Case Studies

Process Documentation and Standardization

Challenge

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Grant Programs Directorate (GPD) was founded in 2007 as a merger of legacy grant organizations from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.  During the first several years of their development, GPD struggled with creating a common language to discuss grant processes and identifying ways to streamline the grants management process for more than 50 grant programs.  In December 2010, GPD established an organization-wide, collaborative effort known as the Grants Process Improvement Initiative (GPII).  The purpose of GPII was to help GPD:

1.       Improve, standardize and document grant management processes and procedures across the directorate and the Regions for each grant program. 

2.       Measure and monitor grant administration procedures.

3.       Improve internal controls and compliance with federal regulations and OMB guidance.

This effort was the first of its kind and required the collaboration of FEMA Headquarters and Regional grants management experts to develop a single process flow for all preparedness grants and build a standard operating procedure (SOP) around each step in that process.

Solution

Achieving the objectives of GPII required standard language and operating procedures to clarify roles, responsibilities, coordination, and collaboration of GPD and Regional staff managing the preparedness grant programs.  HWC collaborated with more than 45 subject matter experts representing all GPD Divisions and FEMA Regions to develop a standardized Preparedness Grant Lifecycle and a comprehensive SOP for each of the 21 distinct functions in the Preparedness Grant Lifecycle.  HWC also developed a comprehensive set of terms and definitions, authorities, and regulations to help users better understand and perform the preparedness grant lifecycle functions.

Results

The GPII helped GPD become a more transparent, responsive, and customer-centric organization by improving stakeholder collaboration and grants administration across GPD and FEMA Regions. As subject matter experts across FEMA collaborated to define the end-to-end processes for managing preparedness grants, opportunities for improvement were identified and SOPs were standardized.  The GPII SOPs are now the official source for preparedness grants management procedures for FEMA and are used as teaching tools to increase stakeholder awareness and understanding of the FEMA Preparedness Grant Programs.

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• Overview
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• Process Documentation and Standardization
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