Inter-Agency Collaboration to Facilitate Cross-Departmental

¶ … inter-agency collaboration to facilitate cross-departmental efforts to deliver emergency preparedness response including an integration of the Housing for Urban Development program to the National Disaster Housing Strategy. The research shows that Federal policies administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and the Housing of Urban Development, proved ineffective in handling the emergencies faced domestically, notably the lack of a coordinated response to Hurricane Katrina. The Federal emergency response is contingent on the integrated network of communications linkage between the responsible agencies and inter-agency collaboration has shown to be the framework to enable coordinated responses to mitigate future disasters.

Background

Since the creation of modern government administration, Federal Inter-agency Planning has been non-existent in the framework of departmental management in government affairs. This assertion has indirectly resulted in necessary collaborative inter-agency efforts to yield long-term recovery efforts after a federally declared disaster. In part, the history in the development of emergency inter-agency disaster collaboration has arisen from the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes. "Because of the many stakeholders involved in recovery, including all levels of government, it is critical to build collaborative relationships." (Czerwinkski, 2009)

Research into emergency response performance information revealed strategic changes that will enable more efficient and effective recovery efforts in future disaster responses. A report generated via collaborative efforts involving intergovernmental relations between federal, state, and local government, and an inter-agency effort between the cabinet level federal agencies bullet-pointed specific initiatives that will impact recovery efforts. Namely, these include the creation of an implementable recovery plan, provide the resources to facilitate state and local government autonomy where federal assistance can be afforded, create and implement disaster related business recovery plans, and collaboratively create a plan that eliminates fraud, waste, and abuse in government administration.

A national response framework will enhance these collaborative and facilitate a comprehensive network of emergency response systems for federally declared disaster areas. The framework conceptualizing the strategy of the system involves mitigating the responsibility of the limited state and local resources in severe catastrophes where loss of life and loss of property are considerable and widespread. Therefore, the framework identifies groups that are pertinent to integrate into a network of response organizations to assist when disaster occurs. "Thus, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from major disasters requires partnerships between the federal government and non-federal stakeholders, such as state, local, and tribal governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations." (GAO, 2008)

The DHS issued the National Response Plan late in 2004 (December) to align local, state, and federal level efforts to maximize national disaster emergency response. The National Response Framework is derived from the efforts of the plan and was published in 2008 (January). The NRF is a directive to instruct disaster response relief effort between public and non-public agents, such as coordinating response efforts from government and nongovernmental and private sector organizations.

The Emergency Support Function (ESF) does "provide the structure for coordinating Federal interagency support for a Federal response to an incident." (FEMA, 2008) ESF's facilitate intergovernmental emergency disaster response relations by enabling Federal assistance to the State level including Federal to Federal support as defined for Federally declared emergencies under the Stafford Act and for non-Stafford Act emergencies. ESFs are designed to maximize operations in fifteen areas. "Transportation, Communications, Public Works and Engineering, Firefighting, Emergency Management, Mass Care Emergency Assistance, Housing, and Human Services, Logistics Management and Resource Support, Public Health and Medical Services, Search and Rescue, Oil and Hazardous Materials Response, Agricultural and Natural Resources, Energy, Public Safety and Security, Long-Term Community Recovery, External Affairs." (FEMA, 2008) ESFs are branched off into factional segments that identify and coordinate the primary and secondary disaster response. Each component of the ESF segment provides an effective transition "between preparedness, response and recovery activities." (FEMA, 2008)

The National Disaster Housing Strategy (NDHS) provides housing to disaster relief victims and identifies a new direction to better satisfy the needs of affected disaster relief victims and communities. Secondly, the NDHS ensures disaster housing efforts utilize emergency technologies and novel ideas to develop and design an assortment of housing strategies leading to a variety of options for to fit the diverse needs of displaced disaster victims. Practices also ensure that efforts remain cost effective and performance-based to ensure best practices remain followed. "Above all, this new direction must institutionalize genuine collaboration and cooperation among the various, local, State, tribal, and Federal partners, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to meet the needs of all disaster victims." (FEMA, 2009)

However, current efforts in providing housing to disaster victims vary in the scope of disaster and range from the provision of short-term shelters to permanent housing in severe cases. Severe disaster relief efforts such as the efforts provided to aid the relief victims of Hurricane Katrina presented long-term housing challenges for the organization to provide housing to a large number of families over a sustained period of time. In such cases, "The Federal Government stands alongside the States as an engaged partner, maintaining disaster housing resources and ready to deploy those resources, if required, to fill any gap." (FEMA, 2009)

Disaster Management, Recovery and Interagency Collaboration

Management of Natural Disasters is amongst the most inherently problematic of public policy challenges. Indeed, disaster management hinges often on the occurrence of uncontrollable events and the intercession of these events with human subjects. Disaster management will concern the preparations for defense against disaster, the activation of strategies for the minimization of disaster casualties and the capacity to respond to disaster in all contingencies.

The attendance to these responsibilities requires a concerted and continuous recognition of that which is likely in the event of 'predictable' disasters, such as those, which are naturally occurring and related to detectable presumptive evidence. Therefore, post-disaster strategy has traditionally instigated the investigatory appendages of public governance as a means to delivering a final statement on the causes of a disaster, used as a source for deriving recommendations for future defense, casualty minimization, and responsiveness in the event of a similar disaster.

To this end, governments have often as a knee jerk response to any evidence of disaster mismanagement unleashed the "public inquiry" as a means to better understanding 'what went wrong' and, thereafter, engaging in widespread administrative reorganization in order address perceived challenges. Quite frequently however -- and particularly in the United States, where skepticism of public officials is fairly high -- public inquiry falls well short of addressing the full scope of public interests and, as a consequence, strategies for interagency collaboration often fall short of critical disaster management goals. A discussion on the National Response Framework as it has been reorganized in light of both the 11th of September attacks and Hurricane Katrina reveals that on many levels reveals the many bureaucratic obstacles which stand in the way of proper interagency collaboration.

NRP & IMPT

Certainly, this is a claim that reinforces the article by Hayhurst et al. (2010) that describes that aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Council put forth several directives to the National Response Plan (NRP) to buttress and enable the ability of the Federal Governments emergency preparedness response system to domestic disaster areas. A function of this reorganization of the NRP, a 'permanent planning element' would be established and labeled as the Incident Management Planning Team (IMPT).

This new on-call staff of emergency responders is a product of the Homeland Security Department. According to Hayhurst, "the IMPT is part of a larger, collaborative planning effort under development at the Department of Homeland Security. The IMPT collaborates with other planning elements in the Department to establish a shared planning system with the long-term objective of establishing a homeland security planning community within a shared national planning system." (p. 2) the IMPT has evolved into the Integrated Planning System with the goal of enabling guidance to administer interagency compliance to the system. "DHS began developing the Integrated Planning System in December 2007 and implemented an interim version in June 2008." (Brown et al., pg 9)

Failure in Coordinated Disaster Response

The overall attainment of these goals does remain unknown. However, it is clear that massive failure on the part of the federal government both at distributing its resources and at maximizing the optimal use of local or state resources would contribute to widespread suffering after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. Some research would also proceed on the argument that this was evidenced following the 9/11 attacks as well, with the federal government demonstrating a clear lack of preparedness to coordinate and mobilize local-level first-responders, emergency relief and disaster management personnel.

Harrald (2006) indicates this failure on the part of the federal government, contending that the reports, which would be forthcoming from the tragedies in New Orleans and elsewhere, were demonstrative of this breakdown in essential federal responsibilities. Harrald reports the finding that "a catastrophic incident may cause significant disruption of the area's critical infrastructure, such as energy, transportation, telecommunications, and public health and medical systems.' The total loss of infrastructure in New Orleans is one of the main discriminators between this event and the prior near-catastrophic events in U.S. history such as Hurricane Andrew and the Northridge earthquake. Post-9/11 infrastructure protection investments have focused on increasing the security of infrastructure, not in increasing its resilience." (p. 258)

Certainly, these breakdowns are an indication that many of the interagency strategies brought to bear in the discussion on public administration had not been executed effectively, especially those intended to coalesce under the roof of the Department of Homeland Security. A quick review of the disaster management failures of Katrina are appropriate here. Accordingly, for five days after the landfall and passage of Hurricane Katrina, hordes of people stranded in New Orleans continued to wait for some indication that the federal government would soon be provided relief. Stranded and contained in horrific conditions in the city's football arena, the Superdome, which had been converted to a makeshift evacuation shelter with woefully insufficient supplies and accommodations for the tens of thousands who sought refuge there, those without the means to leave town paid the consequences of the city's incapacity to the facilitate an evacuation on the scale necessitated. Thousands of others, who had attempted either by choice or the absence of any other reasonable option to ride the storm out in their homes, were forced onto their roofs by two stories of flooding. Many of these citizens remained here for days without food, water or contact, waiting for helicopter rescue teams.

In the midst of this chaos, the absence of FEMA representatives, a military emergency management team, adequate supplies, food or water grew more urgent and more inexplicable as hours turned into days. While television cameras rolled, a predominantly African-American population waited on highway embankments, in front of the New Orleans Convention Center, in hospitals, in their homes and in the airport terminal without medication, sustenance or relief from unsanitary conditions and blistering temperatures. With so many infants, elderly and infirm relegated to these circumstances for such an extended duration, "instances of storm survivors dying before they could be rescued and evacuated have added to criticism of the problems in the recovery operation." (SR 2005, p.1)

President Bush did not offer any public indication that federal leadership was orienting a plan or enacting one which would segue into a recovery effort. In a five day lapse that seemed to worsen each day, with simultaneous crises of looting, violence, crime, an absence of central law enforcement and with no on-site leadership or plan of action, the people of New Orleans were failed by overlapping neglect of multiple government agencies, and more particularly by the National Response Plan deployed since the 9/11 attacks.

Here, in the days to follow Hurricane Katrina, many different levels of government would point fingers at one another for the dramatic shortfall on responsibility. However, the distinctly high levels of statewide poverty in impacted contexts such as Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and Alabama suggests that these have lacked the necessary resources to manage such disasters without sufficient federal involvement. Indeed, the text by McCarthy (2009) identifies this as one of the central functions of the federal government where disaster management is concerned, arguing that "states can be victims of an event that can greatly diminish their ability to assist in housing victims of major disasters or emergencies. But beyond the impact of a disaster in a state is the fact that, while all states are equal in rights, they are not necessarily equal in their capacity to respond. Nor do all states make the equivalent commitment to disaster recovery work, including sheltering and housing." (McCarthy, p. 3)

In the Wake of Katrina

As the realities of Hurricane Katrina's long-term damage became apparent, it was clear that states were lacking in the resources to address housing issues for all impacted citizens and that the federal government would be ill-prepared even after its botched relief efforts to provide meaningful assistance in these areas. A consideration of some of the correspondences relating to interagency agreement relating to housing matters shows the disconnect between various government agencies all responding to the same problem. For instance, we consider the departure between two different correspondences proceeding from the umbrella United States Department of Housing and Urban Development as it navigates its new role. In one correspondence, the HUD strongly recommends servicing actions for homeowners whose properties were directly affected by the disaster. This includes such actions as special forbearance, mortgage modification, refinancing, and waiver of late charges." (Montgomery, p. 3)

This denotes HUD's initial policy as a way of bringing disaster relief through a federal moratorium on certain financial actions against effected homeowners. However, this relief seems to be openly contrasted by a correspondence where it is reported that "the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) no longer provides the Mortgage Assistance Payments referred to in Mortgagee Letters 2004-37, 2004-36, and 2004-32. FHA recently became aware that this program was terminated." (Weicher, p. 1) the divergent interests of these policies suggests that HUD has not reconciled effectively its role as an umbrella agency to the benefit of those impacted by poor state or local-level disaster management capabilities. The divergence shown above between the selected correspondences is indicative of the federal balking at responsibility for the long-term management of events such as Hurricane Katrina.

Certainly, one is inclined to speculate with some doubt as to the effectiveness of refinements to this NRP following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. This is because indications that the federal government had failed to provide the necessary quantity of resources to disaster relief management are fully absent from the Public Inquiry. There are additional subject omissions from the inquiry which concern public understanding of the events as the occurred. To this extent, budgetary failures are seen as having led to the devastation of New Orleans, from a long-term downward momentum of funding for Army Corps of Engineers projects intended to strengthen levies and reinforce dams in New Orleans to a sustained trend of neglect for infrastructural needs in a city geographically located almost fully beneath sea-level. (Roberts 2005, p. 1)

And this points further to a set of absolutely crucial omissions from consideration in the public inquiry that, as a result, will leave gaping holes in the overall portrait of the events and implications surrounding the disaster in question. In particular, it is clear that FEMA was an agency remarkably spared the scrutiny which it justly deserved. Given that its appointed head, Michael Brown would be forced to resign within two weeks of the disaster, that FEMA would simply be considered euphemistically symptomatic of the need for stronger communicational coordination between government agencies full ignores the extensive indications that FEMA exhibited a lack of experience and organizational wherewithal suggesting the current incapacity of the umbrella Department of Homeland Security. (AP 2006, 1) This is a clear demonstration that interagency collaboration cannot simply be imposed through bureaucratic restructuring. Genuine communication must occur at multiple levels in order to facilitate preparedness on the federal, state and local level for such massive disaster recovery tasks.

According to this point, Kapucu (2006) speaks to one of the core challenges in this area of civic management, describing a scenario in which the performance of federal emergency management duties is highly dependent on the appropriate level of communication and interaction with core local agencies and stakeholders in achieving preparedness. Here, Kapucu remarks that recent major disasters have highlighted the importance of this functionality, indicating that "an important lesson from the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster is that although the response activities undertaken by official emergency agencies were crucial, those activities constituted only part of the picture. Equally significant was the manner in which these agencies interacted with and obtained support from nonemergency organizations." (Kapucu, p. 207)

In the article's case study on the response actions relating to the WTC attacks, Kapucu identifies effective communication tactics as a primary determinant in the effectiveness of disaster response and emergency management efforts. Still, the dialogue that would follow in the broad spectrum of literature sources on the subject would attempt to evaluate and advise the government in its efforts to reorganize and adapt to changing demands. In doing so, much literature would point, as does that by Harrald, to the degree to which the federal government has failed to serve as a leader in promoting preparation and long-term resource stability in disaster management. Here, Harrald remarks that "extreme events that require a coordinated federal response to avoid catastrophic failures resulting from the overwhelming of state and local resources. As stated by Roberts (2005, 4), this is one of the primary reasons that a government exists." (Harrald, 258)

NRP & NRF

The federal government has recognized this failure to the extent that in 2008, the National Response Plan (NRP) would be replaced with the National Response Framework (NRF). With it would come renewed efforts at bringing coordination and communication about between umbrella federal agencies and state, local or communities stakeholders. The Framework would be focused on providing clear procedural guidelines for effective coordination and communication between collaborating agencies. Accordingly, Petersen et al. (2008) indicate that the "NRF provides guidance for conducting all-hazards emergency response. The framework describes specific statutory and executive authorities, and what DHS describes as "best practices" for managing incidents that range from the serious but purely local, to large-scale terrorist attacks or catastrophic natural disasters. DHS says that NRF focuses particularly on how the federal government is organized to support communities and states in catastrophic incidents." (p. 5)

Many of the correspondences which have been reviewed for this research have been produced by HUD with the intent of communicating between agencies regarding these roles. The correspondences reveal both the primary way that information is distributed to the collaborating agencies falling under the HUD umbrella and demonstrate the continued need for the defining of roles in a the newly organized interagency scenario. So is this demonstrated in the correspondence by Weicher1 (2005) which advises, "when the President declares a disaster, HUD participants must check with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to learn which counties have been designated for disaster recovery and the corresponding declaration dates." (p. 1)

The Importance of Inter-Agency Coordination

Other anonymous sources such indicate that HUD has colloquially used a 'boots on the ground' strategy to lead coordination efforts in the face of disaster. Ostensibly, depending on the damages of a disaster, HUD may elect to create a 'command center' to facilitate disaster relief efforts, and address technical questions from HUD employees relayed from the public and industry officials that span program areas, or are unique to a particular disaster. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, HUD initiated the Hurricane Recovery and Response Center (HRRC)

It is incumbent upon us to return to recognition of the failures that were endemic during the management efforts in the face of Katrina. As a result, we must conclude that such tactics as the use of a local command center would be highly blunted by the absence of advanced preparation or coordination. Here, communication and response management would occur on the fly, suggesting that there remains a greater burden upon the federal government to incorporate a more preemptive strategic orientation into collaboration with local and community level stakeholders. This is an argument which is endorsed in the research conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) (2007). The GAO would find that because of its poor level of preemptive communication and collaboration with agencies and groups at the state, local or community level, it would lack the proper strategic foundation or abilities to effectively manage such catastrophic events as the Katrina disaster.

The GAO reports that "federal agencies generally lacked plans for providing shelter and temporary housing in response to catastrophic disaster such as Hurricane Katrina and Rita but have since taken some steps to improve their response capabilities. Some ESF-6 support agencies had not developed operational plans for meeting their ESF-6 responsibilities, and while they were ultimately able to contribute much-needed assistance, it was not as timely as it might have been." (GAO, p. 1)

In this assessment, we can begin to conclude that what was truly a problem of preparation, communication and coordination manifested in a critical shortfall of resources, manpower and relief facilities. Though improvements are believed to have been made in this system since that time, the mismanagement and absence of preemptive planning in the Katrina scenario have led to a sustained housing crisis for the areas effected. This denotes that the consequences of mismanagement in disaster relief efforts are likely to be sustained as a burden to states and municipalities well beyond the departure of federal emergency responders.

This speaks to the resident uncertainty driving this research discussion, which reflects on the as yet unproved state of the newly developed National Recovery Framework. Its focus appears to be on a greater effort at creating the necessary preparation at the state, local and community level for disaster management through a high level of federal interaction and resource distribution. This means that agencies such as FEMA, HUD and DHS must all achieve a greater comfort with the implications preemptive disaster management by seeking more cohesive, streamlined and humanitarian ways of collaborating with more localized tiers of governance. Disaster management is both the responsibility of the federal government and the challenge facing the impacted state and local governments. As the federal government dedicates its efforts to reorganization and the removal of barriers between agencies, the next major disaster in the United States will be a tremendous test of how far it has come since the failures of Hurricane Katrina.