Management Advisory Report: FEMA's Disaster Assistance Employee Payroll and Deployment Data

摘要

During declared disasters, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) increases its staffing levels with intermittent employees who are deployed to assist in response and recovery operations. These reserve employees augment the agency's regular workforce and are a critical element of FEMA's operations. FEMA tracks all deployable employees, including full-time staff, the cadres of on-call response/recovery employees (CORE), and disaster assistance employees (DAE), using the ADD system, which lists items such as deployment availability and status, skill levels, and salary levels. We conducted this review as part of our oversight responsibilities in order to determine (1) the number and characteristics of the payroll and deployment records for individuals deployed during disasters; (2) the number of DAE payroll records for which there were no corresponding deployment records; (3) whether the payroll and deployment information was consistent; and (4) whether there is evidence of duplicate payments. This project is a follow-on to an earlier review, FEMA's Management of Disaster Assistance Employee Deployment and Payroll Processes (OIG -10-115, September 2010), in which we reported (1) inadequate deployment information; (2) duplicative and contradictory time-reporting systems; (3) erroneous cost-code entries; and (4) conflicting agency guidance regarding DAE benefits.