Sneak Preview: Financial Planning Prior to Disasters Is Critical
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Nonfederal entities are encouraged not to wait until a natural disaster occurs before researching what federal grant funds are available, according to an official with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), who stressed the need for collaboration between financial managers and emergency management officials within a recipient organization.
Speaking to attendees at the recent Association of Government Accountants National Leadership Training conference in Washington, D.C., Chris Currie, senior leader for GAO’s Disaster Planning Project, said that emergency response efforts to a natural disaster may last only a week or two, but the complete recovery process can last years. “We want to bridge the emergency management world and the financial management world because I don’t think that’s been done well through the years,” he said. “Typically, emergency managers show up when something bad happens and they are not part of the day-to-day planning of any government or organization. That needs to change if we are going to get more proactive and be better prepared for disasters.”
Since 2005, the federal government has spent more than $600 billion on disaster assistance, and Currie said the need for such assistance will continue to increase because many state and local governments are not maintaining a “rainy-day fund” for such disasters and are relying on federal government grants for help, and disasters will always be occurring.
State and local emergency managers often conduct exercises to determine potential threats before they happen and use that information to determine what response gaps exist and what they need to do to address these gaps, Currie noted. “The problem we see in our work is that after a disaster, people want to forget and don’t want to go back and close these gaps,” he said. “Work is being done to figure out these issues, but they don’t do what they need to do to close the gaps, determine how to get the funding to do it, and assess when it needs to be done by.”
Therefore, Currie encouraged financial managers to collaborate with others in the organization or governments on these preparedness exercises to prioritize the gaps. “Some [activities] may not be able to be done right away and may require difficult decisions, but you can start chipping away at these things as you prepare for disasters that might affect you,” he added.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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