“Crisis Management” by Dwight Ink


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Executive Summary

This paper focuses heavily on crises caused by major natural disasters, the area in which we have had the most experience in crisis management. The author believes the federal government has not yet given sufficient consideration to lessons learned from natural disasters to make good judgments as to what strategies may be most useful in the event of new disasters or terrorist attacks. 
                                    
There is considerable agreement on how to organize the federal role in responding to natural disasters during the initial emergency period of providing food, water, medicine and shelter, and helping to maintain law and order.

Unfortunately, our federal government moved away from the successful principles of the past by integrating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and saddling it with incompetent leadership and red tape.  However, for future catastrophic terrorist attacks or natural disasters, such as the 1964 Alaskan earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, a more far-reaching federal entity than FEMA will be essential during the recovery phase.  Following are the author’s recommendations:

• Increase the flexibility of the National Response Plan by ensuring it is not encumbered by predetermined detailed structures and processes designed to cope with the last crisis.
• The White House should consider developing, for large-scale crises, a temporary policy commission and a professional operating staff that can quickly mobilize the resources of the whole government. 
• Provide a high degree of public transparency to response and recovery efforts, combined with strong monitoring and independent oversight, in order to ensure the confidence of Congress and the public.
• Develop arrangements in advance that can be placed in effect during a crisis to modify or suspend existing agency procedures that jeopardize schedules needed to rebuild critical public facilities needed for public health and safety, such as water and sewer systems.
• Engage Congress by detailing several Congressional staff to the recovery group handling operations as well as special temporary communications linkages between the two branches at the policy level.
• FEMA must be professionally led, and have freedom to make the urgent decisions required to carry out its emergency response mission without any intervening organizational levels between the FEMA director and the President. 
• There needs to be a legislative requirement that the head of FEMA, either a political appointee or a career member of the Senior Executive Service, have substantial government experience, preferably in the federal government. 
• A central organization capacity is needed in the Executive Office of the President to help the president and agency heads strengthen their ability to execute their missions, especially in responding to crises.

Related Resources

EOM Panel Minutes:
Topic presented at EOM Panel on July 21, 2006.

Associated Presentation Materials:
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Other Related NAPA Materials:
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