departmentwide plans, FEMA has not updated its strategic plan to reflect its
integration into the DHS organization.
9
FEMA developed its strategic plan
prior to implementation of the
Homeland Security Act
and the creation of
DHS. DHS has established specific metrics for response and recovery
response time, customer satisfaction, program delivery cost, and disaster
assistance cycle time. However, as demonstrated in Figure 4, FEMA's
strategic plan fails to identify such metrics, and therefore is not in line with
DHS direction.
DHS
DHS
FE
FEM
MA
A
Response Metrics
Response Metrics
Response Time
Response Time
Not Aligne
Not Aligned
d
No Re
No Response Time
sponse Time Met
ric
Metric
Recovery
Recovery Metric
Metricss
Cus
Custtomer
om Sat
er
i
Satissffactio
actionn
Not Aligne
Not Aligned
d
Cust
Customer Sat
om
i
er Satisf
sfaction
action
((N
Noo Sp
Speeci
ciffic
ic M
Meetr
triics
cs))
Progra
Program D
m Deli
e ver
livery
y Cost
Cost
Not Aligne
Not Aligned
d
No Deli
No De very
li
Cost
very
Me
Cost
tric
Me
s
trics
Identif
Iden ies Need
tifies Need for
for
Dis
Disaster Assistanc
aster Assistance
e
Not Aligne
Not Aligned
d
Perfor
Performance Standards
mance Standards
Cy
Cycle Tim
cl
e
e Time
(N
(No Standards Defined)
o Standards Defined)
Figure 4: DHS and FEMA Response and Recovery Metrics Not Aligned
A planning official said that FEMA uses both the DHS strategic plan and
FEMA's outdated plan. Use of both plans may lead to ambiguous guidance
and direction. For example, the two plans identify different metrics to
measure improvement in the federal government's ability to respond quickly
when states are overwhelmed by a disaster. The DHS plan sets the goal of 12
hour response time for emergency response teams and 24 hour logistics
response time by 2009. In contrast, FEMA's plan establishes a goal to
respond concurrently to four catastrophic and twelve non catastrophic
disasters by 2008. Although it began updating its strategic plan in mid 2004
to reflect the organizational changes and new performance expectations,
9
Circular A 11, Part 6,
Preparing and Submitting a Strategic Plan
, Executive Office of the President, Office of
Management and Budget, June 2005.
Emergency Preparedness and Response Could Better Integrate Information Technology
with Incident Response and Recovery
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