarily to follow New York's plan, but I guess more than a
checklist, more of a template, that they can follow down to
make sure they have all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted
for their disaster plan.
But we do review evacuation plans. We do review disaster
plans. And we do provide technical assistance for state and
local communities to help develop those plans. We do work with
them to make sure that they are the plans that they need for
that particular community.
Mr. Cuellar. All right. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson.
And, again, I want to thank all the witnesses for being
here and, of course, all the staff that helped you get ready
for this?a little bit of background work on this.
So I want to thank all the witnesses for their time. And I
hope you all appreciate the little format that we are using. It
is not adversary nature; it is just trying to see how we can
improve the process.
We look forward working with you. And one of the things I
do want to ask you all is, if there is something that we can
work with--I know Mr. Foresman were talking about sometimes
there might be different committees, you know, with similar
jurisdictions. But if there are issues like that that we need
to clarify on behalf of our congressional role, please let us
know.
And, you know, just be straightforward with us, and see how
we can work together, because I certainly feel that we are--it
is not you versus us or anything like that. You know, we are
all part of the same team. So I certainly want to thank you.
So I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable
testimony and the members for their questions. The members of
the subcommittees may have additional questions for the
witnesses, and we ask that you respond to them as soon as
possible, in writing, to any of those questions that they
provide.
Hearing no further business, the hearing is adjourned at
this time. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
Appendix I: Letter
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Appendix II: Questions and Responses
----------
Questions from the Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman, Committee on
Homeland Security
Responses from the Honorable George W. Foreman, Under Secretary for
Preparedness, Department of Homeland Security
Question 1.: Can you assure this Committee that all of the support
positions relating to preparedness programs that are moving from the
Preparedness Directorate to FEMA, including all of the grants, training
and exercise programs, are also being transferred to FEMA?
Response: In planning this reorganization, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) has undertaken efforts to capture and
integrate the preparedness concept into programs, mission, and
enterprise culture. Shortly following enactment, FEMA leadership
reached out to the Preparedness Directorate to identify and incorporate
the synergies that Congress envisioned for the new FEMA. A ``FEMA-
Preparedness-DHS Senior Leadership Team'' was assembled to guide the
overall transition effort. This team established several FEMA/
Preparedness functional teams that have been working for several months
to address major transition management issues in the areas of
personnel, finance, grants, procurement, facilities and security,
communications, and information technology.
Recognizing the need to focus on mission-essential program
integration, FEMA also assembled an integrated team of senior managers
from Preparedness Directorate programs and offices that were
transferring to FEMA. The purpose of this mission-oriented team was to
help educate, inform, collaborate with, and advise FEMA leadership on
the most programmatically sound organizational structure. As a result
of these deliberations, the Department split the functions of the
Office of Grants and Training (G&T) among an FEMA's Grants Programs
directorate and National Preparedness directorate, which will integrate
the preparedness, doctrine, training and exercise functions that
previously resided in FEMA and the Preparedness Directorate.
Accordingly, the administrative actions needed to integrate the G&T
staff, resources, assets, programs, and mission into FEMA met the
mandated transition date of March 31, 2007. The full integration of
G&T's programs, policy, and doctrine will be an ongoing effort to
continue to evolve over the next several months.
Question 2.: What will the Risk Assessment office's role be in
determining the allocation of homeland security grants? Will the office
of Grants and Training be stripped of its role in creating grant policy
and guidance?
Response: The Office of Risk Management and Analysis will ensure
that all individual risk programs, which include the risk analysis-
driven DHS grant programs, are synchronized, integrated, and use a
common approach. The Department's common risk framework will be based
on developing and embedding a standardized and consistent national
approach to risk that is coordinated and collaborative, and will share
risk expertise across the Department's components and external
stakeholders.
Under the Departmen's original organizational structure, the Office
of Grants and Training (G&T) did not include an independent risk
analysis component. Consequently, G&T has always relied heavily upon
the essential coordination and integration of other departmental
components in developing a comprehensive grant allocation methodology
based on risk. FEMA's Office of Grants will retain responsibility
formerly in G&T for administering the Department's Homeland Security
grant programs and ensuring that all relevant data sets are represented
as the Department establishes a common risk methodology. It will
continue to draw from the expertise of relevant components in
determining the priorities and risk formula for deciding grant
allocations as part of a comprehensively informed grant process.
For example, in the fiscal year 2007 Infrastructure Protection
Programs grant cycle, G&T relied upon the expertise of the DHS Office
of Intelligence and Analysis to provide current threat data, the Office
of Infrastructure Protection to provide risk and vulnerability data (in
the form of our critical asset lists), and the United States Coast
Guard for data relating to ports and waterways. It is by relying on
component strengths and expertise through this highly collaborative
internal process that the Department is able to make informed
allocation decisions to better secure the homeland.
Questions from the Honorable Henry Cuellar, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response
Responses from the Honorable George W. Foreman, Under Secretary for
Preparedness, Department of Homeland Security
Question: What are the principal internal DHS coordination
challenges that the National Protection and Programs Directorate faces?
For example, how will you coordinate emergency communications, risk
analysis, and infrastructure protection responsibilities with the grant
programs that will be located within FEMA?
Response: The principal coordination challenges that the National
Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) face are related to
emergency communications, risk analysis, and infrastructure protection.
Emergency Communications: The Office of Emergency Communications
(OEC), located within NPPD, is responsible for interoperable emergency
communications that support the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
grant programs and will continue to coordinate with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) newly formed Office of Grants and
Office of Training and Exercises. Specifically, OEC will help these
offices develop grant guidance related to interoperable communications.
Additionally, OEC will directly support the efforts of these offices,
as well as our State and local partners in the development and
implementation of their Statewide Communications Interoperable Plans
through the Interoperable Communications Technical Assistance Program.
Risk Analysis: The Office of Risk Management and Analysis (RMA),
established by the Secretary as a result of the Post-Katrina Emergency
Management Reform Act passed as part of the Fiscal Year 2007 DHS
appropriations Act, will lead the Department's efforts to establish a
common framework to address the overall management and analysis of
homeland security risk. Within this capacity, RMA will ensure that
Department component risk programs are synchronized and integrated, and
use a common approach/lexicon.
Currently, there are multiple components within DHS working to
reduce our comprehensive risk. RMA will leverage and integrate risk
expertise across the Department's components and external stakeholders
to establish a common framework to address the overall analysis and
management of homeland security risk. The Department components with
risk programs will retain operational control of their specific
programs.
G&T will continue to develop grant policy and guidance under FEMA's
new structure. It will continue to take a collaborative approach in
doing so, soliciting multiple inputs from numerous parts of DHS,
including the Office of Policy, Preparedness Directorate, Domestic
Nuclear Detection Office, and Customs and Border Protection, as well as
other departments and agencies such as Heath and Human Services.
Infrastructure Protection: The DHS Office of Infrastructure
Protection (OIP) has provided Critical Infrastructure/Key Resources
(CI/KR) risk input to support the grant determination process since
2003. Previously, this input was provided directly to the Office of
Grants and Training, but, moving forward, it will be provided to the
Office of Grant Programs within FEMA. The Homeland Infrastructure
Threat and Risk Analysis Center (HITRAC), the joint center established
by OIP and Office of Intelligence and Analysis, has the primary
responsibility within DHS to provide CI/KR risk information to support
the grant determination process.
HITRAC supports the grant process in two primary ways. First, it
develops the methodology used to calculate the threat component of risk
and through the compilation of required threat data. Second, HITRAC
provides the list of Tier 1 and Tier 2 assets used by the Office of
Grant Programs to support eligibility determinations for Urban Areas
Security Initiative, State Homeland Security, and Buffer Zone
Protection grant programs. Providing the Tier 1 and Tier 2 assets to
this process ensures that those assets and systems capable of creating
nationally significant consequences are one focus of DHS's ongoing
protective efforts.
Question 4.: What will the role of the intergovernmental unit in
the new Protection and Programs Directorate be and how will it interact
with efforts of other intergovernmental offices in the Department?
Response: The Department of Homeland Security has one of the most
diverse constituencies of any Federal agency. States, municipalities,
and relevant associations interact daily with our components on a range
of issues including border security, critical infrastructure
protection, information and intelligence sharing, emergency management,
immigration, and transportation security. The Office of
Intergovernmental Programs (OGP) within the National Programs and
Protection Directorate will serve as the Department-level focal point
for coordinating related communications and policies with Department
leadership, and ensuring consistent and coordinated component-level
interactions. This office will provide constituents a clear pathway for
communication with Department leadership and vice-versa.
The OGP was established under Section 872 authority by the January
18, 2007 notice to Congress. The January 18 notice stated that OIP
would be supported by shifting resources from the Office of Legislative
and Intergovernmental Affairs (LIA) to the NPPD M&A appropriation to
support the stand up of the OIP.
In addition, DHS has requested a legislative change to allow the
personnel and assets of the former Office of State and Local Government
Coordination (SLGC), which were transferred to FEMA as required by the
Post Katrina Emergency Reform Act, to support OIP. The reason we have
asked for this adjustment is that the functions of the SLGC are not
FEMA functions, but rather department-level communication functions.
The OIP office will coordinate with other components
intergovernmental affairs offices, such as the External Affairs Office
in FEMA, to leverage assets to enhance coordination across the
Department.
FEMA's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs will support the DHS
Office of Intergovernmental Programs on FEMA related inquiries
addressed to DHS leadership. FEMA's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
will serve as the primary point of contact for State, local and Tribal
officials on all other FEMA related issues.
Question 5.: Can you please tell the Committee exactly when the
Department plans to deploy the automated grant tracking system that
would allow for tracking of the distribution and use of homeland
security-related funds?
Answer: DHS has been working diligently on the requirements for a
DHS-wide electronic grant management system. Because of the recent
transfer of the Office of Grant and Training preparedness programs into
FEMA, this effort has been intensified. FEMA has a robust life-cycle
grant management system that was developed for the Assistance for
Firefighter Grant Program. This e-Grants system will be enhanced to add
the application/award processing and report functions for all of the
DHS non-disaster assistance programs. It is anticipated that the DHS-
wide e-Grants system will be operational beginning FY 2008, with the
phasing of programs into the system accomplished over a three-year
period.
Question 6.: Do you believe the Department of Homeland Security has
done a sufficient job training its personnel on the NRP and NIMS?
Response: The Department has made important progress on training
its personnel on the NRP and NIMS, but Department leadership will not
be satisfied until all employees are trained on the basics of emergency
preparedness and response.
The Department requires training on both the NRP and NIMS for all
employees, and provides a number of online independent study courses.
The courses are available online for both the NRP and NIMS, and
certificates of completion are issued to employees to verify that they
have received training. As of March 25, 2007, over 16,000 full and part
time FEMA employees had completed the NIMS introduction course; and
over 13,000 full and part time FEMA employees had completed the NRP
introduction course.
With regard to the training of the PFO/JFO staffs, as part of
FEMA's implementation of NIMS, all FEMA full-time employees and
reservists are required to complete four independent study (IS)
courses:IS-100, Introduction to Incident Command System; IS-200, Basic
Incident Command System for Federal Disaster Workers; IS-700, National
Incident Management System: An Introduction; and IS-800, National
Response Plan: An Introduction. All new hires post-Katrina are required
to complete this mandatory training. Federal officials who were named
by Secretary Chertoff in support of State and local governments in
preparing for, and responding to, major natural disasters this past
storm season, participated in a training exercise in early May of 2006
where roles and responsibilities were reviewed.
Questions from the Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman, Committee on
Homeland Security
Responses from the Honorable R. David Paulison, Under Secretary for
Federal Emergency Management, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Question: Does FEMA plan to initiate a long-term nationwide, Federal
ambulance support contract to evacuate patients and provide EMS to
disaster areas when state and local resources become depleted? When
will that contract be in place?
Will a long term, Federal ambulance support contract that is in
place prior to the next large national disaster enable the government
to negotiate lower pricing than if FEMA tries to negotiate such a
contract in the midst of the disaster?
Response: FEMA is working diligently with the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) to award national ambulance contracts on a
regional basis for high risk areas of the country. The first contract
in place will be for the six potentially hurricane impacted states in
the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. A competitive solicitation will
be issued and advertised using FedBizOpps.gov. This initial contract
should be in place by June 1, 2007. The second regional contract will
be awarded shortly after for the Atlantic Coast states from South
Carolina to Maine. The third area will involve the West Coast and the
fourth will be for those states within and around the New Madrid
Seismic Zone. Regionalizing the contract should allow for increased
competition, reduce costs, lessen the impact on the nation's local
emergency ambulance service, and enhance the Agency's ability to
quickly mobilize resources to the scene of an event by markedly
reducing travel times.
Reducing costs and enhancing the Agency's ability to mobilize
resources quickly in the aftermath of a disaster are the key
motivations for establishing pre-negotiated regional ambulance
contracts for our Nation's high risk areas. Having these contracts in
place prior to an event will eliminate the need for trying to
accomplish the contracting task during an event, which always drives up
the cost. Further, advanced contracts allow FEMA to develop more robust
response plans based upon a resource pool that we know will be
available at the outset.
Question 2: As your agency fills vacancies, what training is to be
provided for these recent hires and when?
What are the most critical skills that FEMA needs and why?
Response: FEMA's new hires receive training in several areas
shortly after coming on board with the Agency. Briefings on Security
and Ethics are provided the day new employees report for duty. Upon
reporting to their hiring organization, and prior to receiving access
to an email account, new employees must complete the Rules of Behavior
Computer Security Awareness Training.
A full day of FEMA-specific training is provided within 30 days of
entrance on duty. Topics include: FEMA's mission, history, values;
mitigation; continuity of operations planning; response and recovery
operations; National Incident Management System integration; public
affairs; ethics; equal rights; information systems security;
alternative dispute resolution; and workplace safety and security,
including a discussion on violence in the workplace.
Employees are also shown how to access the FEMA Emergency
Management Institute's (EMI) web page (http://training.fema.gov/) to
locate training opportunities and are advised of the great value of
training with our State and local partners. They are further advised to
take advantage of experiential learning opportunities by working in
teams with experienced FEMA employees, to seek various professional
training opportunities provided by the Agency, and to participate in
deployments for disaster operations where they will gain frontline
experience and knowledge about FEMA and its core mission. Employees are
also given a copy of an Individual Development Plan (IDP) form and
advised to meet with their supervisors to develop their IDP.
During the FEMA Mission, History and Values segment, employees are
specifically advised of the requirement to complete the following EMI
Independent Study courses:
IS-100 Introduction to Incident Command System, I-100
IS-200 ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents
IS-700 National Incident Management System (NIMS), An
Introduction
IS-800.A National Response Plan (NRP), An Introduction
Mission Critical Occupations, those required to support and ensure
the success of FEMA's Strategic Plan and commitment to our Country,
include:
GS-0301 -- Fire Program Specialist
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0301 -- Program Specialist (National Security)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0301 -- Program Specialist (Response)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0301 -- Program Specialist (Recovery)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0301 -- Program Specialist (Mitigation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0301 -- Program Specialist (Preparedness)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0801 -- Engineers
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0808 -- Engineers
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0810 -- Engineers
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-1163 -- Insurance Examiner
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-1712 -- Training Specialist
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0201 -- Human Resources Management Specialist
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-2210 -- IT Specialists
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0391 -- Telecommunications Specialist
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-0505 -- Budget/Financial Management
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GS-1102 -- Contract Specialist
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Generally speaking, mission critical occupations (MCO) are the job
series, as defined by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM),
critical to the success of any department or agency achieving its
mission. As part of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) ``One
DHS'' Workforce Plan, components were required to identify MCOs by
conducting supply, demand, and gap analysis and developing strategies
to overcome workforce issues in these key occupational series. A team
of senior Human Resources Division managers and subject matter experts
worked diligently to determine FEMA MCOs.
In addition to identifying MCOs, DHS adopted OPM's definition of
mission critical competencies, which is: a competency most central to
an organization's core business, reflected in an organization's
mission, vision, and strategy, and which can arise as a result of new
challenges and business trends affecting the agency. Cross-cutting and
high profile MCOs were identified across the Department, where DHS can
track gaps in competencies significant throughout the Department and
leverage resources to address workforce gaps. MCOs and their related
competencies will serve as a resource for FEMA, and the Department to
use in planning, managing, and developing skills to ensure that the
Agency can meet core mission goals and objectives.
FEMA and Department leaders now have a clear picture of MCOs and
the necessary competencies they represent, providing the Agency with a
clear vision that guides the planning, investment, and management of
human capital, tools to achieve performance improvements, and a guide
to identifying Agency competencies and the training needed to
successfully achieve the Agency's mission.
Question 3.: Exactly what assistance is HUD providing you in your
continuing efforts to provide housing for the victims of Hurricane
Katrina?
Response: FEMA and HUD began collaborating immediately following
Hurricane Katrina and continue coordinating the provision of temporary
housing for disaster victims both nationwide and in the impacted areas
in direct support of ongoing disaster recovery operations. Examples of
this collaboration include:
FEMA and HUD are working closely with the Housing
Authority of New Orleans on outreach efforts to ensure that all pre-
Katrina HUD households are appropriately referred back to HUD for
continued housing assistance.
HUD's Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program (HUD
KDHAP), under which FEMA reimbursed HUD for the cost of providing
disaster housing vouchers to pre-disaster HUD housed families that were
displaced from HUD housing due to Hurricane Katrina. This arrangement
continued until HUD received its own supplemental funding and
transitioned this population to the HUD Disaster Voucher Program (DVP).
FEMA and HUD modified an existing interagency agreement
shortly after the disaster that enabled HUD to provide eligible
Hurricane Katrina disaster victims with HUD single family housing
resources.
FEMA and HUD continue to exchange applicant data in order
to identify applicants receiving excess or duplicate housing benefits
from our respective agencies.
HUD is a key partner in FEMA's Joint Housing Solutions
Group to identify, evaluate and test alternative housing solutions for
large numbers of disaster victims.
HUD is a key partner in FEMA's interagency Disaster
Housing Task Force. This task force also includes Veterans Affairs, the
United States Department of Agriculture, the Internal Revenue Service
and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Access Board, and
internal DHS support entities.
Questions from the Honorable Henry Cuellar, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Emergency Communications, Preparedness and Response
Responses from the Honorable R. David Paulison, Under Secretary for
FEderal Emergency Management, Federal Emegency Mangement Agency
Question 4.: Has the Department taken any steps to create a
national credentialing system for first responders?
Response: The National Credentialing System will enhance the
ability of Federal, State, Tribal, and local jurisdictions to locate
and obtain appropriate emergency responders from other jurisdictions
when needed for Inter-State Mutual Aid. The NIMS Integration Center
(NIC) is working with existing State, Territory, or discipline-specific
credentialing bodies toward national recognition for multi-
jurisdictional response under mutual aid agreements. Working groups
will identify the positions that should be credentialed and establish
the minimum qualification, certification, training, and education
requirements for each position. The NIC is developing guidance and best
practices to ensure uniformity of process for credentialing. The NIC
does not issue credentials or determine the job skills needed to be
eligible for credentials, which is the role of local jurisdictions.
The EMS, Search and Rescue, Fire/Hazmat, Incident Management and
Public Works working groups have produced 99 positions for
credentialing. These positions are available for review and comment on
the National Incident Management System website at http://www.fema.gov/
emergency/nims/whats--new.shtm.
Additional credentialing efforts are being supported by the
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Public Health,
National Emergency Number Association, and the Association of Public
Safety Communications Officials. Also, the DHS Science and Technology
Directorate and the National Institute for Standards and Technology
(NIST) are working to establish a working group to extend the FIPS-201
SmartCard standard to address more than identity vetting by specifying
the storage allocation of data features, data structures and essential
information such as affiliations, qualifications etc. to ensure the
various FIPS-201 implementations will be interoperable nationally.
Question: Has FEMA created a language access plan which outlines
how FEMA will provide meaningful access by Limited English Proficient
(LEP) persons to services provided by FEMA?
Response: Sec. 689e of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform
Act of 2006 (PKEMRA) amends the Stafford Act to require that FEMA work
with state and local governments to identify population groups with
limited English proficiency and to take them into account in planning
for emergencies or major disasters. Furthermore, Sec. 689e of the Post-
Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act requires FEMA to ensure that
information made available to individuals affected by emergencies and
disasters also is made available in formats that can be understood by
persons with limited English proficiency and individuals with
disabilities and special needs.
To implement this and other requirements of the Post-Katrina Reform
Act, FEMA has established a Legislation Implementation Action Team to
develop implementation plans and recommended policy changes. The
strategies under consideration to provide meaningful access to persons
with limited English proficiency as well as those with disabilities and
other special needs include the following:
Integrating the PKEMRA Sec 689e requirements into and
throughout FEMA programs and operations. This effort entails
identifying omissions in operations plans and SOPs and updating
procedures to address the new Stafford Act requirements that
the communications needs of these populations be taken into
account in emergency and disaster operations.
Translating disaster assistance information into frequently
encountered languages in the U.S. and providing the same
materials in formats accessible to persons with disabilities or
special needs. Posting the materials on the FEMA Intranet and
Internet sites and providing on CD and DVD for use in emergency
and disaster operations.
Providing information in appropriate formats in
cooperation with state and local governments through Community
Relations teams and FEMA-trained inspectors and contractors;
and Congressional district offices, Disaster Recovery Centers,
congregate shelters, feeding and first-aid stations, voluntary
agencies, government agencies and more.
Mandatory training for all personnel who encounter or
communicate with or work directly with disaster victims,
including headquarters, regional and JFO personnel; inspectors
and contractors, DRC personnel, and personnel at shelters and
feeding stations.
Using hardware/software solutions to augment
translating capabilities and providing alternative
communications such as touch screens, electronic pointing
devices, alternative keyboards, video relay, reading tools,
screen enlargers, text-to-speech synthesizers, voice browsers
and virtual computers that project computer screens onto walls
and large screens.
Question 6.: Why did the Administration decide to keep the Ready
program within in the Office of Public Affairs while Citizen Corps is
moving into FEMA? How will all of the citizen preparedness programs in
the Federal government be coordinated?
Response: The Ready Campaign, which was launched in February 2003,
is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's national effort designed
to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to
emergencies including natural disasters and potential terrorist
attacks. The goal of the Ready Campaign is to encourage our citizens
who can prepare to do so, freeing up valuable response resources and
helping make our Nation more secure, strong and resilient. Because
public communications and outreach are at the core of the Ready
Campaign, it makes sense to house it within the Office of Public
Affairs.
Ready asks individuals to do three key things to prepare: get an
emergency supply kit, make a family emergency plan, and be informed
about the different types of emergencies that could occur and their
appropriate responses. The campaign also includes several extensions
for specific audiences. Ready Business helps owners and managers of
small- to medium-sized businesses prepare their employees, operations
and assets in the event of an emergency. Ready Kids is a tool to help
parents and teachers educate children ages 8--12 about emergencies and
how they can help get their family prepared. Listo, Listo Negocios and
Listo Ninos are Spanish language versions of these efforts.
Inherently a communications effort, the Ready Campaign's messages
have been distributed through: television, radio, print, outdoor and
Internet public service advertisements (PSAs) developed and produced by
the Advertising Council; brochures; www.ready.gov and www.listo.gov Web
sites; toll-free phone lines 1-800-BE-READY and 1-888-SE-LISTO; and
partnerships with a wide variety of public and private sector
organizations.
Thus far, Ready has been a success. Since its launch the campaign
has generated more than $618 million in donated media support; its Web
site has received more than 2 billion hits and 25.7 million unique
visitors; and more than 12 million Ready materials have been
distributed. In addition, a national survey conducted by The Ad Council
in June 2006 found that from 2005 to 2006, the proportion of Americans
who said they have taken any steps to prepare rose 10 points, from 45
percent to 55 percent.
With regards to Citizen Corps, the Citizen Corps program addresses
each aspect of the emergency management cycle through all-hazards and
as such, the program fits well within the FEMA mission. Citizen Corps
is a National hands-on, grassroots effort that improves individual and
community preparedness and resilience through information, training,
and active engagement through our program partners and affiliates.
Citizen Corps and Ready work in tandem to promote community
preparedness. In addition, Citizen Corps maintains a close, well-
established relationship with the FEMA Office of Public Affairs. This
relationship will ensure that all Citizen Corps activities and outreach
will be coordinated with the activities through the DHS Office of
Public Affairs.
Question 7.: In a disaster situation, what decisions can you make
as FEMA Administrator on you own and what decisions have to be approved
by either the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security?
Response: As FEMA Administrator, I will be able to exercise all
authorities given to me by statute and through delegations of
authority. Currently, under Delegation Number 9001, the Secretary of
Homeland Security has specifically delegated to me the authority to
provide oversight and responsibility for disaster-related activities,
including:
Helping to ensure the effectiveness of emergency
response providers to terrorist attacks, major disasters, and
other emergencies
Providing the Federal Government's response to
terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies
Coordinating other Federal response resources in the
event of a terrorist attack or major disaster
Assigning disaster response-related duties or tasks to
DHS organizations elements or offices, or to other Federal
agencies, and arranging for appropriate reimbursement from the
Disaster Relief Fund of other available funds to DHS
organizational elements or offices, or to other Federal
agencies performing disaster-related assignments
Aiding the recovery from terrorist attacks, major
disasters and other emergencies
The existing delegations of authority from the Secretary are being
revised to reflect the new scope of authorities provided to the
Administrator of FEMA by statute.
Question 8.: Could you give us your thoughts on the respective
roles the Principal Federal Official and the Federal Coordinating
Official should play in the preparation for and response to an
incident, and how we can clarify the two?
Response: As a part of the National Response Plan review process,
the Department continues to work on defining and clarifying the role of
the Principal Federal Official (PFO) and the Federal Coordinating
Officer (FCO). A goal of the process is to incorporate language
regarding the national response structures at the field-level within
the NRP during a domestic incident response and to include discussions
on the role of the PFO and FCO. The revised NRP will be released in the
Summer of 2007.
Questions from the Honorable Christoper Carney, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Mangement, Investigations, and Oversight
Responses from the Honorable R. David Paulison, Under Secretary for
Federal Emergency Management, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Question 9.: Has FEMA clearly defined the roles, responsibilities,
and expected outcomes for each of its organizational components under
its new organizational structure? If not, what is the status of those
efforts?
Response: As part of the FEMA re-tooling and reform efforts, FEMA
is currently in the process of a full transformation process. This
process has included several senior leadership sessions and working
group function and mission sessions to re-align FEMA organizational
components, address system concerns, and upgrade FEMA's ability to
quickly respond and recover from future events. Also, FEMA and the
former Preparedness (PREP) directorate's leadership teams have met
regularly since January 2007 to ensure a smooth transition of all
preparedness functions and missions. One of the senior leadership teams
is specifically reviewing the missions and functions and roles and
responsibilities of the PREP programs to ensure optimal integration
into FEMA. The approach has been used to identify the best practices of
both FEMA and PREP, with the ultimate goal of strengthening national
preparedness through our State and local partners.
The focus of the transition through March 31 is on the tactical and
operational activities necessary to complete administrative transfers
so that there is a seamless transition for our transferring employees,
as well as our State and local partners. The new FEMA organizational
structure has been in place since March 31, 2007. For the remainder of
FY 2007, FEMA will be focusing on complete integration of PREP
functions and mission into FEMA, moving the balance of FEMA into the
new organizational structure, and determining the best structure for
the Regions. That will allow identification of specific missions and
functions for all components of the New FEMA, and position the Agency
to begin full implementation of the transition in FY 2008.
Question 10.: If another Hurricane Katrina were to strike today,
what is FEMA certain it could do well (and why), and what key gaps
remain (and why)? For example, some key problem areas in Katrina were
mass care and shelter, evacuation of special needs populations,
operable and interoperable communications, logistics, and reconciling
the need for quick assistance while protecting against fraudulent
claims.
Response: FEMA has been building increased management and resource
capacity to address all the major recommendations coming out of the
post-Katrina analysis and reports. We are confident the Agency can
perform at much higher levels in the response and recovery areas you
identify as well as in additional areas. DHS and FEMA have also worked
closely with their Federal, State and local partners to build increased
response and recovery capacity at all levels in anticipation of
possible future catastrophic incidents. While FEMA and its partners
have taken great strides to be better prepared to address any and all
disaster response and recovery needs, it must be recognized that our
ability to be effective is tied to a certain extent to how much the
capabilities of our State and local partners have been affected by the
incident. It must also be understood that if another incident of the
magnitude of Katrina took place, while our response and recovery
efforts would be much more effective, we would not be able to address
all disaster victim needs immediately. The sheer magnitude of such an
event would still be challenging to the collective immediate response
ability of FEMA and our Federal, State and local partners.
As we approach the 2007 hurricane season, FEMA is more ready than
at any time in its history to work with State and local partners.
Further, FEMA has assisted many more disaster victims in a shorter
period of time, with greater accuracy and improved protection against
waste, fraud and abuse, and adopted new policies and procedures
developed post-Katrina to support State and local efforts as they
transition to longer-term recovery solutions.
Question 11.: Does FEMA have the authority it needs to fully
perform its roles and responsibilities? If not, what areas need to be
addressed?
Response: FEMA maximizes the authorities that are available and
looks forward to continuing to work with Congress as it develops
proposed legislation relating to all of FEMA's authorities.
Question 12.: What are the principal internal coordination
challenges that FEMA faces with DHS under its new organization? How
does FEMA plan to address those challenges?
Response: The Preparedness Directorate Components that are now part
of FEMA provide an opportunity to implement and integrate the best
practices of both organizations to build a better, more efficient, more
capable and more coordinated preparedness and emergency response
agency. The Preparedness Components have been completely integrated
into FEMA and will partner with other FEMA directorates to leverage
assets and resources. Some of the other major benefits of this new
organization include:
Integrating the innovative national preparedness
system and the agile, adaptive emergency response system
represents a cultural shift for FEMA and the Department that
will strengthen the Nation's resilience, improve service to our
stakeholders, and empower our employees;
Presenting a comprehensive, strengthened and
coordinated preparedness and emergency response regional
structure that presents the full range of FEMA missions will
support a more effective partnership with our State, local, and
other stakeholders to ensure a more prepared national response
capability;
Strengthening expanded training and exercise programs
that incorporate elements of the full range of emergency
management disciplines including preparedness, protection,
response, recovery and mitigation for increased capabilities at
the Federal, State and local levels; and
Increasing collaboration with the Department and its
many components is accelerating integration of our capabilities
with those of our Departmental partners under the new DHS
organization. FEMA benefits greatly from the support and
cooperation received from DHS Components we have traditionally
worked with, such as Operations and Infrastructure Protection,
and relatively new partners such as the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office (DNDO), Health Affairs and the Secret Service.
The net result of the implementation of the new FEMA organization
is the development of a more robust emergency management system and an
expanded and more closely coordinated ``culture of preparedness'' to
engage all Americans in helping the Nation address the continuing
challenges we face.
Question 13: GAO has reported that FEMA has not had good
information on the resources needed for its day-to-day operations
compared to the additional resources it needs to assist state and local
governments respond to major disasters. What is FEMA doing to determine
its ``baseline'' operational resource needs? What assumptions and
analyses are being used to identify those needs?
Response: With the transition of the Preparedness Directorate to
FEMA and as part of the Department's FY 2009--2013 Programming and
Budget activities, FEMA is revalidating and adjusting our baseline
dollars to ensure that money is available to accomplish Agency
priorities and to determine any new or additional requirements. To
identify these needs the agency is using accepted management
engineering practices and tools for data collection and resource
validation.
Questions from the Honorable Henry Cuellar, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response
Responses from the Honorable Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General,
Departement of Homeland Security
Question 1.: What would you consider to be the largest acquisition
related problems that FEMA and other federal agencies encounter when it
comes to disaster contracts?
Response: There are three areas, which FEMA or any other federal
agency needs to address regarding disaster contracts:
(1) Tracking and Reporting Contract Information: In responding to
Hurricane Katrina, federal agencies awarded numerous contracts to
respond in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. However, adequate
contract information was not readily available. A common database and
electronic copies of documents are needed for all agencies to
facilitate the dissemination of contract data as well as the oversight
of contractors.
(2) Better Strategic Planning to Address Disaster Acquisitions: The
federal government should develop better contracting strategies that
maximize the use of advance contracts to the extent practical and cost-
effective. Pre-existing contracts that are negotiated before disasters
strike and coordinated with state and local governments could help
mitigate the numerous problems we cited last year.
(3) Lack of Good Contract Monitoring to Help Minimize Fraud, Waste,
and Abuse: Agencies must be able to provide sufficient numbers of
trained field-level contracting staff and to meet mission requirements.
should also establish an assessment process to monitor planning efforts
for disaster-related procurement needs and to monitor and maintain
surge capacity for disaster contracting.,
Question 2.: Is FEMA making any strides in addressing the lack of
clearly communicated acquisition responsibilities among FEMA, other
federal agencies, and state and local governments and the insufficient
numbers of acquisition personnel to manage and oversee contracts?
Response: FEMA has committed to a number of initiatives including:
Self-assessments and retooling their procurement
organization
Over 200 new readiness contracts
Better contract tracking and reporting procedures
A concerted effort to fully staff desperately needed
procurement positions
They have made progress so far and these measures should help
significantly, but the actions taken so far are clearly not enough to
ensure that FEMA is prepared for the next catastrophic event. The
acquisition management reforms that need to occur throughout DHS,
including FEMA, will take several years.
Additionally, FEMA has developed a National Contingency Plan, which
will help the Agency prepare for the 2007 Hurricane season. As part of
this plan, an acquisition tracker has been developed which identifies
procurements to support the 2007 Hurricane Year.
This tracker is a tool, which is prioritized by three tiers:
Type of goods or services
Projected dollar value, and
Acquisition strategy.
The tracker helps to support the contingency plan to compete
contracts for requirements, which may be needed in the future. By
aiding FEMA in competing contracts prior to the advent, this
acquisition tracker should reduce the need to procure items required to
support the disaster relief and recovery assistance in an urgent and
compelling environment. In addition, the contingency plan will ensure
contractor support is in place to help FEMA quickly mobilize resources
in immediate response to disasters.