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FEMA Could Tweak Its Fire Grant Award Process |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Monday, 02 November 2009 |
Grant process generally goes well, GAO says
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) generally met requirements for awarding Fire Grants in the past several years but the agency usually did not provide useful feedback to rejected applicants, congressional investigators said in a recent report.
FEMA should make certain to provide specific feedback to rejected applicants and to align questions for Fire Grant applications to grant priorities, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended in the report Fire Grants: FEMA Has Met Most Requirements for Awarding Fire Grants, but Additional Actions Would Improve Its Grant Process , issued Oct. 30.
GAO also was unable to determine if FEMA met a statutory requirement to award at least 3.5 percent of its fiscal year 2008 grant funds as Emergency Medical Service (EMS) awards because FEMA's grant system does not specifically track grants awarded to fire departments for EMS awards. GAO recommended that FEMA establish the means to do so. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed with the recommendations.
Four out of nine major fire service organizations told GAO that FEMA did not provide adequate feedback to rejected applications, the GAO report noted. Twenty-two of 36 rejected applicants interviewed from fiscal 2007 and 2008 agreed that the feedback they received as not helpful to them.
FEMA officials acknowledged they could improve such feedback and vowed to do so to assist applicants with preparing future grant applications, the report said.
And while 28 of 36 applicants interviewed by GAO said Fire Grant guidance was clear, investigators found some inconsistencies between grant application priorities and the application questions and their scoring values.
"For example, the fiscal year 2008 guidance for the grant that funds the recruitment and retention of firefighters states that continuity-maintaining recruitment and retention efforts beyond the life of the grant-was a priority for grant awards," the report stated. "However, no grant application question addressed this priority and the scoring values did not include it.
"Thus, it is difficult for FEMA to ensure that grant funds are awarded in accordance with the agency's funding priorities," the report said.
Furthermore, because FEMA's computer systems cannot automatically break down EMS grant awards within Fire Grants, the agency must rely on laborious and time-consuming research to conclude if it is meeting a statutory requirement to award 3.5 percent or more of the funds to EMS purposes. As such, the agency should set up the means to ensure that it is complying with federal law on EMS awards, GAO advised.
Overall, however, FEMA did very well in complying with statutory requirements and its own program requirements for awarding Fire Grants, the report observed. FEMA accomplished seven of eight federal requirements and two of three FEMA program requirements for making awards in fiscal 2007 and 2008 (with the caveat that FEMA had not completely finished its fiscal 2008 awards by July 2009).
GAO also found that FEMA did a good job of including the fire service community in its grant processes.
FEMA received roughly 25,000 Fire Grant applications for fiscal 2007 and 22,000 for fiscal 2008 as of July 2009, the report said. The agency has awarded more than 5,000 Fire Grants for those two years.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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