Community Resilience – What Federal Government Can Do

In a 2009 paper by the British Think Tank, Demos, titled, “Resilient Nation,” author Charlie Edwards suggests that for the UK, the role of central government in community resilience should be limited and mainly supportive of local and regional efforts. He recommends a central government role based on four “Es” – Engagement, Education, Empowerment and Encouragement. Although written for the UK, the paper has great relevance for the US and is well worth reading. The full paper can be found on the Demos web site at http://www.demos.co.uk/. These four Es may be useful in thinking about how DHS relates to other partners in the homeland security enterprise in the area of disaster preparedness and recovery.

The federal government (largely through the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency) plays two significant roles in community disaster resilience. In the first role, DHS is the leader of the federal response to incidents of national significance – the nation’s first responder at the federal level. As such, DHS acts in a top-down manner as a cabinet-level department within the federal government. In the second role, DHS is the leader of the nation’s “homeland security enterprise” and must coordinate many different types of efforts including disaster preparedness and recovery. In the past, DHS has fulfilled this role by acting as the approver of state and local plans, providing funding for preparedness planning and coordinating federal efforts to prepare for recovery.

DHS has steadily improved its ability to carry out the first role. But while the National Response Framework lays out an operational framework for response, the framework has not been fully effective in helping DHS carry out its second role – coordinating preparedness and recovery efforts across the Homeland Security Enterprise. In fact, the lessons of the past decade demonstrate inherent tensions in these two roles that produce expectations that often cannot be met within the constraints of traditional emergency management.

In our view, nationally DHS must help nurture communities in developing their inherent resilience; help train them in concepts, tools, and practices that develop, support and enhance disaster resilience; and provide incentives to communities that demonstrably increase their disaster resilience. The returns to the nation for this federal effort are communities that enhance the power of national programs by inculcating realistic expectations and by applying local power in an effective and efficient way. This approach harmonizes the two roles of DHS and allows DHS to change from being solely a federal “control” agent (which it is sometimes seen as doing ineffectively) to becoming a facilitator of rapid and effective return to normal community functions (a role that will properly and successfully leverage the federal resources and might).

A number of surveys and studies reveal that the current federal hierarchical, response-centric approach has elevated the public’s expectations of federal responsibility and capability well beyond the nation’s needs —and the Federal government’s ability to deliver – particularly in light of longer term trends such as the projected increase in climate variability. The nation would be better served to engage communities in a way that sets more realistic expectations and increases the incentives to become resilient at the local and regional level.