FEMA has made limited progress assessing national disaster preparedness capabilities as required under the post-Katrina Act, GAO told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recently.
DHS and FEMA have implemented a number of efforts with the goal of measuring preparedness by assessing capabilities and addressing related challenges, but success has been limited, according to GAO-11-260T.
With the Japanese tsunami disaster just days old, GAO told the committee that DHS developed plans to measure preparedness by assessing capabilities, but did not fully implement those plans.
FEMA subsequently issued a target capabilities list in September 2007 but has made limited progress in developing preparedness measures and addressing long-standing challenges in assessing capabilities, such as determining how to aggregate data from federal, state, local, and tribal governments, GAO said.