Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a major US federal organization responsible for dealing with various severe emergencies such as natural and man-made disasters, as well as for countering terrorist offenses. The paper describes and examines the organization’s leadership (current and recent), its structure (work division (the organizational table, units, and subunits, the basis for the division) and work coordination (the mission and hierarchy of the organization), the core statutory laws that define the organization’s activity.
Apart from that, the administrative rules (primarily the title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations), the budget appropriation and the tendencies connected to the resources available, the personnel and the related trends, and committee hearings (with particular attention paid to the topics of the speeches of FEMA executives) are discussed.
Finally, the results that have been achieved by the current Administrator are analyzed within the framework of the company’s goals and missions. To conclude the paper, certain thoughts concerning the specifics of managing an executive branch organization are suggested. The paper is based on materials obtained from official websites of US agencies, scholarly articles, and course materials.
Leadership
Description
Currently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is led by William Craig Fugate, who was approved by the USA Senate and appointed the Administrator of FEMA in May 2009. Before that, he worked as the Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management since 2001. He is responsible for managing the actions of the state during major disasters that occurred during his services in Florida, such as Hurricanes Charley, Jeanne, Katrina, and others. Among his achievements are the establishment of a permanent scheme of catastrophic planning which allows for stabilizing the impact of a disaster within three days, and the implementation of the informal Waffle House Index used by FEMA in order to calculate the aftermath of a storm.
Fugate’s predecessor was Nancy L. Ward, who served as the Interim Administrator of FEMA from January 2009 to March 2009. She temporarily served after the retirement of Robert David Paulison, who was the Administrator in September 2005 – January 2009. Having been a firefighter, Paulison was appointed as the head of the United States Fire Administration by G. W. Bush in 2001; later, in 2003, he was made the Director of National Preparedness Division of the Emergency Preparedness & Response Directorate by President Bush. He also was appointed as the Under Secretary for Federal Emergency Management, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2006.
Analysis
In terms of the dichotomy of policy and administration (as stated by Kettl and Wilson) it can be pointed out that the two are intertwined and cannot be separated completely, but the former is primarily concerned with political decisions while the latter deals with their implementation. As a result, the behavior of a policymaker and an administrator is different. Apparently, R. D. Paulson was a so-called administrative leader, not a political one.
He started his career as a firefighter; later, he was promoted to fire chief and had much experience in that position. He was nominated for his post in FEMA by G. W. Bush, who was a Republican, whereas Paulson was a Democrat. The same appears to be true of W. C. Fugate: he also should be called an administrative leader, not a political one. Fugate started his career as an emergency paramedic and had substantial experience of working as an emergency manager first for a county, then for the State of Florida.
Structure
Work division
Description
Figure 1 shows the organizational table of FEMA, the hierarchy within the organization, and the lines along which the information flows. There are offices responsible for administrative issues, and there are offices that directly handle disasters.
The headquarters of FEMA is located at 500 C Street, SW, Washington, DC 20472. The National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) is also located nearby; it is a multiagency that coordinates FEMA’s actions on the national level, its personnel, and resource deployment in case of disasters.
The incident support, or “administrative,” “part,” includes offices of chief officers, offices of external affairs, policy and program analysis, national capital region coordination, equal rights of disaster survivors, protection, etc. The basis for the division is the type of administrative job that is handled. The “reacting” or incident management part includes departments of mission support, fire administration, federal insurance and mitigation, response, and recovery. Perhaps it is possible to include the department for national preparedness here. Table 1 shows the functions of these incident management divisions. The basis for the division is the type of job that needs to be done while dealing with disasters.
Table 1: Functions of Incident Management Divisions of FEMA.
In regions, FEMA has ten Regional Response Coordination Centers (RRCC), each of which is maintained by a regional office and functions in a number of neighboring states and manages Federal regional response efforts. The list of RRCCs (and the states in which each of them operates) is given in the table below.
Table 2: 10 regional offices of FEMA, territories in which they operate, and regional offices locations.
Figure 2 shows the territorial division on the map. The basis for this division is geographical proximity. The offices are spread across the country to provide a permanent regional presence of the administration, coordinate State emergency operations centers, and maintain the link between them and the organization on the federal level.
Analysis
The work in FEMA is divided by the areas with which the departments deal. There are two “parts” of the organization: “administrative” (deals with financial, legal, organizational issues) and “reacting” (responds to disasters). The division is based on the role the departments play in dealing with disasters; the “administrative” part provides incident support, the “reacting” part supplies incident management. Also, it is noted that work is also often divided according to the instruments needed. Various aspects of disasters require different equipment, so the basis for the work division of incident management units is likely technical. Clearly, the structure of the organization is very ramified. It is noted that FEMA is rather a network structure than a traditional hierarchical organization.
Work coordination
Mission
Description
According to the FEMA’s mission statement, its mission is “to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all hazards.” This mission consists in the coverage of the main five areas, namely, Prevention (predicting and stopping dangerous situations such as acts of terrorism in advance), Protection (safeguarding the country from terroristic acts and man-made disasters), Mitigation (lowering the life and property costs of disasters by lessening the impact of these disasters), Response (saving life and averting damage to property and environment resulting from emergencies), and Recovery (helping various types of communities which suffered damage or harm as a result of disasters or emergencies to recover quickly and with minimal losses).
Analysis
On the whole, the organization is aimed at supporting the country’s citizens in case of various disasters and organizing a nationwide network for responding to such disasters. The five main areas of coverage of the organization’s mission should also be paid attention to. Interestingly, Gulick stresses that “in dividing up any ‘whole,’ one must be certain that every part, including unseen elements and relationships, is accounted for.” It is noteworthy that some of the mission areas of FEMA are apparently related to the functions of the five major incident management divisions (Table 1). While the areas of Prevention and Protection, it seems, are mainly the competency of the division of National Preparedness, for the areas of Mitigation, Response, and Recovery, there exist the respective divisions within the organization which bear the same names. Apparently, such a structure should allow FEMA to better coordinate its activity according to its mission coverage areas.
Hierarchy
Description
Figure 1, the organizational table, shows the hierarchy of the institution. The top leader of the institution is its Administrator (currently W. Craig Fugate), assisted by the Deputy Administrator. According to Figure 1, all the other structural divisions are subordinate only to the Office of the Administrator that oversees them, but not to each other. The Administrator is responsible for the control of the whole Agency, whereas heads of other departments only control their departments.
The span of control of the Administrator is, therefore, enormous, and he can be described as the entity constituting the highest level of management. The second level is constituted by numerous offices as well as the divisions concerned with the main areas of FEMA mission regional administrators and other departments.
Not every one of these units has a third-level subdivision, but some of them do; from the organization chart, it follows that no departments of the fourth level can be found in FEMA. It is also worth noting that FEMA nowadays is a part of the US Department of Homeland Security; the latter is a part of the executive branch of the government. Besides, there is also the territorial division for levels of management. The headquarters oversees the ten Regional Response Coordination Center. RRCCs, then, coordinate efforts of state emergency operations centers in the states and provide communication between the latter offices and NRCC.
Analysis
Interestingly, Wilson points out that “it is harder for democracy to organize administration than for monarchy.” Perhaps, it can be seen in the example of FEMA. For instance, the need to comply with the demands of democracy means that there are a number of offices directly related to the organization’s public policy, which adds to the number of ramifications. Also, while the FEMA’s Administrator apparently works as an “overseer” of the whole institution, the ramified hierarchical structure means that there are a large number of offices that are independent of each other, and can make decisions and not have to request permission from one another.
On the other hand, the Administrator of the agency is still able to coordinate the work of separate departments and make important decisions that would affect the whole organization. The span of control of the Administrator can be described as enormous, which may not be exactly beneficial: as stated by Gulick, it is not only the competence but also time and energy that tend to restrict the span of control for an executive. Still, such a structure appears to have its benefits, in spite of the small number of administration divisions responsible for the entire organization.
Core Statutory Law
Description
FEMA was established on April 1, 1979, by Executive Order 12127 of President Carter. It absorbed some of the responsibilities that were formerly carried out by other governmental structures. Another important statutory act was Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (signed into law on November 23, 1988; it amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, PL 93-288); currently, it is functioning with amendments.
The amendments include the Disaster Mitigation Act (2000), the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (2006), and the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act. Also, the US Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, and FEMA became a part of it in 2003. The document which defined the core responsibilities of FEMA was the mentioned Executive Order 12127 of President Carter. Besides, FEMA is also regulated by various dispersed acts. They can be found on FEMA’s website.
Analysis
It is notable that FEMA does not have a single statutory act, instead of relying on a number of rather dispersed legal documents. This is partially due to the fact that when FEMA was created, numerous functions of various dispersed organizations dealing with different aspects of disaster handling were transferred to FEMA. As Jones points out, laws, statutes, and regulations can often be regarded as “the formal ingredients or legal expressions of programs and decisions”; This means that the law dispersion is also caused by the actual demand for such an amount of various regulations. In other words, by using the documents and acts of the previous organizations, FEMA retains their functions. On the other hand, the fact that the core statutory documents of the organization are so dispersed might prove a source of additional complications in the work of the agency.
Administrative Rules
Description
The primary title of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that FEMA is concerned with is the first Chapter of the title 44: Emergency Management and Assistance. The title provides general information (including the definitions) and consists of subchapters that cover all the relevant topics: insurance and hazard mitigation, fire prevention and control, disaster assistance, and preparedness.
In 2009, FEMA thoroughly revised the Chapter, suggesting changes throughout it; the changes that have been accepted were concerned with organization and procedures. The most recent FEMA-suggested changes in the Chapter include the revision of part 201, which is concerned with mitigation planning, as well as the proposed revisions of parts 5 and 103 concerned with the disclosure and availability of information. The former changes took place in 2014 and included the reduction of the frequency of the State Migration Plans submission, while the latter, the proposed ones, are aimed at improving the transparency of FEMA operations.
Analysis
The rulemaking process can be illustrated by the changes that have been suggested and made with the help of FEMA to improve title 44. Indeed, the 2015 change is in the state of proposed rulemaking and awaits the commentary, while, for example, the rule of 2014 is a final rule that had been published and took effect. The intent of the Agency to increase transparency is another demonstration of the sensitivity of FEMA to public opinion, the desire to maintain democratic principles and abide by the existing laws.
Apart from that, it can be mentioned that the interrelation of administration and policy is illustrated by the evolution of title 44 in a rather peculiar way (here, we shall keep the decision-implementation dichotomy in mind). FEMA, in this case, is primarily an administrative body, but it affects the process of policymaking, which is natural, given the level of proficiency and the understanding of the subject that is higher for FEMA than for a policy-making body.
At the same time, the new proposal is supposed to improve title 44 to correspond to the Freedom of Information regulations, which means that FEMA is both executing the policies created by policy-makers and is participating in policy-making with this decision. Indeed, as stated by Kettl, “The two phenomena are interrelated, and no strict line can be drawn between them.” Finally, it is worth mentioning that, as pointed out by Wilson, “trust is strength.” This is why the new transparency improvement suggestion of FEMA can be regarded as a very strong and reasonable move.
Departmental Budget Appropriation
Description
Figure 3 provides general information about the DHS budget that includes FEMA and FEMA grants budgets for the years 2008-2010.
Figure 4 provides information about FEMA’s budget for the years 2011-2013. It is apparent that throughout the years 2008-2010, the funds allocated to FEMA grew, but those meant for grant programs (the assistance provided to state and local governments to enhance natural disaster mitigation) were slowly decreasing.
The net enacted appropriations of FEMA for FY 2011-2013 were decreasing. It should also be pointed out that FEMA is a part of DHS, which means that the funding is performed through DHS; in 2013, FEMA received 17% of DHS funding, and 5% went to FEMA Grants.
Analysis
The question of political economy as the phenomenon of the interconnection of the two aspects of the life of the society is described by Dolbeare and Edelman. The position of a governmental organization is specific in terms of the business word, and this fact defines the policy of FEMA with respect to financial resources. As stated by DHS, the decreasing budget requests of FEMA reflect the Agency’s intent of allocating the resources more efficiently.
Naturally, it is implied that the Agency is capable of reducing the expenses. This strategy is similar to that of EPA as suggested in the course materials: by spurring innovation, the agencies are capable of reducing their expenses without dealing damage to the quality of their performance. The fact that FEMA is only one part of DHS might imply the idea of competition among these parts, but it should be pointed out that innovation is one of FEMA’s goals and, therefore, it can be concluded that the Agency would strive to reduce its expenses by increasing the efficiency even without the impetus of competition.
Departmental Personnel
Description
This part of the analysis is concerned with the attraction of the staff; the training and maintenance is one of the goals of FEMA that has received sufficient attention in the terms of the Agency’s policy and will be discussed in the next sections. The total number of the full-time employees in FEMA amounted to 10,056 in 2013 as compared to the 6,727 in 2010; in 2014, the figure increased to 14,844 employees.
The tendency of increasing the number of personnel is, therefore, obvious. The major division of the employees as suggested by DHS includes the employees of the disaster relief fund (4,852 as of 2013) and other divisions (5,204). Apart from that, DHS tends to single out contract personnel. According to DHS, in 2013, there was a trend in increasing the number of contract personnel, which allowed FEMA to avoid the backlog of grant requests.
Analysis
The issue of attracting and retaining personnel has been shown to be rather problematic in the terms of governmental organizations. FEMA appears to be able to deal with the problem as the number of its employees is rising. The changes in the numbers of employees are not steady, and an increase in the change rate is noticeable between 2013 and 2014. The number of contract employees has been raised to fulfill a specific purpose and, according to DHS, the purpose (avoiding grant request backlog) was achieved. In general, given the fact that the staff is being expanded, it can be concluded, that the FEMA itself is expanding; apart from that, this factor presupposes the increase in the resources of the Agency, which is a most positive outcome.
Recent Congressional Committee Hearings
Description
The relationship of FEMA and Congress is primarily managed by the Congressional Affairs Division that is primarily busy with ensuring the continuous information exchange between the two bodies. The hearings, however, are typically devoted to more general and (or) significant issue. An example of such an issue is described in the statement of Mr. Fugate before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency. The statement is dated October 22, 2015; it is devoted to the federal emergency preparedness.
First, Mr. Fugate describes the legislation (Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act; Sandy Recovery Improvement Act; Presidential Policy Directive-8) that had changed FEMA, allowing it to become more effective. He also talks about National Preparedness System that has been developed by FEMA and, as Mr. Fugate highlights, with the help of the whole community. Apart from that, he demonstrates the lessons, which had been learned by FEMA in the course of its existence with every new emergency, and describes the current state of federal preparedness.
Another recent (8 July 2015) statement by Roy Wright (Deputy Associate Administrator for Insurance and Mitigation of FEMA) has a different character. It was meant for the same subcommittee (HCHS SOME) and was entitled “Examining DHS’s Misplaced Focus on Climate Change.” The statement is not very radical, but it provides an examination of the most recent FEMA-related policies and demonstrates that some of them (including the DHS Climate Action Plan) cannot be described as holistic.
Mr. Wright proceeds to describe the FEMA State Mitigation Plan Review Guide, which had been released in March 2015, and highlights the critical feature of the new Guide’s policy that consists in a holistic approach towards emergency situations and other relevant activities. FEPA Congress hearings do not result in unfriendly interchange as a rule. In particular, according to FEMA, the Congress is very predisposed to Mr. Fugate and, what is more important, it is unanimous in valuing the Administrator. Indeed, when Mr. Fugate received the post, he also received bi-partisan support in Congress; his competence, experience, and knowledge of the Agency ensured that he was considered to be a most suitable candidate for the Administrator position.
Analysis
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is the committee that is directly concerned with DHS and FEMA, but others of the Senate committees (20), subcommittees (68) and joint committees (4) can also be interested in the hearing. It is obvious that the topics of FEMA hearings are concerned with the initiatives, suggestions, plans, and issues of the Agency, and the suggested examples illustrate this fact. The character of the first statement is obviously rather general, but it is concerned with most important issues (the relevant legislation assessment, the statement of policy, the assessment of the national preparedness), which is why it was meant for a hearing.
It is also implicitly used to communicate the responsibility sharing policy of Mr. Fugate. The second statement is more specific, and it highlights the issue that FEMA considers important for emergency management; apart from it, the new FEMA Guide is introduced and explained to Congress through this statement. These statements were meant to be highlighted, and, as a result, this information exchange could not be delegated to the Congressional Affairs Division.
It is very noteworthy that no explicit conflicts appear to have been registered during Congress hearings. This factor can be used to demonstrate the political environment, in which FEMA exists. Indeed, if FEMA congressional committee hearings do not exhibit any kind of interest clashes between either the congressional forces or the Congress and the Agency, in the terms of the Congress as a representative of the environment, there are no particularly hostile elements for FEMA.
Reporting on and Assessing the Results Achieved by the Current Administrator
Description
With the guidance of William Craig Fugate, FEMA has achieved numerous accomplishments. The goals of the Agency that are stated in correspondence with the mission include promoting the community approach to emergency management along with building common effort and understanding; building the respond and recover capability across the nation; promoting innovation and learning.
The promotion of community approach has obviously been the key goal of Fugate as the initiatives that are concerned with it are truly numerous. FEMA specifically highlights the Maximum of Maximums emergency planning that was launched and specifically supported since 2010. The initiative was focusing on the emergency management planning that presupposed inclusiveness of all the community entities and, according to FEMA, it transformed this kind of planning into the current national standard. Other relevant actions include using funds to encourage the private sector to participate as well as creating dialogues and enabling cooperation between the Agency’s offices and other organizations.
Maximum of Maximums, being a planning initiative, obviously promoted the nation’s capacity as well. The same mission was fulfilled with the help of the National Disaster Recovery Framework and the Disaster Case Management Program Manual that were created in 2011. The specific benchmarks for response and recovery are included in the latter. Apart from that, the Community Emergency Response Teams program provides the relevant training, and in 2011, 428,000 people participated in it.
The National Mass Care Council was established in the same year to help to structure, coordinate, and guide the national response in the terms of mass care. The grants of FEMA are used for the capacity building by providing the resources to governments, areas, private sector; for example, in 2011, $2.9 billion was spent to achieve this aim. Finally, FEMA national workshops, seminars, and discussions serve all the purposes and are particularly important for innovation and learning.
Apart from that, the goal of optimization has always been important for FEMA. To improve the efficiency of the Agency, the Office of the Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery was created and appointed to align the missions of response, recovery, and logistics in 2001. In the same year, the Office of Readiness and Assessment was created to ensure the ability of FEMA to determine the level of readiness in missions achievement.
Analysis
There is no definite strategy to achieve success, although by studying the policies of different administrator one can achieve a certain understanding of the skills that are required in the field. Still, as Wilson points out, the hardest and, probably, the most necessary thing to achieve in the field is progress, change. The analysis of the changes that the Administrator’s policy brought along can yield some results concerning the successfulness of his actions.
Given the general character of FEMA goals, their achievement is not possible, and instead of setting concrete goals, the Agency appears to define the direction in which to move. It does not appear plausible that the initiatives or programs themselves can be considered as goals: they are the means of goals achievement that have been approved of; they are meant to achieve the goals, and often they are directed at several goals at once.
At the same time, possibly the major directions presented here are in fact divided into smaller and more concrete goals by FEMA for its employees while the public goals are not very specified. In this report, the mentioned directions will be considered as goals. From these goals, the priorities of the Agency can be defined as national security, national understanding of security, and the technology, methodology, and personnel development, all of which are necessary given the environment of an emergency Agency.
The latter priority, the need for qualified, skilled, enthusiastic personnel is, in fact, essential to any organization or industry; employees attraction, retainment, and training policies are of vast importance for an organization. The list of the initiatives that have been mentioned may also be incomplete. Still, even from these actions and programs, it is obvious that the Agency is very consistent in moving in the defined directions, even though the achievement of the goals is impossible.
The evaluation of the effects of the programs, which is a necessary stage of policy process as defined by Jones, is somewhat hindered by the fact that not every effect is measurable. For example, the effects of improved understanding of common responsibility or community approach adoption are rather difficult to define. However, as DHS points out, the community approach has become a standard for the emergency management, which is an almost tangible outcome.
Similarly, the only effect of the training programs that the Agency is capable of providing is the number of people who had been trained. The efficiency of this training can be indirectly demonstrated by the fact that, according to the 2012 report of FEMA, the Agency responded to a record number of emergencies in 2011. The organizational changes and their effects are more difficult to assess, but DHS claims that they had been necessary.
The Office of the Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery was, in fact, created not to subdivide the work, but to unite three of FEMA missions (response, recovery, logistics) and ensure the supervision for them. As pointed out by Gulick, there is a limit to division, and, possibly, this decision was prompted by the excessive division problem or the need for extra coordination.
To sum up, the achievements of Mr. Fugate as FEMA administrator are quite numerous, but the primary of them is concerned with promoting the idea of shared responsibility in the field of emergency management. The relevant bodies believe that the community approach to the emergency has become a national standard, which means that Fugate has been quite successful. Apart from that, he did not neglect other aspects of the Agency management, including the innovation, staffing, and organizational issues, and, obviously, he paid particular attention to the primary duties of FEMA. In every of these fields, various initiatives have been suggested and implemented, and the results that can be measured demonstrate improvements.
Concluding Thoughts: Managing an Executive Branch Organization
The presented organizational analysis included the mission goals, structures, environment (primarily, the political one), people (primarily the leader), and performance of FEMA, which does not constitute the complete framework presented in the course materials, but covers some of its most significant aspects. At the same time, this analysis covers the POSDCORB framework suggested by Gulick as the aggregate of the key elements of administration activities. Based on the analysis, the following conclusions about executive branch organization management can be made.
As pointed out by Riccucci, the skills of an administrator need to be suitable for the situation. William Craig Fugate has had a vast experience in the management of emergency situations, management of emergency personnel and management per se. Throughout his life, Fugate was a volunteer firefighter, paramedic, Lieutenant of Fire Rescue, the Bureau Chief for Preparedness and Response for Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Later, already as the Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, he managed the 2004 major disasters in the region as well as those of the year 2005. To sum up, this person has had the experience of treating emergency both with his own hands and in a managerial position; he had obviously exhibited the appropriate skills as he had been rapidly moving up the administrative ladder. Apart from that, this person has the deep knowledge of the organization itself, as he appears to have been in every management level of FEMA. As a result, he indeed appears to have an exceptionally good skills and experience set for the position.
Therefore, it is not surprising that he had received the support of the Senate along with that of the DHS, and it is not surprising either that FEMA appears to perform exceptionally well with him as the leader. In other words, the importance of managerial skills and experience is undeniable in this case, but it is the applicability of the skills in a particular environment that appear to have a particular importance.
Since Fugate has an expert knowledge of the environment, the Agency has been outperforming itself recently. The vast change in the attitude to the nature of emergency management as an issue that requires universal participation and responsibility can be regarded as a significant progress, and Fugate can be called the hero of administration, who is exceptionally good at management.
One of the aspects of administration is the resource allocation. In this respect, the structure of the organization can be mentioned once again. The top-down organization of the Agency can be explained by the specifics of its issues: indeed, the centralization of the system provides the control over the resources that is necessary for emergency situations. Apart from that, the key tendencies in resource usage that the FEMA leader demonstrates include the significant increase in personnel numbers and the slight decrease in the budget requirements.
In general, the attitude of FEMA to personnel is both rational and humane; the Agency prides itself on the training that the employees receive and seeks to introduce innovations and new guidelines that could help them. These actions are bound to increase the value of the human resource; apart from that, they should increase the employees’ job satisfaction since the empowerment of education is typically good for the self-esteem of employees.
Apart from that, as Chetkovich shows, major difficulties that cause employee turnover are often psychological: in other words, it is inspiration and motivation that plays an important role in employee retention. According to FEMA, it seeks to motivate and inspire the employees through the mission of the Agency. While this is obviously not the only way of motivation, it is understandable that such a strategy provides psychological comfort and job satisfaction, which is what makes it both reasonable and humane.
The tendencies of budget usage are completely opposite: by emphasizing the importance of innovation and resource usage optimization, FEMA seeks to decrease the expenses. For an organization like FEMA, such a line of action demonstrates the concern with its stakeholders and is in all aspects logical and honorable. Obviously, this aspect may be considered a restricting one, but since it is included in the company’s policy as a goal, it shall be considered a specifics of resource allocation and usage in this report.
In the respect of restrictions, it can be mentioned that FEMA exists in a relatively nonaggressive environment. The Congress does not appear to constrain FEMA Administrator above what is reasonable, that is, above the legislation. It should be pointed out that FEMA demonstrates the will to abide by the law, but at the same time, it works to improve the applicability of the law to the sphere. Indeed, as FEMA proceeds to revise and suggest changes for the title 44 (chapter 1) in correspondence with the Freedom of the Information Act, it works to improve the law, guided both by its own interest and that of stakeholders. In other words, instead of allowing the law to restrict, FEMA improves it to enable it to regulate.
The situation of an administrative body that is influencing politics, as it has been mentioned, brings along the issue of the relationship between politics and administration. As it has been pointed out, the dichotomy of policy and administration is best described by the demonstration of the interrelation of the two fields: one of them provides the decision and the other provides its implementation. It can be implied that the policy is a rather theoretical concept while administration provides practical actions. As a result, it is not surprising that an administrative entity like FEMA finds it possible to suggest changes for policy: the practical understanding is not only more significant, it is also the first to “feel” environmental changes and demonstrate the need for innovation.
As for politics per se, while Kettl does use this term when describing the dichotomy once, he switches to oppose administration to policy. Policy, as defined by Jones, is a decision. Wilson, at the same time, uses the term “politics,” but he opposes it to the term “the field of administration.” In other words, from the works of these authors, it follows that the relationship of administration and policy is on the one level, where they can be opposed, compared and interrelated.
Politics, on the other hand, is a more general term that is one level above the two; it can be opposed, compared, and related to the field of administration. The dichotomy of theory and practice appears to be applicable to both, but vertically, the terms are in the genus-species relations. In the general sense, FEMA as an administrative entity has an effect on politics as a whole, but this effect is usually executed with the help of separate policies.
To sum up, the example of FEMA and its Administrator shows how a leader can allocate resources, deal with constraints and affect and create relevant policies with the help of his or her experience, skills, and knowledge. The decisions made by Fugate may be not exactly suitable for another agency, but the performance of FEMA demonstrates that they have been quite effective in this particular context.
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