Homeland Security: Effective Regional Coordination Can Enhance	 
Emergency Preparedness (15-SEP-04, GAO-04-1009).		 
                                                                 
As requested, GAO reviewed coordination practices in various	 
metropolitan areas to find regional programs with lessons learned
that could be applied in the National Capital Region (NCR) and	 
elsewhere. We addressed the following questions: (1) In selected 
metropolitan areas, what factors enhance regional coordination?  
(2) What features of federal programs enhance regional emergency 
preparedness coordination? (3) How does regional coordination for
emergency preparedness in the NCR incorporate features from other
areas and federal programs? For detailed analysis, we selected	 
Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and  
Tampa-St. Petersburg--considered by DHS to be high-threat urban  
areas because of their population and critical infrastructure,	 
among other factors. We also analyzed regional coordination in	 
the planning and implementation of transportation and		 
environmental programs because of their history of requiring such
collaboration. DHS and the District of Columbia's Deputy	 
Mayor/City Administrator generally agreed with our report	 
regarding the characteristics of regional coordination and that  
the NCR's Urban Area Security Initiative governance structure was
relatively advanced.						 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-04-1009					        
    ACCNO:   A12510						        
  TITLE:     Homeland Security: Effective Regional Coordination Can   
Enhance Emergency Preparedness					 
     DATE:   09/15/2004 
  SUBJECT:   Counterterrorism					 
	     Emergency preparedness				 
	     Federal aid programs				 
	     Federal funds					 
	     Funds management					 
	     Intergovernmental relations			 
	     National preparedness				 
	     Strategic planning 				 
	     Homeland security					 
	     Urban areas					 
	     DHS Urban Area Security Initiative 		 
	     National Capital Regions				 

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GAO-04-1009

United States Government Accountability Office

      GAO	Report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Reform, House of
                                Representatives

September 2004

HOMELAND SECURITY

       Effective Regional Coordination Can Enhance Emergency Preparedness

                                       a

GAO-04-1009

Highlights of GAO-04-1009, a report to Chairman, Committee on Government
Reform, House of Representatives

As requested, GAO reviewed coordination practices in various metropolitan
areas to find regional programs with lessons learned that could be applied
in the National Capital Region (NCR) and elsewhere. We addressed the
following questions:

(1) In selected metropolitan areas,

what factors enhance regional

coordination? (2) What features of federal

programs enhance regional

emergency preparedness

coordination? (3) How does regional

coordination for emergency

preparedness in the NCR

incorporate features from

other areas and federal

programs?

For detailed analysis, we selected Dallas, Los Angeles, New York,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-considered by DHS to
be high-threat urban areas because of their population and critical
infrastructure, among other factors. We also analyzed regional
coordination in the planning and implementation of transportation and
environmental programs because of their history of requiring such
collaboration.

DHS and the District of Columbia's Deputy Mayor/City Administrator
generally agreed with our report regarding the characteristics of regional
coordination and that the NCR's Urban Area Security Initiative governance
structure was relatively advanced.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-1009.

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Patricia A. Dalton at (202)
512-6806 or [email protected].

September 2004

HOMELAND SECURITY

Effective Regional Coordination Can Enhance Emergency Preparedness

GAO's analysis of federal program documents and plans, and interviews with
federal, state, and local officials in six metropolitan areas revealed
several factors that characterize effective regional coordination of
federally supported efforts. Regional coordination efforts are enhanced by
the presence of a collaborative regional organization that includes
representation from many different jurisdictions and different
disciplines. Also, when regional civic and political traditions foster
interjurisdictional coordination, flexibility in the membership and
geographic area of the regional organization can enhance collaborative
activities. In addition, a comprehensive strategic plan with measurable
goals and objectives helps focus resources and efforts to address
problems. Finally, funding regional organizations provides incentives for
their collaborative planning activities.

The federal government can provide support for regional coordination. In
particular, through its grant design and requirements, it encourages
structures and practices associated with effective regional efforts. For
example, federal transportation law requires the existence of metropolitan
planning organizations (MPO) before transportation funds can be awarded.
Some programs have recognized the importance of flexibility by allowing
local jurisdictions to organize themselves in ways consistent with their
regional environment. For example, the DHS' Urban Area Security Initiative
(UASI) grant program allowed three San Francisco Bay programs to pool some
of their grant resources to establish a regionwide UASI effort. Moreover,
some federal grants require regional organizations to prepare plans that
guide funding decisions. Transportation law, for example, requires MPOs to
prepare transportation improvement plans as a condition for awards.
Finally, federal financial support can facilitate coordination activities.
Several programs, including the MPO program, provide such support.

The characteristics of effective regional coordination we identified are
applicable to the NCR's efforts to coordinate emergency preparedness. If
implemented as planned and as observed in its early stage, the NCR's UASI
program would include a collaborative regional organization. However, as
we reported in May 2004, the NCR did not include a full array of homeland
security grants in its planning. The NCR's UASI program plans to address
those issues by identifying non-UASI funding sources and collecting
information about the funding allocations, expenditures, and purposes, as
well as data on spending by NCR jurisdiction. DHS and UASI officials
believe these data will enable program managers to avoid duplication of
expenditures and to better utilize program funds.

Regional approaches are changing quickly, and the nation is still in the
early stages of building regional institutions across the country to deal
with homeland security issues. Those important developments warrant
continued congressional monitoring and oversight.

Contents

  Letter

Results in Brief
Background
Collaborative Organizations and Strategic Planning Foster Regional

Coordination Some Federal Programs Contain Incentives for Regional
Coordination NCR Emergency Preparedness Effort Can Benefit from

Comprehensive Planning and Application of Standards Concluding
Observations Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

1 3 8

11

19

23 26 27

Appendixes

                                       Appendix I: Appendix II: Appendix III:

Appendix IV:

Scope and Methodology 30

Comments from the Department of Homeland Security 33

Comments from the Deputy Mayor and City Administrator, District of
Columbia 36

GAO Contacts and Acknowledgments 40 GAO Contacts 40 Acknowledgments 40

Contents

Abbreviations

CAOs Chief Administrative Officers' Committee
D.C. District of Columbia
DHS U.S. Department of Homeland Security
DOT U.S. Department of Transportation
EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
EPC Emergency Preparedness Council
GAO Government Accountability Office
MPO Metropolitan Planning Organization
MWCOG Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
NAPA National Academy of Public Administration
NCR National Capital Region
NCTCOG North Central Texas Council of Governments
ONCRC DHS' Office of National Capital Region Coordination
SPG Senior Policy Group
TBEP Tampa Bay Estuary Program
TEW Terrorism Early Warning Group
TRANSCOM Transportation Operations Coordinating Committee
UASI Urban Areas Security Initiative

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this
work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the
copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material
separately.

A

United States Government Accountability Office Washington, D.C. 20548

September 15, 2004

The Honorable Tom Davis Chairman Committee on Government Reform House of
Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

Particularly since the events of September 11, 2001, regional approaches
have been recognized as a key way to address the threat of terrorism. In
many urban areas, the threat of terror is regionwide, and resources for
responding to that threat are distributed among many jurisdictions.
Therefore, the most effective responses are coordinated and planned across
the region, rather than being jurisdiction-specific. The complexity of
multijurisdictional urban areas-such as the National Capital Region (NCR),
composed of Washington, D.C., and numerous surrounding jurisdictions in
Maryland and Virginia-with a range of potential terrorism targets,
presents significant challenges to coordinating the development of
effective homeland security programs.1

Following the initial allocation of billions of dollars to first
responders after September 11, 2001, the need to address the threat of
terrorism from a regional perspective began to be a focus of federal
policy. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Urban Area Security
Initiative (UASI) allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to urban areas
that were considered to be at a high risk for a terror attack. In fiscal
year 2003, DHS granted seven high-threat metropolitan regions2 UASI
funding to address the unique needs of emergency preparedness and response
in large urban areas. Each of these areas covered multiple city/county
jurisdictions, and two (New York City and the NCR) covered more than one
state. In May 2003 DHS announced an additional total of $500 million to
augment the

1 Section 882 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-296
(Nov. 25, 2002)) incorporates the definition of the NCR from 10 U.S.C.
2674(f)(2) as the geographic area consisting of the District of Columbia;
Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland; Arlington, Fairfax,
Loudoun, and Prince William Counties and the City of Alexandria in
Virginia; and all cities and other units of government within those
jurisdictions.

2 In addition to the NCR, the Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San
Francisco, and Seattle areas were designated as high-risk urban areas
during the first round of UASI funding in fiscal year 2003.

original UASI areas' funding and provide funding for 23 more areas. Fiscal
year 2004 funding was announced November 2003 to continue the thirty 2003
UASI programs and to fund an additional 20 areas.

In May 2004, we reported on the management by NCR jurisdictions and the
DHS' Office of National Capital Region Coordination (ONCRC) of
approximately $340 million in first responder grants during fiscal years
2002 and 2003.3 We found that managers of first response agencies-police
and fire, for example-as well as federal and state emergency preparedness
agencies did not have national preparedness standards to assess existing
first responder capabilities, gaps in those capabilities, and progress
made in achieving performance goals. Similarly, those agencies had no
regionwide, comprehensive, strategic plan for establishing first responder
preparedness goals, needs, and priorities. Finally, the agencies had no
consolidated, readily available source of information on (1) the amount of
first responder grants available to each jurisdiction, (2) budget plans or
criteria used to determine spending priorities, and (3) data on funds
expended from the various sources. Without these components, the federal
grants were difficult to manage in a way that enabled first response
agencies to pursue and monitor goals and objectives.

As you requested, we followed up our NCR work with this review of
coordination practices in various other metropolitan areas around the
nation, with an emphasis on identifying characteristics of successful
regional coordination that could be applied in the NCR and elsewhere. We
agreed to address the following questions:

1.	In selected metropolitan areas, what factors enhance regional
coordination?

2.	What features of federal programs enhance regional emergency
preparedness coordination?

3.	How does regional coordination for emergency preparedness in the NCR
incorporate features from other metropolitan areas and federal programs?

3 GAO, Homeland Security: Management of First Responder Grants in the
National Capital Region Reflects the Need for Coordinated Planning and
Performance Goals, GAO04-433 (Washington, D.C.: May 28, 2004).

We selected six metropolitan areas in which to examine regional
coordination: Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia,
the San Francisco Bay Area, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. We selected these
locations based on such factors as their vulnerability to terror events
indicated by the presence of potential targets, such as critical
infrastructure and important federal and commercial facilities. We also
selected metropolitan areas with a large number of regional jurisdictions
that indicated a level of complexity in approaching emergency preparedness
from a regional perspective. Within each area, we examined certain federal
programs--such as metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), regional
estuary preservation efforts, and UASI, which require regional
coordination. We included in our analysis nonemergency preparedness
programs, such as transportation planning (involving MPOs) that have
existed for decades and have developed their own regional organizations
and planning practices. Examining such programs can provide insights into
how to structure regional homeland security efforts, which are relatively
new, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

We met with and obtained documentation from mayors' offices, city and/or
county offices of emergency management, state emergency management
offices, regional planning councils, or MPOs; other regional bodies,
offices, and task forces; and program directors for selected programs that
require coordination. We also contacted officials of the responsible
federal agencies, including DHS, the Department of Transportation (DOT),
and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We reviewed relevant
reports, studies, and guidelines on homeland security and emergency
preparedness.

We conducted our review from July 2003 to September 2004 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards. See appendix I for
more details on our scope and methodology.

Results in Brief	Regionally coordinated and planned programs have existed
in such fields as transportation and environmental planning for decades.
For example, the metropolitan transportation planning model came into
being in response to federal transportation planning requirements in the
1960s. In contrast, homeland security is a relatively new public policy
field, emerging in prominence after the terror attacks of September 11,
2001. According to our work in six metropolitan areas, several factors
characterize effective regional coordination in those regions.

o 	Regional organizations that include representation from many different
jurisdictions and diverse stakeholders serve as structured forums for
these parties to discuss public policy problems and agree on possible
solutions. These organizations exist in metropolitan regions for a variety
of purposes-for example, to coordinate transportation planning or clean
water initiatives. Decisions made collaboratively are likely to have
broader support than those that are unilateral. For example, federal
transportation law requires metropolitan planning organizations (MPO) with
multijurisdictional representation to work together to agree on a regional
transportation plan and allows the use of federal funding for such
planning. For example, in the NCR, the Metropolitan Washington Council of
Governments (MWCOG) promotes collaborative transportation decision making
by requiring the majority of the area's multijurisdictional board to
support a regional transportation improvement plan. Agreements on such
projects as road improvements associated with rebuilding the Woodrow
Wilson Bridge were approved by the MWCOG Transportation Planning Board and
included in the transportation plan for federal funding.

o 	Where regional collaboration is encouraged by the leadership and
political traditions of state, regional, and local entities, flexibility
for regional organizations to establish their membership requirements and
collaborative processes is important. Such flexibility helps regional
organizations function effectively in the existing political and civic
environment by allowing them to expand the scope of the collaborative
activities; under these circumstances, overly prescriptive requirements
could impede effective coordination. For example, emergency preparedness
officials in the San Francisco Bay area told us that first responder
agencies in that area have a longstanding tradition of interjurisdictional
coordination. However, in our view, in cases where state and local
traditions do not engender interjurisdictional collaboration, more
prescriptive requirements regarding regional group members,
decision-making processes, and planning can establish minimum thresholds
for those activities and may provide an incentive for regional
coordination.

o 	Strategic plans developed by regional organizations can be effective
tools to focus resources and efforts to address problems. Effective plans
often contain such features as goals and objectives that are measurable
and quantifiable. These goals and objectives allow problems and planned
steps to be defined specifically and progress to be measured. For example,
according to Tampa Bay Estuary Program

officials, the involvement of federal, state, and local government
partners, environmentalists, and the private sector in proposing and
implementing solutions to cleaning up Tampa Bay ensures agreement on
technically sound plans that are based on measurable goals and objectives.
An agreement involving state and local agencies, as well as industry,
committed these parties to specific actions to achieve those goals,
including an overall goal of restoring sea grasses to the conditions of
about 50 years ago. By specifying goals and objectives, plans can also
give planners and decision makers a structure for allocating funding to
those goals and objectives. Moreover, the application of standards, where
existent, can focus the strategic planning process by allowing planners to
measure the current status (baseline) of performance, express measurable
goals, and identify any gaps between the baseline and goals.4

The federal government can provide support for regional coordination. In
particular, through its grant design and requirements, the government
encourages structures and practices associated with effective regional
efforts.

o 	Some federal programs support the existence of regional organizations
that reach collaborative decisions, and several federal programs require
the grantee to establish such an organization before it can receive
federal funds. For example, under federal transportation law, all
transportation improvement plans must be prepared by MPOs prior to the
allocation of highway and transit funds. To avoid one party or type of
party being overrepresented in the regional group or wielding too much
power, some federal programs define acceptable requirements for the group
and the associated planning processes.

o 	Some federal grants allow local jurisdictions the flexibility to
organize themselves in ways consistent with their regional environment.
For example, in fiscal year 2003, the Dallas UASI region as defined by DHS
included the City of Dallas and its contiguous counties, but not Tarrant
County, Texas. Many regional, state, and city officials felt that Tarrant
County should be included in the UASI planning. To address this issue, the
state of Texas provided funding to Tarrant County from the 20

4 Preparedness standards include functional standards for equipment, such
as personal protection suits; performance standards, such as the number of
persons per hour that could be decontaminated after a chemical attack; and
best practice benchmarks, if applicable.

percent of UASI funding that was not passed through to the City of Dallas.
On the other hand, if the regional environment is not friendly to
collaboration, then federal grantor agencies can specify minimum
requirements for a regional organization and procedures that elicit
collaborative decisions.

o 	Some grants require a strategic plan as a precondition for receiving
federal funds, but to be effective the plans should include measurable
goals and objectives. In addition, clear standards help to guide the
progress toward measurable objectives. For example, MPOs must show that
metropolitan transportation plans and programs conform to the goals of the
state (air quality) implementation plan for the region. Reducing
transportation emissions in the metropolitan planning process is usually
achieved by a combination of new construction, system improvements, and
demand reduction measures.

o 	We also found that federal funding targeted at collaborative regional
groups can encourage regional coordination. For example, federal
transportation funds pay for the coordination activities of MPOs.

Our observations about regional coordination in the implementation of
federal programs in metropolitan areas we visited are applicable to the
efforts to coordinate homeland security efforts in the NCR. Based on
planning documents obtained from officials of the NCR's regional UASI
governance structure and observations of the early stages of the program,5
the region's UASI program would have some elements of successful regional
coordination, if the plans were fully implemented. For example, the NCR is
beginning to use regional working groups-the Emergency Preparedness
Council and the Chief Administrative Officers Committee, among others-to
bring stakeholders together to agree upon goals and to consider funding
for regional emergency preparedness. However, at the time of our May 2004
report, the NCR had not applied this regional coordination structure and
plans to the full array of federal homeland

5 According to current plans, the NCR's UASI governance structure includes
the Emergency Preparedness Council (EPC) and Chief Administrative Officers
(CAO) Committee, and the Senior Policy Group (SPG). The EPC contains
representation from various first response disciplines, several regional
jurisdictions, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector, among others.
The CAOs represent the city and town managers and county executives of the
19 jurisdictions. The SPG represents the governors of Maryland and
Virginia, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and the Department of Homeland
Security and has final budget authority over UASI-related emergency
preparedness projects for the NCR.

security grants, totaling about $340 million. Moreover, the regional UASI
plan would not be based on any preparedness standards. In commenting on a
draft of this report and as discussed at a September 1, 2004, meeting of
the UASI Senior Policy Group and Chief Administrative Officers, DHS noted
that the governance structure is in place and being used to reach
decisions for homeland security programs in the region, including a
broadening of the UASI decision-making process to consider funding sources
other than UASI. The governance structure is developing information,
including a centralized database to be implemented fully by 2005, that
would provide information on non-UASI emergency preparedness funds
available, allocated, and expended; the reasons for their allocations; and
to which jurisdictions they were distributed. Having these data would help
the UASI governance structure avoid funding duplications and leverage UASI
funds to extend preparedness efforts to the entire region.

In summary, the federal government can encourage regional coordination
through its grant programs. Regional organization structures, flexibility
to account for local conditions, and strategic planning are key
characteristics of regional coordination. Given the important role that
regional planning and governance can play in improving national
preparedness, these developments warrant continuing congressional
oversight.

We provided a draft of this report to DHS and officials of the NCR's UASI
governance structure for their review and comment. According to DHS, the
report contains information that will be valuable to communities across
the country as DHS encourages regional coordination and capability
building. DHS stated, however, that the governance structure is currently
active in the NCR-not proposed or interim-and is acting to enhance
emergency preparedness decision making and planning in the region. As
appropriate, we added information in our report to reflect these
refinements to the NCR's governance structure. The Deputy Mayor/City
Administrator, Washington, D.C., also provided comments. Similar to DHS,
he stated that the NCR's governance structure reflected the building of a
great deal of the foundation for meeting the domestic preparedness
challenges that affect the area. In addition, he said that the NCR is
unique compared to the six metropolitan areas we chose for detailed
analysis because only the NCR (1) involves two states and a governmental
entity that combines state and local functions; (2) contains monuments and
memorials that are the most visible symbols of our national strength and
patriotism; and (3) is the seat of the federal government, creating a
partnership between the national government and NCR state and local

governments. While we agree that the NCR is an important and unique urban
area, the areas we chose for detailed analysis contain comparable
features.

The Deputy Mayor/City Administrator also stated that the National Estuary
Program incorporates clean water standards and scientific solutions to
accomplish clean water. He stated that the federal homeland security
strategies and plans are not based on proven standards and solutions.
Hence, he concluded that the estuary program is not comparable with
federal homeland security strategies and plans. We agree that the National
Estuary Program is based on existing standards and solutions; indeed, our
report notes that for the most part, standards are not yet extant for
homeland security efforts. However, the application of standards in the
planning and implementation of the National Estuary Program is the very
reason we chose to explore and elaborate upon it. Our report notes that
the preparation and implementation of plans that have goals and objectives
that are actionable and measurable-frequently based on the application of
standards-is a key factor in the success of regionally coordinated
programs.

Background	Historically, the American governance system, divided into
federal, state, and local jurisdictions, does not provide a natural
vehicle for addressing public policy issues from a regional,
multijurisdictional perspective. The autonomy of local jurisdictions and
competing priorities within and among them can make regional coordination
difficult. Efforts that seek to overcome these challenges to coordinate
regionally must take into account the different operational structures and
civic traditions of states and municipalities. For example, states differ
in their relationship to local governments and their promotion of regional
infrastructures. Local municipalities differ in their history of
multijurisdiction cooperation. Some local jurisdictions have histories of
mutual aid agreements and working together, while in other regions federal
homeland security programs may be bringing partners together across
jurisdictions to conduct planning efforts for the first time.

As used in this report, regional coordination refers to the use of
governmental resources in a complementary way toward goals and objectives
that are mutually agreed upon by various stakeholders in a region.
Regional coordination can also help to overcome the fragmented nature of
federal programs and grants available to state and local entities.
Successful coordination occurs not only vertically among federal, state,

and local governments but also horizontally within regions. The effective
alignment of resources for the security of communities could require
planning across jurisdictional boundaries; neighboring jurisdictions may
be affected by an emergency situation in many potential ways, from
implementation of mutual aid agreements, to accepting evacuated residents,
to traffic disruptions.

Our work has previously noted the concerns of state and local governments
about fragmented federal grant programs with burdensome application
processes that are complicated by the inconsistency across programs.6
State and local governments manage multiple funding sources for distinct
but often similar purposes. For instance, GAO identified 25 emergency
preparedness programs that provided funding to the NCR.7 The short history
of regional coordination for homeland security is characterized by
attempts of federal, state, and local governments to overcome a fragmented
federal grant system and local jurisdictional barriers to assess needs,
fill gaps, and plan for effective prevention and emergency response.

GAO has consistently called for the development of a truly national,
rather than purely federal, strategy.8 For example, in testimony given in
2003, GAO highlighted multiple barriers to addressing one basic area of
preparedness-interoperable communications systems-including the lack of
effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intergovernmental
planning.9 Another GAO study of bioterrorism preparedness found that
although progress had been made in local planning, regional planning
involving multiple municipalities, counties, or jurisdictions in
neighboring

6 GAO, Combating Terrorism: Intergovernmental Cooperation in the
Development of a National Strategy to Enhance State and Local
Preparedness, GAO-02-550T (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 2, 2002).

7 GAO, Homeland Security: Management of First Responder Grants in the
National Capital Region Reflects the Need for Coordinated Planning and
Performance Goals, GAO04-433 (Washington, D.C.: May 28, 2004).

8 See GAO-02-550T and GAO, National Preparedness: Integration of Federal,
State, Local, and Private Sector Efforts Is Critical to an Effective
National Strategy for Homeland Security, GAO-02-621T (Washington, D.C.:
Apr. 11, 2002).

9 GAO, Homeland Security: Challenges in Achieving Interoperable
Communications for First Responders, GAO-04-231T (Washington, D.C.: Nov.
6, 2003).

states lagged.10 In July 2002, the President issued the National Strategy
for Homeland Security, which emphasized a shared responsibility for
security involving close cooperation among all levels of government. To
enhance emergency preparedness, the strategy called for systems that avoid
duplication and increase coordination to better align public and private
resources for homeland security.

With the creation of DHS and the development of the National Strategy, the
federal government has developed several programs and provided financial
assistance to improve state and local governments' ability to prevent and
respond to the threat of terrorism. These grant programs demonstrate a
variety of approaches. For example, all states are eligible for the State
Homeland Security Grant Program to update and implement their state
Homeland Security Strategy. The UASI provides support to metropolitan
areas designated by DHS as high-threat areas. The funds are distributed
based on a formula that considers critical infrastructure, population
density, assessment of threats, and other factors.

DHS' UASI program combines the elements of threat-based assessment and
funding with regional planning. UASI programs must create a working group
with representation from the region that will be responsible for
coordinating development and implementation of program elements. Before
funding can be distributed, DHS also requires each UASI program to develop
and submit a strategic plan that outlines the region's common goals,
objectives, and steps for implementation. The strategy is intended to
provide each program with direction for enhancing regional capability and
capacity to prevent and reduce vulnerability. UASI funds can be used to
purchase a range of goods and services to enhance the preparedness of
first responders, including approved equipment, preparedness plans,
exercises, and training.

Other federal programs that require regional coordination may be
instructive for homeland security. In the area of transportation planning,
the federal government has required states to establish MPOs to address
regional transportation impact and needs. Established in response to
federal planning requirements dating back to 1962, MPOs are
multijurisdictional regional bodies composed of local elected officials
and public agency representatives who review and approve transportation

10 GAO, Bioterrorism: Preparedness Varied across State and Local
Jurisdictions, GAO-03373 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 7, 2003).

investments in metropolitan areas as a condition for federal highway and
transit funding. In the area of environmental planning, the Clean Water
Act directs EPA to develop plans for attaining or maintaining water
quality in an estuary system. Congress established EPA's National Estuary
Program in 1987 to improve the quality of estuaries of national
importance. To be selected for the National Estuary Program, estuaries
must be nominated by state governors and demonstrate existing regional
infrastructure with the capacity to fulfill the requirements of the Clean
Water Act.

Collaborative Organizations and Strategic Planning Foster Regional
Coordination

As corroborated by officials with whom we met, collaborative regional
organizations that include a wide range of stakeholders from multiple
jurisdictions and disciplines contribute to successful regional
coordination for a variety of public programs. In addition, effective
strategic planning that includes measurable objectives appropriately
aligned with resources is necessary for fostering regional approaches that
enhance emergency preparedness and achieve other public goals. The
application of standards, where existent, to the planning process can help
to define and measure a baseline status (e.g., a baseline of
preparedness), a desired level of performance (e.g., preparedness levels
that are to be achieved), and a gap between the baseline and desired level
that would be the focus of a program's efforts.

Regional Organizations and Collaborative Decisionmaking Process Support
Effective Coordination

When regional organizations are structured so that they include a wide
range of stakeholders and promote collaborative decision making, they can
advance regional coordination by creating a forum for those stakeholders
to build rapport, solve problems regarding issues of mutual concern, and
engage in information and resource sharing. Collaborative problem
identification and problem solving promotes cooperation in planning
efforts to address public problems. Collaborative decision making can
encourage decisions that preclude one party from dominating decisions
about problems, potential solutions, programmatic goals and objectives,
and funding allocations; instead, such decisions are made with input from
many. Emergency management, transportation, and estuary program officials
reported that regional organizations enabled their regions to work
together on a variety of emergency preparedness, environmental, and
transportation issues. In the emergency preparedness area, the UASI
working group in the NCR has achieved multijurisdictional agreement on
regional plans that contain 21 specific efforts to be funded in equipment,
training, exercises, and planning to improve the NCR's preparedness

regionwide, not just to benefit individual jurisdictions. Also in the NCR,
the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments promotes collaborative
transportation decision making by requiring the majority of the area's
multijurisdictional transportation planning board to support a
transportation plan that specifies projects to be funded that are intended
to address the region's traffic congestion and air quality problems-seen
as being among the worst in the nation. The region's long-range
transportation improvement plan contained agreements on such projects as
road improvements associated with rebuilding the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
Similarly, the Tampa Bay Estuary Program has restored a net increase of
about 850 acres of sea grasses on the Tampa Bay seabed since the program's
inception, or about 6 percent of the 14,000 total acreage to be restored.

Collaborative decisions made by many stakeholders represented in regional
organizations can formulate mutually agreed-upon responses to public
policy problems. The collaborative experiences we observed in the
Dallas-Fort Worth area provided examples of how regional organizations can
aid in solving problems. For example, the Dallas-Fort Worth's Regional
Emergency Managers Group has served as a forum for the region's emergency
preparedness officials to analyze, plan for, and make decisions about
various regional initiatives, such as improving interjurisdictional
communications interoperability. Within this group, an associated subgroup
explored technical issues related to communications interoperability. The
Regional Emergency Managers Group evaluated technology options and is
creating a regional purchasing plan to facilitate the purchase of
interoperable communications equipment. Without interoperable radios and
other communications equipment, police and fire departments in different
jurisdictions cannot easily communicate when responding to an emergency.

Collaborative efforts through regional organizations can also result in
the integration of plans and programs that are implemented by individual
jurisdictions. In Dallas-Fort Worth, local first responder agencies built
upon the established working relationships and their trust of the local
council of governments to enhance regional coordination of homeland
security. For example, the City of Dallas contracted with the North
Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) to facilitate the
development of the UASI strategy. In addition, most of the jurisdictional
and private sector stakeholders had their own emergency preparedness plans
that were not integrated. Acting upon a request from local officials,
NCTCOG initiated a process to coordinate and integrate these various plans
that reflected the

NCTCOG's reputation as an impartial and fair arbiter. The resulting plan
identifies the roles of the various first responder agencies across
jurisdictional boundaries, thereby increasing the police, fire, and
emergency medical resources that can respond to an emergency.

Regional organizations can also facilitate coordination by fostering
information and resource sharing. For example, in response to problems
coordinating the construction schedules on roads in the New York-New
Jersey region, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey created the
Transportation Operations Coordinating Committee (TRANSCOM) in 1986-a
coalition of 18 independent transportation and public safety agencies in
Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. TRANSCOM's significance was
exhibited on September 11, 2001, when it facilitated efforts among member
agencies such as the Port Authority, New Jersey State Police, New Jersey
Transit, New Jersey Department of Transportation, and New Jersey Turnpike
to reopen a major Manhattan bus terminal to transport thousands of people
home.

DHS and state and local emergency management officials have cited the Los
Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group (TEW) as an example of an
information-sharing network focused on the prevention of terrorist acts.
Created in 1996 by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the
primary focus of TEW is to provide a coordinated and focused response to
acts of terrorism based on assessment and dissemination of intelligence
information. The core team of TEW includes the Los Angeles Sheriff's
Department, Los Angeles Police Department, City and County Fire
Departments, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cooperating agencies include about 30
other agencies representing a number of disciplines, such as emergency
management, transportation, and criminal justice. As a group, TEW monitors
trends and assesses threats that could potentially result in terrorist
attacks within Los Angeles County. Because of its ability to develop
terror threat information from a variety of sources and disseminate it to
first response officials throughout a large metropolitan region, DHS is
encouraging states and local agencies to utilize their federal homeland
security funding to replicate the Los Angeles TEW model within the
framework of their UASI plans.

Where Consistent with Civic and Political Traditions, Flexible Approaches
Can Enhance Regional Organizations

Metropolitan regions differ in their civic and political traditions. Some
regions have leadership and/or long-running civic and political traditions
that promote collaborative efforts. For example, according to national
associations and emergency preparedness officials in the San Francisco and
Los Angeles areas, fire and emergency services in California jurisdictions
have longstanding traditions of coordinating and operating jointly, across
city and county lines. This tradition is expressed through a strong mutual
aid system. In other regions, however, tradition can work against regional
collaboration. In one state we visited, metropolitan transportation
planning was characterized by a practice of having one MPO for each
county. Officials in the region we visited explained that local
development patterns in the region traditionally isolated each county from
the next, but in recent decades the counties' development had merged as
new migrants moved into the area. As a result, the county-based planning
structure may be outdated, because it is based on previously existent
development patterns. In response to the lack of a regionwide MPO, the
county-based MPOs have formed a regional MPO alliance that includes MPO
chairs, representatives from the regional councils of government, and the
state transportation department.

To function effectively, regional organizations must take into account the
impact of political and civic traditions. In regions where leadership or
cultural factors encourage collaborative efforts, regional organizations
that are formed locally, instead of being imposed by federal and state
government, are more likely to have identified a coherent regional area
based upon natural boundaries, population, and established mutual aid
relationships. Where appropriate and considering regional leadership or
culture, federal or state programs can preserve the benefits of existing,
locally formed regional organizations by allowing local jurisdictions to
organize together. The following examples illustrate this point:

o 	Pennsylvania's Counterterrorism Planning, Preparedness and Response Act
of 2002 (Act 227) legally established the state's nine regional
counterterrorism task forces to coordinate the activities of county law
enforcement agencies in addressing terror threats.11 However, in most
cases, Pennsylvania allowed counties to divide themselves into regions

11 2002 Pa. Laws 227. This act codified the task forces, which were
administratively created in 1998.

based upon their natural mutual aid alliances, rather than imposing a new
organizational boundary.

o 	In Texas, the Governor requested assistance from regional councils of
governments to facilitate a variety of collaborative efforts to build
regional emergency preparedness capacity across the state. Specifically,
regional councils of governments were able to unite public and private
stakeholders to develop, maintain, and coordinate regional emergency
preparedness management plans and actions. While many cities, counties,
and private sector stakeholders in Dallas-Fort Worth had extensive
emergency preparedness plans, many of these plans were not integrated. The
North Central Texas Council of Governments played a key role in
facilitating emergency preparedness coordination and integrating
preparedness plans through its efforts to coordinate and integrate the
emergency preparedness initiatives of the metropolitan area. Those efforts
culminated in the Regional Emergency Managers meeting-a forum through
which emergency managers shared information, discussed best practices and
technology, built rapport, and developed mutual aid agreements. At the
time of our study, the group was continuing to meet on a quarterly basis
and is developing a regional emergency plan and associated schedule for
achieving emergency preparedness goals.

Regional leadership or traditions that are focused on achieving
collaboration can advance regional coordination by expanding collaborative
efforts throughout a region. In such cases, allowing regional
organizations the flexibility to define their geographic areas or
membership requirements can foster increased degrees of regional
coordination. However, in our view, in cases where state and local
traditions do not engender interjurisdictional collaboration, more
prescriptive requirements regarding group membership, decision-making
processes, and planning serve as minimum thresholds for those activities.
In some cases, leaders bring together stakeholders to agree upon common
objectives and to act to achieve them. Those leaders play an important
role in fostering trust among partners and facilitating progress.
According to a report by the National Academy of Public Administration
(NAPA), leadership dedicated to stakeholder involvement is a critical
characteristic of high-performing partnerships, second only to achieving
results.12

12 National Academy of Public Administration, Powering the Future: High
Performance Partnerships (Washington, D.C.: April 2003).

Collaborative leadership contributed to the expansion and success of
regional coordination efforts we studied in both emergency preparedness
and transportation programs. For example, emergency managers in the San
Francisco Bay Area developed the area's Regional UASI working group,
recognized by DHS and the State of California as a good example of
regional coordination. They brought the working group together to discuss
emergency issues and develop solutions for the entire Bay Area, which
includes three subregions with individual UASI programs-San Francisco, San
Jose, and Oakland. While there was no requirement to work collaboratively
across UASI programs, these emergency management leaders took the
initiative to establish a regional approach to facilitate coordination
throughout the area. They created a regionwide group that meets for
planning, and they obtained funding to implement the UASI efforts by
combining a portion of the individual UASI program's funds for use in the
whole of the San Francisco Bay Area. The group has effectively developed a
regionwide emergency preparedness strategic plan that includes eight
goals, such as regional mutual aid exercises and communications
interoperability.

Comprehensive Strategic Planning Based on Measurable Objectives and
Resource Alignment Contributes to Regional Coordination

The deliberations of regional collaborative entities can result in
mutually agreed upon problems and solutions. Moreover, strategic plans are
a valuable tool to articulate goals, objectives, tasks, and measures. By
adding specificity to more general discussions about problems and
solutions, strategic plans can help to focus and operationalize efforts to
deal with identified problems. In addition, standards, if existent, can be
applied to help measure baseline performance levels (e.g., the existing
level of preparedness), define measurable goals and objectives, and
identify any gaps in performance. In other words, the application of
standards can give measurability and benchmarking to strategic planning
and performance monitoring.

Regional organizations' collaborative efforts can result in achieving
mutual agreement, expressed in plans, among diverse stakeholders on
priority problems and on specific steps to be taken to address them.
Moreover, the goals and objectives in plans allow problems and planned
steps to be defined specifically and progress to be measured. Two examples
follow.

o 	In the case of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP), a regional
organization's collaborative efforts identified environmental problems,
goals, and objectives that were expressed in a comprehensive strategic
plan. Estuary program officials pointed to the program's focus on a

limited number of measurable and achievable restoration goals as key to
its success, with respect to the strategic planning process. Such planning
addressed how to restore and recover the Tampa Bay sea grass to conditions
of 1950 via measurable and actionable goals, objectives, and tasks. By
specifically defining what could be done in an action plan, TBEP involved
a wide cross-section of stakeholders, including federal, state, and local
government partners, local environmental groups, and the private sector.
Using EPA's primer dated August 1989, "Saving Bays and Estuaries" as a
guideline for developing missions and policies, the program's planning
component involved a diverse and comprehensive set of stakeholders. For
example, a technical advisory committee proposes technical solutions to
the restoration effort; a nitrogen mitigation consortium involves local
industry in proposing solutions; and a management board involves
environmental agencies in providing advice to the Policy Board-chaired by
the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and EPA-that approves
all major decisions. Program officials credited the involvement of
scientists and citizens from the Tampa Bay region as vital to the process
of identifying and ranking the Bay's problems, as well as developing
measurable goals and objectives that are included in its comprehensive
restoration plan. Specifically, the strategic plan identifies the
restoration of 14,000 acres of sea grasses and protection of the remaining
sea grasses as a major goal and also establishes a nitrogen management
strategy (action plan) to encourage sea grass recovery. The comprehensive
strategic plan and nitrogen management strategy include specific and
measurable goals by reducing nitrogen levels, identifying interim
indicators (including water clarity and chlorophyll concentrations), as
well as monitoring mechanisms to measure progress toward goals.

o 	In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, emergency management officials reported
that the UASI requirement for a regional emergency preparedness plan
initiated development of a comprehensive plan for emergency preparedness
policy guidance and coordination. They noted that planning helped the
region to prioritize goals and resulted in a systematic decision-making
process to determine spending for the UASI funds. Other UASI areas,
including Tampa Bay and Los Angeles, reported that the strategic planning
process was a driving force in streamlining administration of the program.

Another example of the role of strategic planning with well-defined goals
and measurable objectives in encouraging regional coordination is the
MPO's requirement to develop a realistic transportation plan that includes

short-term and long-term strategies. According to officials, such planning
forces stakeholders to determine the relative importance of various
transportation projects. Federal transportation law requires MPOs to plan
for projects using a process that considers financial resources that are
budgetarily constrained, thereby forcing stakeholders to resolve disputes
and agree on common goals and realistic objectives at the outset. In the
San Francisco Bay Area, the planning process led to transportation
projects that served the region as a whole instead of disparate projects
in different jurisdictions. For example, the regional MPO planned for an
extension between two rail systems that enhanced regional access to the
San Francisco Airport with the surrounding area, including San Jose and
Oakland.

In addition, a strategic plan can be used in making decisions about funds
and other resources. Funds and resources can be allocated based on the
goals and objectives of the strategic plan. For example, the NCR's UASI
plan aligned $60 million to 21 lines of effort that were categorized in
functional areas that included equipment, training, exercises, and
planning. Those projects were linked to eight points contained in a
multistate agreement. At the same time, to be truly effective strategic
planning needs to be comprehensive by addressing most of the resources
available to address a public policy problem. Failure to do so can result
in overfunding some ongoing efforts, and underfunding or not funding other
activities. For example, in our May 2004 report on the management of first
responder grants in the NCR, we found that the UASI planning effort for
the NCR would have been improved by considering not only the uses of $60
million in UASI funds, but also the uses of $280 million in funding from
other first responder grants.13 While we found no evidence of duplicative
purchases, consideration of the other $280 million in funds within the
framework of the UASI plan would have reduced opportunities for excessive
expenditures in some areas, while gaps remained in other areas. More
comprehensive planning could have better ensured that funding would have
been focused on the highest priority emergency preparedness needs of the
region. The NCR's UASI governance structure is now taking steps to
implement more comprehensive planning.

13 GAO-04-433.

Some Federal Programs Contain Incentives for Regional Coordination

Some federal programs contain features that encourage regional solutions
by providing incentives for local jurisdictions to join together to obtain
federal grant funding. A federal grant whose award is conditioned on the
recipient working through a collaborative regional organization can
encourage regional coordination. Grant programs can also require the
regional groups to express their agreements regarding problems and
solutions by preparing a strategic plan with measurable goals and
objectives. Such plans can guide grant expenditures. Grant requirements
that take into account local and regional conditions and histories of
collaboration by providing appropriate flexibility can further enhance
regional coordination. Finally, federal financial assistance for
coordination activities can provide important support.

Some Federal Requirements Support Regional Organizations

Federal grantor agencies support the existence of regional organizations
by requiring the grantee to establish such an organization before
receiving federal funds. Importantly, such requirements can promote
interjurisdictional cooperation in areas where civic and political
traditions work against such cooperation. For example, federal
transportation law requires an MPO to write metropolitan transportation
improvement plans before federal highway and transit funds can be
allocated.14 Moreover, UASI requires a regional working group representing
first responder agencies and policymakers in a core city, core county, and
other local jurisdictions to write a regional UASI plan.

In addition, a federal agency may define a collaborative decision-making
process that fosters wide participation by a variety of stakeholders and
tries to avoid one party or type of party being overrepresented in the
regional group or wielding too much power within the group. In that
regard, a federal program may define minimally acceptable requirements for
such a group and the planning processes associated with it. For example,
DHS' UASI assigns funding to predefined core cities and core counties. In
addition, in one location that we visited, the working group was required
to agree unanimously to the UASI regional strategic plan and budget,
representing a high state of consensus. In another case, federal
transportation law requires MPOs to be broad-based bodies that include
representation from elected officials of various jurisdictions in the
defined

14 23 U.S.C. S:134.

service area of the MPOs. In addition, MPOs must include the state
transportation agencies and operators of publicly owned transit services.

Flexibility in Grant Requirements Accommodates Regional Variations

Federal grant designs can take into account the uniqueness of leadership
and political traditions at the state, local, and regional levels by
allowing local jurisdictions the flexibility to pursue working
arrangements that can facilitate regional coordination. By allowing
jurisdictions to identify the boundaries of the region, they can take
advantage of regional leadership or political relationships that can bring
additional stakeholders, resources, or ideas to the process. For example,
in fiscal year 2003, the Dallas UASI region as defined by DHS included the
City of Dallas and its contiguous counties-Collin, Dallas, Denton,
Kaufman, and Rockwall. However, many regional, state, and city officials
felt that Tarrant County also should be included in the UASI planning,
since Tarrant County includes a large portion of the Dallas-Fort Worth
population, including the entire city of Fort Worth. To address this
issue, the state provided funding to Tarrant County from the 20 percent of
UASI funding that was not passed through to the City of Dallas.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also exhibited a commitment to regional
collaboration when it overlaid the regional Philadelphia UASI area onto a
preexisting regional task force. Member jurisdictions of that task
force-five emergency management coordinators from the counties in the
Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force-had been working together
for 5 years. As a result, the UASI program in Philadelphia benefited from
strong preexisting working relationships. The cordiality built up among
the UASI task force members fostered relatively coequal funding and
planning efforts that extended to suburban parties well beyond the core
city and core county.

Other locations, however, may not have traditions or leadership that
encourage interjurisdictional collaboration. For example, in some
locations, we found power imbalances, as well as political traditions and
histories of competition that challenged regional coordination. Such
challenges, for example, have been manifested by one or two jurisdictions
making decisions about how federal dollars would be spent and how much
funding other jurisdictions would receive. In such cases, regional
cooperation might be facilitated by designing grants that require
representation and collaboration through regional organizations.

Federal Grant Requirements for Comprehensive Strategic Planning with
Measurable Objectives and Resource Alignment Encourage Effective Regional
Coordination

Some federal grant programs require strategic plans as a precondition for
receiving federal grant dollars to encourage regional coordination, but
for the plans to be effective they should include measurable objectives
and corresponding resource alignment. In addition, the application of
preparedness standards to define the baseline status and goals for regions
can enhance strategic plans by adding an element of measurability and
specificity to them.

Our previous study of a number of leading public sector organizations
shows that strategic plans work most effectively when they contain goals
and objectives that are measurable and actionable.15 The presence of
measurable goals and objectives allows program managers to ascertain
progress being made and required action-such as reallocating funding
and/or making programmatic changes-needed to meet those goals and
objectives. For example, in the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, a community of
state, local government, nonprofit, and commercial stakeholders determined
four key program goals, as well as mechanisms through which to achieve
these goals prior to receiving funding. Upon obtaining the funding, the
program's management built upon the stakeholders' support to proceed
efficiently with the plan.

As previously noted, the existence and applicability of standards can
enhance the ability of decision makers to define measurable programmatic
goals and objectives and enable them to assess and demonstrate progress
being made. DHS' recently issued strategic plan makes reference to
establishing, implementing, and evaluating capabilities through a system
of national standards. In emergency planning, preparedness standards can
serve to define the preparedness requirements of an area or jurisdiction,
the current status of preparedness, and the gap that exists between the
requirements and current status. Emergency preparedness officials told us
that when developing their strategic plan, national standards would have
been helpful to identify gaps and determine appropriate actions to address
them.

Clear standards help to guide the progress toward measurable objectives.
For example, MPOs must show that projects identified in transportation
plans for federal funding do not worsen air quality conditions of the

15GAO, Comptroller General's Forum: High-Performing Organizations:
Metrics, Means, and Mechanisms for Achieving High Performance in the 21st
Century Public Management Environment, GAO-04-343SP (Washington, D.C.:
Feb. 13, 2004).

nonattainment16 metropolitan area. Their analysis must demonstrate that
the total emissions projected for a transportation plan or program are
within the emission limits established by the State Implementation Plan.17
Reducing transportation emissions in the metropolitan planning process is
usually achieved by a combination of new construction, system
improvements, and demand reduction measures.

Federal Funding for the Costs of Coordination Supports Regional Efforts

Some federal grant programs provide regional organizations recurring
funding for costs associated with regional coordination. The federal
government sometimes facilitates regional collaboration by paying
specifically for some of the costs of regional coordination. For example,
the coordination activities of MPOs are paid in part with federal
transportation funds.

Estuary program officials said annual EPA grants allow spending for
administrative needs and are important for facilitating regional estuary
efforts. They reported that federal EPA funding, even though a relatively
small portion of their overall budgets, was important to program
sustainability, because it is often the only funding available to cover
the critical operations that enable the rest of the estuary program's
activities to take place.

Federal grants also may facilitate regional coordination by enabling
organizations to use federal grant dollars to leverage partner
organizations to fund administrative costs. Officials with TRANSCOM in the
New York-New Jersey region said that federal funding for technical
infrastructure and maintenance costs enabled them to leverage funding from
partner jurisdictions for administrative costs.

16 Nonattainment areas are those that do not meet or previously have not
met air quality standards for ozone, carbon monoxide, particulate matter,
or nitrogen dioxide.

17 States are required by the Clean Air Act to develop State
Implementation Plans that demonstrate how the designated area will reduce
emissions and meet air quality standards.

NCR Emergency Preparedness Effort Can Benefit from Comprehensive Planning
and Application of Standards

Our observations about regional coordination in the implementation of
federal programs in metropolitan areas we visited are applicable to the
efforts to coordinate homeland security in the NCR. Importantly, DHS' UASI
program allowed the District of Columbia, the State of Maryland, the
Commonwealth of Virginia, and regional jurisdictions to exercise a high
degree of flexibility in organizing the UASI governance structure. Based
on our review early developments, the NCR's UASI program would exhibit key
elements of successful regional coordination in UASI-related emergency
preparedness efforts. As envisioned in the current UASI plans, the NCR's
UASI program may be on the way to developing multilayered regional
coordination structures for the UASI. For example, the NCR is beginning to
use regional working groups-the Emergency Preparedness Council (EPC) and
the Chief Administrative Officers Committee (CAO), among others-to bring
stakeholders together to agree upon goals and to consider funding
allocations for regional emergency preparedness. However, at the time of
our May 2004 report, the NCR had not applied this regional coordination
structure and plans to the full array of federal homeland security grants
in the region, totaling about $340 million.18 As discussed at a September
1, 2004, meeting of the UASI governance structure's Senior Policy Group
(SPG) and CAOs committee, the UASI governance structure plans to implement
comprehensive planning by identifying funding other than UASI and
developing centralized information on the uses of those funds.

NCR UASI Program Could Demonstrate Some Elements of Successful Regional
Coordination

Based on our work in six urban areas, effective regional collaboration is
characterized by, among other things, the presence of a regional
organization of many diverse stakeholders that identifies problems and
possible solutions. The combined outcome of the collaborative interaction
of those parties is a strategic plan that is made actionable by the
presence of goals and objectives. As currently envisioned and as being
implemented in the initial stages, the NCR's UASI governance structure
appears to incorporate those features and thereby has the potential to
identify, fund, and implement emergency preparedness regionwide, rather
than having those decisions made either by one dominant jurisdiction or in
a fragmented, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction manner.

18 GAO-04-433.

As the UASI program is currently planned and implemented in the early
stages, the governance structure is bringing together various stakeholders
to identify regional emergency preparedness projects to be funded with
UASI funds, and to solicit and obtain funding priorities, other input, and
concurrence from federal, state, and local governmental stakeholders
(including first responders); the commercial sector; the not-for-profit
sector; and the health community, among others. For example, the CAO
committee uses several technical committees-e.g., police chiefs, fire
chiefs, public information officers, and health care committees-to
identify security gaps and make recommendations on how to close them.
Those recommendations are to be reviewed by the CAO committee, which is
comprised of the 19 CAOs (in effect, county executives and city and town
managers) of the Metropolitan Washington Area Council of Government's
(MWCOG) jurisdictions, and consolidated, where necessary. In addition, the
CAOs would discuss preparedness expectations for the region, including
strategic objectives and commitments to action by Maryland, Virginia, and
the District of Columbia. The CAOs would obtain UASI proposals by asking
NCR jurisdictions and technical committees to provide their top
priorities. According to the CAO Committee's chairman, those priorities
would be consolidated by the CAO committee and used to generate final,
rank-ordered funding priorities for the fiscal year 2004 UASI funds.

Under current plans, the EPC, which serves as the UASI working group,
would have the authority to approve all funding initiatives. The EPC
represents the federal, state, and local levels of government, a variety
of first responder disciplines, and the commercial and not-for-profit
sectors, among others. It meets to discuss and approve the UASI funding
recommendations that have been made by the CAO Committee.

The SPG-representing the Governors of Maryland and Virginia, the Mayor of
Washington, D.C., and the DHS Office of National Capital Region
Coordination (ONCRC)---has final budget authority over projects discussed,
recommended, and approved by the CAOs and EPC. MWCOG staff and the CAO
Committee's Chairman do not envision disagreements between the different
elements of the UASI governance structure, because they share membership
on the same committees.

Management of Most Emergency Preparedness Grants in the NCR Affected by
Lack of Comprehensive Regional Planning and Preparedness Standards

In our report and testimony of May and June 2004, respectively, we
concluded that the NCR efforts to implement an efficient and effective
regional preparedness approach were hampered by not having a coordinated
strategic plan for enhancing NCR preparedness. Moreover, the regional UASI
plan would not be based on any performance standards. Specifically, the
NCR's UASI plan could not be considered to be a comprehensive strategic
preparedness plan because it excluded non-UASI funds totaling $280 million
in fiscal years 2002 and 2003. As we reported, at the time of our May 2004
report, there existed no reliable central source of data on funds
available and expended and the purposes for which they were spent.19
Instead, those funds were allocated on a grant-by-grant basis within each
jurisdiction largely based on requests from first responder and emergency
management officials. To the extent there was consensus on regional goals
and knowledge of regional capacities, funds could be allocated in a more
coherent manner. Moreover, federal emergency preparedness grants were
often spent by each jurisdiction without considering whether assets and
resources purchased already existed in neighboring jurisdictions and could
be shared. Decisions about those purchases generally were not based on
knowledge of the current level of preparedness or requirements to reach a
desired preparedness level. According to comments provided by DHS and as
discussed at a September 1, 2004, meeting of the UASI governance
structures SPG and CAOs Committee, the UASI governance structure now plans
to address these issues by gathering information from Maryland, Virginia,
and the District of Columbia on funding sources other than UASI, how the
funds were allocated and for what purposes, and how they were distributed
by jurisdiction. In that regard, the governance structure's working group
is converting hard-copy data on funds available and expended to a
centralized database that would be fully populated by 2005. This would
help the UASI governance structure avoid duplication of funding and
leverage UASI funds to extend preparedness efforts to the entire region.
In addition, as stated in DHS' comments on our draft report and as
discussed at the September 1, 2004, meeting of the SPG and CAOs Committee,
a committee has been assigned to work on an analysis of regional
preparedness gaps that would consider the local assets that could be
applied to closing those gaps. Stakeholders at the meeting mentioned that
such a gap analysis could be based on likely scenarios that would need to
be addressed during an emergency.

19 GAO-04-433.

The NCR's UASI plan sets broad strategic goals of preventing terror
attacks, reducing the region's vulnerability to terror, and minimizing
damages and recovery from any terror attacks that do occur. The plan
endorses an eight-point agreement signed by Maryland, Virginia, and the
District of Columbia to achieve those three strategic objectives by
focusing action on (1) preventing terror; (2) promoting citizen
involvement in preparedness; (3) working in partnership to implement a
coordinated decision-making process; (4) implementing emergency protective
measures; (5) promoting a public/private partnership to protect the
infrastructure; (6) working to develop a Joint Information System for the
media; (7) enhancing mutual aid agreements, including dealing with any
liability issues; and (8) partnering to coordinate plans for terrorism and
security-related training and exercises across the area.

Concluding Observations

Federal programs frequently rely on regionally coordinated approaches to
deliver important services to program beneficiaries and clientele. This
fact is especially important in the relatively young field of homeland
security, because the urgency of addressing the terror threat calls for
effectively and efficiently managing the use of federal homeland security
grant dollars. Based on our work, we have concluded that regional
approaches to manage federal homeland security dollars help to ensure that
those funds are spent in a complementary, coordinated fashion that is
targeted at known security gaps. Our work further shows that regional
approaches to emergency preparedness and other fields are characterized by
several broad features that the federal government can encourage,
frequently through the design and requirements of its grants. These
lessons can be applied in the NCR and elsewhere to improve the management
of federal emergency preparedness grant dollars by enlisting the support
of a variety of stakeholders in identifying and supporting solutions to
preparedness requirements and targeting the use of scarce resources to
address preparedness gaps.

The federal government can encourage effective coordination in its grant
requirements in four ways:

o 	First, some federal grants require the existence and operation of a
regional collaborative organization and establish a minimum threshold of
regional collaboration by requiring a variety of stakeholders, resulting
in widespread agreement on what problems should be addressed and what
steps should be taken.

o 	Second, where favorable political and civic conditions exist, some
federal grants have allowed regional organizations to exercise flexibility
in how they operate-for example, in establishing their membership
boundaries.

o 	Third, some grants provide minimum thresholds for planning by requiring
that regional organizations prepare regional strategic plans that contain
goals and objectives that are specific and measurable. Strategic plans
provide a focal point for establishing goals and aligning resources. The
application of standards, where existent, adds a measure of precision and
measurability to a plan's goals and objectives.

o 	Fourth, some grants fund the costs of regional organizations, thereby
providing additional incentives for localities to collaborate
interjurisdictionally.

Regional approaches for homeland security continue to evolve quickly, but
the nation is still in the early stages of building institutions and
processes to address emergency preparedness. Also, the federal government
is still in the early stages of developing preparedness standards to guide
local initiatives. Based on our work and given the important role that
regional planning and governance can play in improving national
preparedness, these developments warrant continued congressional
monitoring and oversight. As local initiatives continue to evolve and
federal guidance becomes more definitive, the use of regional structures
and plans in guiding the allocation and use of all major federal homeland
security assistance will likely become more important.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to DHS and officials of the NCR's UASI
governance structure for their review and comment. DHS commented that the
report contains information that will be valuable to communities across
the country as DHS encourages regional coordination and capability
building. DHS also states that the UASI governance structure is currently
active and is not proposed or interim. We agree that the governance
structure is not proposed or interim, and we state in our report that the
regional coordination activities of the NCR's UASI governance structure
have evolved to begin to display many of the characteristics of regional
coordination. For example, our report reflects information regarding the
establishment and evolution of structures associated with the UASI
governance structure, including the Senior Policy Group, the Emergency
Preparedness Council, and the Chief Administrative Officers Committee.

DHS also remarked that, as discussed at a September 1, 2004, meeting of
the UASI Senior Policy Group and Chief Administrative Officers Committee,
the UASI governance structure will take steps to ensure that planned uses
of federal emergency preparedness funds consider all funding sources,
including non-UASI sources. Specifically, the UASI governance structure
plans to gather information from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of
Columbia on funding sources other than UASI, how the funds were allocated
and for what purposes, and how they were distributed by jurisdiction. In
that regard, the governance structure is converting hardcopy data on funds
available and expended to a centralized database that would be fully
populated by 2005. In response, we added information in our report to
reflect these refinements to the NCR's governance structure.

The Deputy Mayor/City Administrator of Washington, D.C., also provided
comments. Similar to DHS, he stated that the NCR's governance structure
reflected the building of a great deal of the foundation for meeting the
domestic preparedness challenges that affect the area. He also commented
that the NCR is unique compared to the six metropolitan areas we chose for
detailed analysis because only the NCR (1) involves two states and a
governmental entity that combines state and local functions; (2) contains
monuments and memorials that are the most visible symbols of our national
strength and patriotism that, if attacked, would create a perception of
vulnerability on the part of the federal government; and (3) is the seat
of the federal government, creating a partnership between the national
government and state and local governments. While we agree that the NCR is
an important and unique urban area, the areas we chose for detailed
analysis contain comparable features. For example, the New York City
region contains three states and a very large city; that same region, as
well as other areas we visited, also contains a significant federal
presence and many buildings and icons that could be at risk for a terror
event. Moreover, other regions we studied contained extensive partnerships
between federal, state, and local governments.

The Deputy Mayor/City Administrator also stated that the National Estuary
Program incorporates clean water standards and scientific solutions to
accomplish clean water. He stated that the federal homeland security
strategies and plans are not based on proven standards and solutions.
Hence, he concluded that the National Estuary Program is not comparable
with federal homeland security strategies and plans. We agree that the
National Estuary Program is based on existing standards and solutions;
indeed, our report notes that for the most part, standards are not yet
extant for homeland security efforts. However, the application of
standards in the

planning and implementation of the National Estuary Program is the very
reason we chose to explore and elaborate upon it. Our report notes that
the preparation and implementation of plans that have goals and objectives
that are actionable and measurable-frequently based on the application of
existing standards-is a key factor in the success of regionally
coordinated programs. Indeed, our May 2004 report on the management of
first responder grants in the NCR recommends that the Secretary, DHS,
identify and address gaps in emergency preparedness and evaluate the
effectiveness of expenditures in meeting those needs by adapting standards
and preparedness guidelines based on likely scenarios for the NCR and
conducting assessments based on them.20

As agreed with your office, unless you release this report earlier, we
will not distribute it until 30 days from the date of this letter. At that
time, we will send copies to relevant congressional committees and
subcommittees, to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and to other
interested parties. We will also make copies available to others upon
request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on GAO's
Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff has any questions about this report, please contact
me at 202-512-6806. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix
IV.

Sincerely yours,

Patricia A. Dalton Director, Strategic Issues

20 GAO-04-433.

Appendix I

Scope and Methodology

Our overall goal for this engagement was to identify features of regional
collaboration in urban areas outside of the National Capital Region (NCR)
that could be transferred to homeland security efforts in the NCR and
elsewhere. In pursuit of that overall goal, we met with representatives
and officials of the National Academy of Public Administration, the
Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, the National
Association of Regional Councils, the U.S. Department of Transportation,
and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We asked these parties to
recommend specific urban areas that, in their view, had significant
regional coordinative activities that we should examine. We also sought
out areas that presented challenges for regional coordination through such
features as having a multitude of jurisdictions within a region, an
interstate geographic area, and geographic bifurcation characterized by
the presence of a large body of water. We also obtained information
regarding factors- such as the presence of significant federal and
commercial facilities, national monuments, critical infrastructure
(bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports), population density, and
ranking as a high-threat urban area per the Department of Homeland
Security's (DHS) Urban Area Security Initiative-that indicated a
metropolitan area was at risk for a terror event.

Based on these various considerations and recommendations, we identified
the Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay, New York,
Philadelphia, and Tampa-St. Petersburg areas as sites meeting one or more
of these criteria and selected them for a more detailed analysis of
regional coordination across a variety of federal programs.

We also used information from these parties, along with a review our
previous work in the area of intergovernmental relations, to identify
federal programs with regional coordination features that could be useful
for enhancing regional emergency preparedness coordination. Based on our
assessment of this information, we selected for examination the
transportation planning program that utilizes metropolitan planning
organizations to prepare regional transportation improvement plans and
related plans to guide the expenditure of federal highway and transit
dollars. In the area of environmental protection, we selected estuary
programs in which state agencies; local governments; or other public,
nonprofit, or private agencies, research institutions, and individuals
develop programs to protect and restore coastal resources through
comprehensive planning and joint action. We also selected a homeland
security program-the Urban Area Security Initiative-that apportions
domestic preparedness funding for equipment, training, exercises, and

Appendix I Scope and Methodology

planning on the basis of a regional plan that is prepared by a regional
working group.

To meet our first objective of identifying factors of successful regional
coordination, we met with representatives of regional organizations and
with federal, state, and local government officials in the areas selected.
Regional organization representatives that we met with came from regional
councils, councils of governments, metropolitan planning organizations,
air quality districts, and estuary programs (where applicable). We also
met with local and state officials responsible for homeland security and
emergency preparedness, first responders, and other region-specific
officials with responsibility for transportation, environmental, or
homeland security planning. We asked these officials about characteristics
of their organizations and regional political and civic factors that
fostered regional coordination. We also obtained, analyzed, and followed
up on such documentation as: stakeholder lists and the decision-making
procedures of regional organizations, strategic planning documents,
indicators of progress made against program goals and objectives, and
plans for future enhancements of regional coordination.

In pursuit of the second objective of identifying features of federal
programs that enhance regional emergency preparedness coordination, we met
with local officials and officials from state emergency management
agencies at all six case study locations. We also met with federal grantor
agency officials from the Department of Transportation, the Environmental
Protection Agency, and DHS's Office of State and Local Government
Coordination and Preparedness. We obtained information and examined
documentation (i.e., program guidance, grant requirements, and reporting
requirements) about the federal guidelines and objectives for these
programs. Based on those discussions and documentation examinations, we
were also able to identify traits and characteristics that provided
incentives to state, regional, and local governmental, commercial, and
notfor-profit entities to collaborate in pursuit of public policy
purposes.

To address our third objective of examining the state of emergency
preparedness regional coordination in the NCR, we determined current NCR
regional coordination practices by meeting with officials from the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's Divisions of
Transportation, Environment (Air Quality), and Homeland Security and
Public Safety. We also met with officials from the DHS's Office of
National Capital Region Coordination and the Chair of the NCR Chief
Administrative Officers Committee, and we attended meetings of the NCR
Emergency

Appendix I Scope and Methodology

Preparedness Council as well as the Senior Policy Group and Chief
Administrative Officers Committee. We relied on oral and documentary
evidence from these officials as well as our previous review of the
management of first responder grants in the NCR to understand the state of
regional coordination in the NCR as of September 2004.

We conducted our review from July 2003 to September 2004 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Appendix II

Comments from the Department of Homeland Security

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Homeland Security

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Homeland Security

Appendix III

Comments from the Deputy Mayor and City Administrator, District of
Columbia

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������������������������������

���������������
������������������������������������

September 10, 2004

Patricia Dalton
Director, Strategic Issues
U.S. General Accounting Office
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Ms. Dalton:

As the State Administrative Agent (SAA) for the National Capital Region
(NCR), I would like to thank you for forwarding the Draft GAO report,
GAO-04-1009, entitled Homeland Security: Effective Regional Coordination
Can Enhance Emergency Preparedness

for review. This draft report was provided to the NCR to obtain advance
review and comment for subjects it discusses. We understand that the
report has not been fully reviewed within GAO and is, therefore subject to
revision. In general, the report describes factors that enhance regional
coordination in selected metropolitan areas, the features of federal
programs that enhance regional emergency preparedness coordination, and
how to incorporate regional coordination for emergency preparedness
features from other metropolitan areas into the NCR.

The report selected six metropolitan areas to examine regional
coordination. These six areas were chosen based on their vulnerability to
terror events indicated by the presence of potential targets and the level
of complexity as it relates to regional coordination. Based on the
uniqueness of the NCR, it is difficult to compare the NCR with the six
metropolitan areas identified. The following describes the differentiating
factors associated with the NCR:

o 	The NCR is the only urban area to include two states and a government
entity that serves city, county, state functions in combination (the
District of Columbia). The NCR comprises eight major jurisdictions with a
number of additional municipalities that reside within the boundaries of
these eight jurisdictions. In line with regional homeland security
coordination and the guidance set forth by the Office of Domestic
Preparedness (ODP), the NCR adopted a comprehensive governance structure
that includes elected leaders and Chief Administrative Officers (CAO's)
from each jurisdiction as well as the State Homeland Security Advisors and
Emergency Management Directors that comprise the Senior Policy Group
(SPG).

�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Appendix III
Comments from the Deputy Mayor and City
Administrator, District of Columbia

Patricia Dalton
Draft GAO report, GAO-04-1009
September 10, 2004
Page 2

o 	The NCR's monuments and memorials are some of the most visible in the
country and are symbols of national strength and patriotism. A terrorist
threat to anyone of these monuments or memorials is likely to have a major
negative psychological and emotional impact that would be felt throughout
the country and the world. This would create a perception of vulnerability
on the part of the Federal government.

o 	The NCR is also the seat of the Federal government. A partnership
exists between the NCR state and local governments and the Federal
government entities to coordinate homeland security efforts.

For these reasons, the NCR must be viewed as unique in comparison to other
urban areas designated by the Department of Homeland Security.

The report recognizes the importance of regional organizations to serve as
structured forums for diverse parties to discuss public policy problems
and agree on possible solutions. The report specifically refers to the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) multi-jurisdiction
transportation board as an example of such an organization and forum for
collaborative decision making. As discussed in the Office of National
Capital Region's response to the previous GAO report (GAO-04-433), the NCR
recognizes the importance of such an entity through the formal NCR Review
and Recommendation Process. This process ensures coordination of resources
among all jurisdictions within the NCR and utilizes MWCOG public safety
cluster committees (i.e., Law Enforcement, Fire Chief, Emergency Manager,
etc...) to ensure coordination throughout the NCR within their particular
area of expertise and provide the associated priorities and needs. This
allows the NCR to leverage longstanding tradition of interjurisdictional
coordination to provide recommendations through the regional process and
accompanying governance structure. This regional collaborative process has
been encouraged by the leadership of the NCR and has resulted in the NCR
Chief Information Officers (CIO's) to formulate a MWCOG committee to
discuss information technology issues and develop solutions as it pertains
to homeland security.

The report also recognizes the importance of strategic plans developed by
regional organizations can be effective tools to focus resources and
efforts to address problems. Such plans often contain features as goals
and objectives that are measurable and quantifiable. The report
specifically refers to the Tampa Bay Estuary Program involving multiple
entities from the private and public sectors (federal and state) to
implement solutions to cleaning up Tampa Bay on technically sound plans
that are based on measurable goals and objectives. The National Estuary
program identifies federal standards that have been established for
hazardous substances, through scientific data, that must be obtained
within the water through specific sampling methods to determine if the
Estuary is considered "clean". These standards are based on remedial
technologies (solution) that currently exist for remediating a source as
defined by the Environmental Protection Agency.

�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Appendix III
Comments from the Deputy Mayor and City
Administrator, District of Columbia

Patricia Dalton
Draft GAO report, GAO-04-1009
September 10, 2004
Page 3

The NCR recognizes the importance of technically sound plans that are
based on measurable goals and objectives when federal standards exist to
define the quantifiable standard to be met with existing remedies or
solutions. Such quantifiable federal standards currently do not exist for
defining a level of preparedness or established remedies or solutions to
meet such standards. For the reasons stated above, GAO has incorrectly
compared a well established, federal estuary program with baseline
performance measures with homeland security strategies and plans that do
not have well developed, scientifically tested, baseline performance
measures.

That said, the NCR has in place a structure to enable good planning. To
assist in future coordination efforts the SPG has developed a team to
assist in administering state and regional grant funds, and coordination
of programmatic planning and response issues. A detailed outline of theses
processes were described with the response to the draft GAO report,
GAO-04-433 entitled: Homeland Security: National Capital Region Grant
Management Issues Reflect the Need for Coordinated Planning and
Performance Standards. The processes described allow for coordinated
grants administration and strategic planning for enhancing the NCR's
preparedness, performance standards, and a reliable, central source of
data on funds available and the purpose for which they are spent.

The report further recognizes the importance of regional organizations
that reach collaborative decisions prior to receiving grant funds. As the
report points out, this avoids one party or type of party being
over-represented in the regional group or wielding too much power. As
stated on page 32 of the report, the NCR utilizes regional working groups
for collaborative decision making, as stated above when referring to the
public safety committees of MWCOG. This was also exemplified in the
September 2, 2004 CAO/SPG meeting, which GAO representatives attended to
view the NCR's collaborative decision-making process at work.

In line with regional homeland security coordination and the guidance set
forth by ODP, the NCR adopted a comprehensive governance structure that
includes the CAO's from each jurisdiction as well as SPG, which is
comprised of the homeland security advisor and the director of the
emergency management agency of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of
Columbia. This governance process is required to ensure collaborative
decision making throughout the NCR. The governance structure of the NCR is
all encompassing to include not only the strategic decision makers and the
senior leaders of the region but also the tactical decision makers, the
Public Safety department heads, and their subordinate field experts.

For all the progress made in the NCR to increase preparedness, the NCR
realizes, and your report supports the fact, that we need to continue to
implement and enhance our collaborative decision-making process and
continue to redefine our performance goals. We have already built a great
deal of the foundation for meeting the challenges noted in the report and
will continue to work toward meeting our goals.

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Appendix III
Comments from the Deputy Mayor and City
Administrator, District of Columbia

Patricia Dalton
Draft GAO report, GAO-04-1009
September 10, 2004
Page 4

Your cooperation is appreciated. If you have additional questions, please
call Steve Kral, Administrator for the Office of Homeland Security, at
(202) 727-5934.

Sincerely,

Robert C. Bobb
Deputy Mayor / City Administrator

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Appendix IV

                        GAO Contacts and Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts Patricia A. Dalton, Director, (202) 512-6806

Acknowledgments	In addition, Ernie Hazera, Joseph Byrns, Chelsa Kenney,
Laurie Latuda, Jeanine Lavender, Amy Rosewarne, Susan Sato, and Amelia
Shachoy made key contributions to this report.

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