Professionalism and Accountability in FEMA

 

Standardized actions and ethical practices that emergency management practitioners might implement in order to further professionalize the field

• Implementation of misconduct policies for surge capacity work workforce. When there is a catastrophe, there are many people that join FEMA to help manage the disaster and most of the people who join the workforce engage in unethical behaviours that affect the agency’s reputation (Currie et al., 2017). Clearly documented policies would greatly help to outline the disciplinary actions or the appeal processes that should be applied on these individuals. It will also help in bettering management to address misconducts and also mitigate perceptions that misconducts within FEMA are normally handled inconsistently (Currie et al., 2017). Emergency agency should ensure that various groups of people that take part in helping during disasters are controlled by policies that clearly illustrate the discipline measures that should be taken on them in case of misconducts.
• Creation of reconciliation procedures to help track the indiscipline cases that are referred to the Department of Homeland Security Office of inspector General (DHS OIG). FEMA shares cases of misconduct with DHS OIG but it does not ever follow up on these cases to know how they are reviewed and addressed (Currie, 2018). Following up on such cases and keeping the records of misconducts can greatly help the agency to identify and address the trends which will help to implement effective measures and policies to reduce cases of misconducts. The emergency agency should ensure that it understands everything that relates with misconducts within the agency to help look for ways to reduce the misconducts.

Commonly used methods of ensuring accountability in emergency management procedures

• FEMA conducts frequent internal audits to help in assessing the effectiveness of the agency’s controls, to help in identifying inappropriate disbursements or risk zones and to consider new procedures that help in reducing risks (Currie, 2018). FEMA through this procedure is able to demand the return of any tragedy aid disbursements that is awarded improperly while maintaining the survivors’ due process rights where it offers them an opportunity to appeal and an opportunity for an oral hearing. This procedure is effective and it has greatly helped in reducing the issue of improper payments. With a good example of this effectiveness being the comparison of 14% error rate during the Hurricane Katrina in the year 2005 and the less 1% during the FY2010 (Currie, 2015).
• FEMA uses viable data facility source to help in verifying the identity of all catastrophe support candidates through matching of their names and their societal security numbers that they use both inside and out of the prevailing candidate records (Currie, 2018). To ensure validity, the applicant’s permanent residence inspections are conducted before financial aid is provided. The residence inspector has to personally validate that the destroyed home is owned by the resident and that it is the victim’s primary residence.  This inspector has to also authenticate that the claimed reimbursements are genuine and the obligation of that person requesting for federal tragedy support (Currie, 2018).  The subsequent facts from the inspection are joint together with the identity confirmation and other appropriate registers such as personal coverage. They are then managed through a comprehensively verified set of commercial guidelines to help regulate individual eligibility. There are processes to ensure that duplication does not occur and in this case an analysis that overlaps over time phases and prevents disbursement in additional of the maximum that is permitted by the Stafford Act (Currie, 2018). Directions to ensure that there are manual evaluation expenditures to more than one candidate that are living in matching resident are also looked into. This greatly helps in determining if the societal safety number was used by numerous people or if it belongs to a deceased person.

Values proposed in the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) Code of Ethics for emergency managers

• An emergency manager should be risk driven in that they are able to effectively use sound risk principles when assigning priorities and resources (Springer, 2009). An emergency manager for instance in case of a fire disaster, should be intelligent enough to make wise decisions in establishing the group of people to be allocated various duties. He should also be wise to also understand the equipment that is required and make necessary arrangement to acquire that equipment in order to ensure that the disaster is managed effectively. A good case example of this is during the Northridge Earthquake where Witt the FEMA director at the time came up with the idea of opening up more disaster management centres that helped serve more victims that helped improve disaster management in that crises in the overall (Kamel & Loukaitou-Sideris, 2004). In this case, Witt did not think twice about the costs that would be incurred in opening up this more centres but rather at the effectiveness that they would bring to the whole management process.

 

• An emergency manager should have collaborative skills which can help him or her to create and sustain broad and at the same time genuine relations among persons and establishments in order to help inspire trust (Springer, 2009). This collaborative relationships help in encouraging confidence, promote a team atmosphere and simplify communication. A manager that understands the concept of collaboration can always reach out to various members of the community to help out with the management of the disaster. This a manager that interacts and ensures a good relationship with various organizations within the community and so when a disaster strikes, he knows that he can trust them to help out and this helps in effective disaster management. Witt is one example of an emergency manager that was collaborative in nature, this is illustrated during the Northridge earthquake where he worked with various organizations and this included the members of the congress that came out with their staff in large members to help out with the disaster management (Kamel & Loukaitou-Sideris, 2004).

 

• An emergency manager should be flexible in that they are they able to practice imaginative and advanced tactics in solving catastrophe contests (Springer, 2009). When a disaster strikes, there are always those predefined measures that have been put in place to help in managing the disaster. At times these predefined measures may be ineffective or insufficient forcing the emergency manager to come up with new decisions that he or she was not prepared for. A flexible manager will make fast and efficient decisions to help in the management of the disaster without any hesitation to ensure effective disaster management. a good case example is with the Northridge Earthquake where Witt created a channel that helped update the members of the public on the progress of the disaster management (Kamel & Loukaitou-Sideris, 2004). This was a creative idea that worked out very well in this case because they were able to get more volunteers to help out in the disaster management. it was also effective because it helped in showing that the agency was transparent in their dealings which helped in curbing any trust issues that the public may have had with FEMA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Currie, C. P. (2015). Additional Planning and Data Collection Could Help Improve

Workforce Management Efforts. GAO Reports, i-55. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=108306875&site=ehost-live

Currie, C. P. (2018). NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS: FEMA Has Taken Steps to Strengthen

Grant Management, But Challenges Remain in Assessing Capabilities. GAO Reports, 1–15. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=129253256&site=ehost-live

Currie, C. P., Turpin, S., Moore, K., Komadina, S., & Atwater, B. (2017). FEDERAL

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Additional Actions Needed to Improve Handling of Employee Misconduct Allegations. GAO Reports, 1–10. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=124340561&site=ehost-live

Kamel, N. M. O., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2004). Residential Assistance and Recovery

Following the Northridge Earthquake. Urban Studies (Routledge), 41(3), 533–562. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=12844520&site=ehost-live

Springer, C. G. (2009). Emergency managers as change agents.Ideas From an Emerging

Field: Teaching Emergency Management in Higher Education, 12(1), 197-211. http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/sea_fac_articles/346