r/EmergencyManagement • u/mevallemadre • Jan 27 '25

FEMA Latest EO regarding FEMA

This executive was recently released regarding FEMA

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/council-to-assess-the-federal-emergency-management-agency/

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u/SchrodingersMinou Jan 28 '25

My biggest issue with FEMA is how inefficient it is to have people constantly cycling in and out on deployments. The work suffers with the constantly rotating cast of EMs. We would be better off cultivating more local hires with oversight from CORE employees on deployment. And the local hires who stick with it should themselves be made CORE employees. If anything, a lot of the work could be done remotely by someone who knows what they're doing. I don't understand why people deploy across the country to sit around in an office all day and then after a month or two, hand their projects off to someone else who has no idea what's going on, who also just sits around in an office. It would be better to just assign a lot of that stuff to someone at Region or a longstanding recovery office.

Goading workers into quitting would not help that problem. It would make it worse and ensure that the staff at FEMA has less institutional and practical knowledge.

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u/CommanderAze Federal Jan 28 '25

Ironically the IM core is designed to mitigate that issue but it comes with it's own problems.

But yes I agree it's an issue

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u/SchrodingersMinou Jan 28 '25

When I was IM CORE I was deployed several times to disasters were there was no work for me to do. It was done at Region. I don't even know why I was there. My projects back home were languishing. I was sitting in a field office twiddling my thumbs and explaining to my supervisor how to do basic tasks. Infuriating.

When I started as a local hire, they were cycling people in and out CONSTANTLY and I couldn't even find people to give me basic info about a project because nobody even had time to get oriented in the disaster. Stuff like "Where is this site?"

Both of these are bad strategies. The manpower management at FEMA definitely needs an overhaul. The reservists are needed sometimes but you really need the institutional knowledge to understand what's going on and the local knowledge to get familiar with the applicants and the projects and everything. You need someone who can stay in one place for a while and someone else who understands the FEMA policies. The reservists bring neither a lot of the time. It's not their fault. They just don't have that ability due to the nature of their jobs.

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u/CommanderAze Federal Jan 28 '25

IM CORE are deployed full time with no steady state job as they only work in the field.

CORE are a different employee type used to fill headquarters and regional positions that also deployed needed.

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u/SchrodingersMinou Jan 28 '25

I either forgot this or never understood the distinction, haha. It's been a few years. Every time I would ask what an acronym meant, people would tell me to look it up in the "FAT book" but nobody could remember what that stood for or how to access it.

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u/CommanderAze Federal Jan 28 '25

To be fair FEMA HR employee types are ... Designed by someone that hates people...

CORE is Cadre of On Call Response Employees

Starting with CORE

Also called HQ CORE or R CORE or Regional CORE but are actually all just CORE ...

IM CORE traveling salesmen of fema full time deployment DCC CORE (of which the last c is redundant like saying ATM machine) which is just IMCORE with a different funding algorithm) IS CORE won't go into it for sanity... Not to be confused with COR without the E... Which are the contracting officers...

We then complicate everything else by having a mix of roles on pay bands that don't line up with a clear IC/GS level (of which don't get me started why the IC pay scale exists as it's just the GS pay scale in yet another funny hat.)

... I digress... FEMA HR... Is a place for mad people to intentionally add complexity to shit for no reason... so I totally get how it wasn't clear

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u/SchrodingersMinou Jan 28 '25

My DTS responder portal docs, which I saved in case I ever want to go back, says COR but I was DEFINITELY not a COR employee.

I always had the sneaking suspicion that the entire agency may just be some sort of self-indulgent project for someone high up with an intense paperwork fetish.

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u/CommanderAze Federal Jan 28 '25

Oh great catch I forgot sometimes for no reason we take the E off but still pretend it's there cause it's still taking about CORE... This shouldn't make me laugh but yea...

What's even funnier is the reason. For this was a typo when they made the employee type list for DTS and by the time it hit review everyone just kinda gave it the pass without asking... Classic

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u/SchrodingersMinou Jan 28 '25

This is the most plausible explanation that could ever be. Oh, FEMA.