Success of Future Disaster Response and Recovery Efforts Depends on FEMA Addressing Current Vulnerabilities

Based on our prior work, we identified a pattern of internal control vulnerabilities that negatively affect both disaster survivors and disaster program effectiveness. These vulnerabilities may hinder future response efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its state and local Public Assistance (PA) grant recipients. The following systemic vulnerabilities negatively affected disaster survivors:

• shortcomings in acquisition and contracting controls that hindered prompt provision of supplies and increased the risk of questionable sheltering options for survivors;
• interagency coordination challenges that reduced Federal volunteers’ usefulness in affected areas; and
• inadequate staffing and training, as well as insufficient privacy safeguards, increased fraud exposure and risk to survivors’ personally identifiable information.