Plan B

The Federal Emergency Management Agency assumes a larger role in advance preparations.

Mike Mason doesn't have to remind federal executives in the Houston area that emergency planning is critical. Nature takes care of that.

The Veterans Affairs Department's medical facility in the region, for instance, used its plan four years ago in the aftermath of tropical storm Allison. Floods incapacitated neighboring hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, an 800-acre cluster of patient care, educational and research facilities, requiring the VA facility to accept extra patients.

The VA isn't alone. All seven federal agencies with Houston area field offices employing more than 1,000 people have relied on continuity of operations plans in emergencies, says Mason, director of the Houston Federal Executive Board. But even though contingency planning is old hat for the area's managers, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed the landscape, prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take a more active part in advance preparations.

A 1998 Clinton directive put FEMA in charge of ensuring that the government is prepared to continue such essential services as issuing weather reports and air traffic control even if a terrorist attack or natural disaster destroys key buildings. But until Sept. 11, FEMA functioned more as a response agency, moving food, water and supplies into the Houston area after disasters, Mason says.

Following the attacks, however, the agency became heavily involved in training agencies to write and test COOP plans. The agency-now part of the Homeland Security Department-bolstered headquarters staff and sent representatives to each of 10 regions. Mason now talks to FEMA representatives based in Denton, Texas, on a weekly basis. A FEMA representative also sits in with the Federal Executive Board's emergency preparedness committee.

"Everything we've needed them to do, they've been ready and willing to do," Mason says of FEMA.

Together with the Office of Personnel Management, the General Services Administration and a COOP working group, FEMA designed a three-day course to train managers to educate workers on emergency preparedness. Since July 2004, 682 federal, state and local officials have completed the course.

FEMA is encouraging managers to test classroom skills in emergency drills, says Reynold Hoover, director of the agency's Office of National Security Coordination. A year ago, FEMA spearheaded the first wide-scale COOP exercise. During the three-day drill, called "Forward Challenge 2004," about 2,500 representatives from 45 agencies practiced relocating and working from alternative facilities.

Similar drills will occur every other year, with the next planned for spring 2006. Meanwhile, agencies can use a FEMA template to run their own regional drills.

FEMA also has updated COOP guidelines in Federal Preparedness Circular 65. The June 2004 modifications flesh out instructions for identifying essential work and ask agency officials to consider telework as an option for continuing services. They also incorporate information from two 2001 circulars-one on COOP tests, training and exercises, and the other on acquiring backup facilities.

In an April report and congressional testimony, the Government Accountability Office, which last year criticized FEMA for failing to provide adequate COOP guidance to agencies, praised the enhanced training efforts and updates to preparedness guidelines. But GAO recommended that FEMA do a better job of evaluating whether agencies' plans meet them.

Hoover isn't that interested in how the plans appear on paper. "The more important thing is assessing ability to [carry out] the plan," he says. "That to me is where the rubber meets the road."

In Houston, agencies are doing just that. Though tropical storms have given the area's 107 federal offices practice, officials have decided to run regular drills based on made-up scenarios. The region conducted its first simulated exercise last year and has another two-day exercise planned for June. One might think the agencies wouldn't need the extra tests, but last year's exercise left the majority saying they wanted to tweak their plans, Mason says. COOP planning, he notes, is "always a work in progress."