GSA centralizes emergency response resources

The General Services Administration announced Tuesday that it has consolidated its emergency resources in a new Office of Emergency Response and Recovery.

"We can't prevent future disasters, but we can surely respond quicker, more effectively and with more resources," said GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, "and that is exactly why GSA has created this new office."

The new office will provide a central location from which GSA can support first responders, emergency workers and recovery teams, the announcement stated.

The agency's old Office of Emergency Management will be dissolved and its responsibilities reassigned to the new unit. Those duties include developing agencywide disaster readiness plans, implementing them and integrating emergency historic preservation requirements into response and recovery plans.

The new office will have four divisions and a historic preservation team. The policy and plans division will be involved in contingency and continuity of operations planning. The training division will coordinate agencies' preparedness plans, and the disaster support division will control emergency acquisitions and property management. The office's communications and security division will facilitate personnel and information security plans. The preservation team will ensure related response and recovery requirements are satisfied.

A GSA spokeswoman could not comment by late Tuesday afternoon on whether the agency will need to hire additional employees to staff the office, or on what precautions are being taken to prevent fraud, waste and abuse. The change will have little, if any, effect on GSA's budget, according to Deborah Ruiz, the spokeswoman.

"We'll be using existing resources and ... nothing will be added to the budget," Ruiz said. No budget figures were immediately available.

The new office will be run, in the interim, by GSA Chief of Staff John Phelps.

In the agency's announcement, Phelps, who became chief of staff in July, said the new office's creation "further defined our [emergency] capabilities." Ruiz said Phelps would not be available for further comment.