Case Studies

Improved Decision Support Through Information Management

Challenge

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Grant Programs Directorate (GPD) is responsible for both the programmatic and financial administration of over $20 billion in grants annually.  To ensure transparency and accountability for these grants, GPD must provide all of its stakeholders—including Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA leadership—with reliable and accurate reports on more than 25 non-disaster grant programs.  Historically, generating these reports required consolidating information from multiple systems to gain an accurate picture of the grant funding. The resulting processes involved numerous manual data adjustments which hindered data accuracy and extended the process duration.  GPD needed new processes and tools to streamline report creation, increase data consistency, and fill unmet information gaps to support FEMA and stakeholder decision-making.

Solution

Hassett Willis and Company (HWC) supported the GPD reporting efforts by improving the generation of reports and information products.  An initial task was re-designing the monthly Funding Fact Sheets, a legacy report that documents financial data on FEMA non-disaster grants across all 56 states and territories.  HWC also reviewed the existing report generation process and tools and identified opportunities to automate and streamline the process, eliminating much of the manual data manipulation. The new process transformed a previously complex and tedious task into an optimized process requiring little more than a click of a button. 

Results

As a result of HWC support, GPD realized an efficiency gain of 92%.  This generates annual savings of over 700 person hours and results in a 97% reduction in manual steps needed to create the report.  This work laid the foundation for the development and automation of other needed recurring reports, including program financial status reports for 18 individual grant program, 4 regional grant programs for each FEMA Region, and 54 U.S. Coast Guard port areas.  For these reports, generation now involves little to no data manipulation and outputs are received within minutes.  GPD now proactively provides more accurate and consistent information resulting in improved decision-making and transparency for GPD stakeholders. 

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• Overview
• Creating a New Grants Management Division
• Leadership Transition
• Long Range Planning: Climate Change Adaptation at DHS
• Process Documentation and Standardization
• Improved Decision Support Through Information Management
• Strategic Foresight Initiative for the Emergency Management Community