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Government Leader home > news stories
08/11/06
Paulison's Pointers
By Stephen Barr
Special to Government Leader
The future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being shaped by the past—Hurricane Katrina, of course.
The new FEMA director, R. David Paulison, left little doubt that Katrina, which devastated New Orleans a year ago, still swirls around the agency. “You can’t hurt my feelings, you can’t embarrass me, I’m way beyond that,” Paulison told reporters during a recent visit to Florida with the president.
FEMA’s sluggish and, at times, confused, response to Katrina ignited congressional investigations and legislative proposals to overhaul the agency and even change its name. At least 49 bills have been introduced in Congress that focus on FEMA and related issues, according to the Library of Congress Web site.
For federal managers who are suddenly given the responsibility to turn around a program or agency, Paulison’s press briefing provides some helpful hints on how to deal with the fallout of a crisis. Among Paulison’s pointers:
- Get the support and personal involvement of the president. “That has helped me tremendously in getting things moving and getting things on the road,” he told the reporters.
Take stock of the landscape. As Paulison put it, “What didn’t work in Katrina, what things went wrong, what things worked okay but we could have done a lot better.” Paulison said he found a breakdown in communications inside the federal government and between other levels of government. Federal responders did not have enough satellite communication equipment and video capability to use in capturing and sharing information, he said. The FEMA logistics operation also “didn’t have enough equipment, didn’t have the ability to get it where it needed to be.” Paulison said he can deploy 800 tractor-trailer loads of MREs, or meals ready to eat, up from the 160 trailer loads available for Katrina. FEMA has purchased 20,000 satellite-tracking devices so that lost trucks can be located quickly. FEMA has also contracted with the Defense Logistics Agency to restock FEMA’s warehouses as supplies are moved out.
- Prevent waste, fraud and abuse. FEMA gave out $2,000 to people for the purchase of clothes, personal items and food. But investigators found substantial abuse, with people applying dozens of times. FEMA has hired an identity verification company to check on applicants and, for the next big storm, will cut back the initial amount provided a family to $500. “This is still going to be a very, very compassionate organization, but we have to put some financial controls in to make sure we don’t have the waste, fraud and abuse that we had last time,” Paulison said. FEMA also is writing contracts ahead of time “so we’ve got them on the shelf,” he said. That will help avoid the use of no-bid contracts, which Congress heavily criticized as inappropriate and a factor in wasteful spending by the agency.
- Improve customer service. FEMA will be able to register up to 200,000 disaster victims a day, twice the number registered during Katrina, “so people won’t get that busy signal every time they call,” Paulison said. FEMA will put staffers in shelters to register victims “so that we know where they are, we know who they are, and we know what their needs are,” he said. Accurate and timely registration will help FEMA track people and make sure they receive the support they need. Paulison is converting five mobile command posts into registration centers, staffed with employees, laptop computers and cell phones. FEMA also is revising its debris remove policies and will reimburse communities at the same rate regardless of whether they use the Army Corps of Engineers or bring in contractors. To help communities, FEMA has set up a registry for debris contractors that shows their capabilities, including how many trucks they have and what kind of work they have done in the past.
- Ramp up. Congressional investigators faulted FEMA for staff shortages in critical areas, and Paulison has pushed to fill key jobs and beef up staffing. But it is a tough task for the agency, which loses 30 employees a month, mostly because of retirements and transfers to other agencies. At headquarters, FEMA has a new director of recovery and a new director of response; in the field, there are fewer acting officials, and six of 10 regional directors are permanent, full-time employees. FEMA has not met Paulison’s overall hiring goals, but agency spokesman Aaron Walker said “we’ve had a growth rate of 15 percent to 17 percent in real terms since March. We think that is pretty outstanding.” FEMA is authorized to have 2,215 employees this year, and, as of Aug. 7, had 1,875 people on board.
FEMA’s management problems cannot be fixed in a matter of months, but Paulison believes the agency must respond more quickly to disasters in the future. “FEMA has got to be a more agile, more flexible organization than it has been in the past, and that’s what we want it to be,” he said.
Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column for The Washington Post and hosts an online discussion, Federal Diary Live, at washingtonpost.com.
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