FEMA

Almost 40 years ago, the Forest Service developed a command-and-control approach to battling forest fires that was successful in coordinating efforts across multiple jurisdictions and fire departments.  Its approach was adopted by other agencies to address their own forms of emergencies. For example, USDA uses it to battle infestations of crop-killing insects.

When Carter Hewgley joined FEMA in 2011, the organization was focused on two things, the timely delivery of services and the processes required to collect and organize all the resources to support those services. FEMA was a “disaster-driven” organization, more focused on responding to the next emergency, rather than reviewing the lessons learned from a previous emergency. Although there were “analytical cells” across the agency and programs, enterprise-level analytical capability was still at its infancy.

In this final installment, we provide highlights from these federal leaders on the most important ingredients for a successful analytics program. (You can watch the video of the panel discussion and listen to each of the seven podcast interviews too.) The executives profiled complex programs in several agencies that have a wide impact on citizens, who benefit greatly from leveraging data as a strategic asset in program operations. What follows are some highlights from those executives on salient take-aways for government and stakeholder groups who are implementing key data-driven programs.

Collaboration is one of the key elements of President Obama’s signature Open Government Initiative. However, federal agencies’ Open Government Plans don’t seem to address it very well. But collaboration expert Russ Linden says “collaboration is vital, difficult, and learnable.” And he’s written a book that makes all three of these points.

A Conversation with W. Craig Fugate, FEMA Administrator

In the last decade, whether as a result of natural or manmade disasters the nation’s emergency response apparatus has faced enormous challenges. Overcoming these challenges and forging a national emergency response network for the 21^st Century requires innovation and teamwork.

John Kamensky

FEMA’s Resilience Reset. RouteFifty reports: “State and local governments should own the disaster recovery process by creating integrated, outcome-based mitigation plans like Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s administrator said Thursday at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.”