Inter-agency collaboration and the National Disaster Housing Strategy response

¶ … 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)

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.

National Disaster Housing Strategy (NDHS)

The Department of Housing and Urban Development was enabled by Congress to establish working groups and relationships with Federal housing agencies and authorities such as the Federal lending institutions and other stakeholders including FEMA, VA, DOT, USDA, HHS, and the commerce and building departments of local governments, and the housing authority within metropolis'. The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 or (PKEMRA), "provided new authorities for FEMA to offer disaster case management services, established a disabilities coordinator position at FEMA, authorized a rental repair program, and expanded the authority for permanent construction." (FEMA, 2009) for instance, following a disaster, temporary housing officials seek to maximize scarce resources therefore the most efficient option is to provide for rental assistance as an interim housing option when such supply is available. However, such a supply is not always available in the affected area, which requires a coordinated effort to provide housing options to disaster victims in a timely fashion. To identify a solution to this quandary, an interagency agreement between the Federal agencies FEMA and HUD to enable a pilot test of a comprehensive housing assistance grant program under the auspice of the Federal government. A comprehensive strategy facilitated under the auspices of the Stafford Act, in support of the DHS, FEMA, and involving the response, recovery, and mitigation from disasters. As directed under the National Response Framework, FEMA communicates with the State government to facilitate Federal disaster response efforts. "Under this Strategy, FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will partner to provide Federal interim housing assistance, each bringing its expertise and experience to bear." (FEMA, 2009) Additionally however, when Federal permanent housing assistance is required, the HUD holds the responsibility under the prevailing strategy to provide housing and developmental resources to the affected community. FEMA provides strategies and coordinates the service of delivery for Federal sheltering assistance and collaborates with HUD in facilitating interim housing assistance, and enables HUD's responsibility to provide permanent housing. "HUD's network of 4,000 Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) provide 1.2 million units of subsidized housing and approximately 2 million housing vouchers to low-income families." (FEMA, 2009)

Leadership & Inter-Agency Team Dynamics

The dynamics of Disaster Management and National Security issues increases the urgency of effective policy and coordination of management and security in these areas. The effective creation of policy and enforceable regulation is critical to the operations of the joint departmental efforts between FEMA, HUD, and additional entities when appropriate.

The type of effective leadership needed to harness the ability of interagency teams is presented in research by Peter Drucker. "Teams are very much in vogue. It is, therefore, important to know not only when the team is the appropriate design principle but what kind of team is appropriate for a given task." (Hayhurst et al., 2010) Drucker points to the integral design inherent in team dynamics and team construction. The team is only enabled to perform its task successfully when assembled in the proper syndicate form. This can be demonstrated by "DHS Operations, Coordination and Planning supports a unified inter-agency planning effort for incidents requiring an unified national response and develops strategic guidance, concepts, and plans which are used for actual or potential domestic incidents." (Hayhurst et al., 2010) the critical nature of leadership in interagency team development and building activities is that it spurs innovation, a necessary function in the ongoing collaboration and integration of plan activity. "The majority of transfer of innovation and of the knowledge associated with it occurs, however, through those elements known as inter-organizational learning mechanisms, that is to say t hose cases in which the link is not represented by a physical or legal entity or other subject." (Lega, 2003)

Disaster Recovery Planning

The Department of Disaster Recovery Planning understands the unpredictable nature of natural disasters. "Disaster Recovery Planning is the factor that makes the critical difference between the organizations that can successfully manage crises with minimal cost and effort and maximum speed, and those that are left picking up the pieces for untold lengths of time and at whatever cost providers decide to charge; organizations forced to make decision out of desperation.

Residential properties are only half of the story when it comes to disaster relief recovery efforts. Commercial properties also suffer losses due to disasters and are often overlooked in the recovery effort due to a lack of logistical connection to the chain of services available at the Federal level to enable the business at the local level of response. "Not many years ago when a business wanted to find the ways to prepare against disaster and ensure business continuity should catastrophe strike, the bulk of the organization's time, money, and effort would be spent on ways that disasters could (hopefully) be avoided altogether.