FEMA focused on natural disasters, not terrorism, GAO says

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is doing a better job preparing communities for natural disasters, but needs to evaluate the effectiveness of its terrorism readiness program, according to a report from the General Accounting Office. FEMA met the majority of its performance goals related to preventing and reducing the damage caused by future natural disasters in its fiscal 2000 performance report, said GAO in its July study, "FEMA: Status of Achieving Key Outcomes and Addressing Major Management Challenges" (GAO-01-832). Despite the agency's progress in helping local communities prepare for Mother Nature's wrath, GAO criticized FEMA for not providing enough information on how well it met its goals in other areas, including terrorism preparedness. Under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, agencies must have strategic plans and prepare annual performance plans and reports. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., asked GAO to assess the largest federal agencies' fiscal 2000 performance reports and determine how well agencies were achieving their key goals. FEMA's performance goals for 2001 were to minimize human suffering and property losses after natural disasters; provide timely responses to disaster aid requests; and prevent or reduce devastation caused by future disasters. GAO said both the fiscal 2000 performance report and fiscal 2002 performance plan were improvements over the 1999 report and the 2001 plan. GAO praised FEMA for meeting performance goals, such as cooperating with 11 agencies and several communities on disaster mitigation initiatives, and completing seven hurricane evacuation studies. FEMA also improved its Results Act reporting by consolidating related goals, including one to support disaster resistance initiatives in communities and states. But the agency did not have any performance measures in place to evaluate the effectiveness of its terrorism preparedness program. Under the government's federal response plan for managing major disasters, including those caused by terrorism, FEMA is responsible for providing state and local emergency management personnel with training and guidance. In its fiscal 2000 performance report, FEMA reported that it created an Office of Terrorism, and listed five other performance goals related to coordinating federal, state and local terrorism preparedness efforts, but failed to develop criteria in its fiscal 2002 performance plan to gauge how effective those efforts are. FEMA will most likely tighten its Results Act reporting on its terrorism preparedness initiatives in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to JayEtta Z. Hecker, director of physical infrastructure issues at GAO. "It is clear that they have a substantial management challenge [with regard to terrorism]; it is probably the biggest single challenge the organization has ever faced, " Hecker said. "The agency is undergoing a fundamental broadening of its mission because of the significant man-made disaster that the agency has had to respond to, and for the future ones it will have to plan for." But Hecker acknowledged that measuring performance goals in areas like terrorism preparedness is tricky. "It is not an easy area to measure and develop outcomes for, because they are outcomes you want to prevent," she said. FEMA's success in meeting performance goals associated with minimizing human suffering and property loss due to natural disasters and providing timely responses to disaster aid requests was more mixed, according to the GAO report. The agency failed to fully meet five of the 10 goals related to the minimizing loss outcomes, and GAO could not determine whether two goals had been met based on FEMA's information. For example, one goal--to enhance recovery efforts by expediting disaster operations through the National Emergency Management Information System--does not discuss the system's weaknesses, according to GAO. FEMA did manage to meet its goal for processing disaster declaration requests within an average of 8.3 days, and achieved an 85 percent customer satisfaction rating for parts of its Public Assistance Program, which provides supplemental federal disaster grant assistance to state and local governments, Indian tribes and certain nonprofit organizations to repair and replace damaged buildings, the report said.