Beginning with preparedness, a revitalized ESFLG would be the focal point for exercising unity of command prior to catastrophes. The ESFLG charter would be changed to reflect its new purpose. First, membership would be based upon real operational authority. All ESFLG members must have the ability to control the assets of their particular department or agency. Alternatively, for larger agencies, members must have the authority to control at least an initial allocation of agency resources without needing to ask for further permission to deploy them. The steady state ESFLG would be chaired either by the FEMA Administrator, or more likely, the Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery, or the Assistant Administrator for Response who is the current ESFLG chair. Unlike the current ESFLG, a SFLEO and a senior member of USNORTHCOM, possibly the Deputy Commanding General or the Director or Deputy Director of its Joint Operations (J-3), who would perform two roles, would also be designated. The first would be to coordinate all crisis management activities that fall
under the jurisdiction of federal law enforcement and military authorities with the consequence management activities of the civilian ESFLG members. Second, each also serves as their department’s senior ESFLG representative for consequence management activities. In the case of DOJ, as the primary ESF agency for ESF #13, and the DoD as a critical ESF Support Agency for multiple ESFs.323 While not co-chairs of the ESFLG, the SFLEO and NORTHCOM leaders each represent statutorily distinct responsibilities and report directly to the president for law enforcement and national security.
All primary ESF departments and agencies would be required to attend each monthly ESFLG meeting along with crucial supporting agencies, such as the DoD. All supporting agencies would be prepared to attend as necessary and at least one meeting per year would require the attendance of the full membership; all federal agencies with responsibilities under the NRF or supporting national plans. Each ESFLG member would be appointed as the emergency coordinator for their agency as required by EO 12656.
The key characteristic is that membership would not change between the preparedness and policymaking functions prior to a catastrophe, and the operational functions in anticipation of and in response to a catastrophe to allow for a seamless transition from policy making to operational decision making.
Second, the function of the ESFLG would change to emphasize the resolution of issues at the operational level. Currently, the purpose of the ESFLG is to perform as “a senior level entity that coordinates responsibilities, resolves operational and preparedness issues relating to interagency response and recovery activities at the national level, and provides planning guidance and oversight for the development of interagency response and recovery focused plans and activities.”324 The ESFLG would emphasize “resolution of issues” with the FEMA Administrator in position with the responsibility to supervise the resolution of operational level issues and with each of its members in position to execute final decisions. The ESFLG would change from a policy making body to one with operational decision-making capability and authority. With the empowerment of the
323 The USACE, which is part of the DoD, is currently the primary agency for ESF #3 along with FEMA.
324 ESFLG Charter dated October 22, 2010.
ESFLG, consideration may be made whether the DRG as an additional layer of bureaucracy needs to continue or whether it remains strictly a policy-making body and does not interfere with the ESFLG’s direct connection to the NSC and the NSS during the response to catastrophes.
As an IPC, the DRG is “attended by Assistant Secretary or equivalent level and Deputy Assistant Secretary or equivalent participants respectively from the departments and agencies that make up the HSC deputies. For some IPCs, such as the DRG that handles response and preparedness issues, the membership may be slightly larger to account for the number of departments and agencies involved with those issues. The attendees are expected to be able to speak on behalf of their departments and agencies and provide resources.”325 As previously stated, the ESFLG membership should already be able to utilize all the resources of their agency or at least have an initial allocation of resources under their command. If this requirement makes membership of the ESFLG and the DRG duplicative, they should be consolidated. However, a significant increase in responsibility would result for departmental assistant or deputy assistant secretaries, since as their department’s emergency coordinator, they would be expected to attend monthly ESFLG meetings and be the primary operational director for their agency or department in an actual catastrophe. The answer may be to create specific agency delegations from agency secretaries or leaders to the most senior operational director in each agency as the agency’s emergency coordinator and ESFLG representative.
Delegating authority for the utilization of agency resources below the assistant secretary level would allow operational control of department resources to those most familiar with agency and department capabilities that would be used to respond to a catastrophe. However, if departmental secretaries and other agency leaders are performing their strategic functions and providing the final line of advice to the president, the assistant secretary level of agency leadership may no longer have a role. This level of agency leadership could find themselves too junior to work directly with the president and too senior to spend significant time preparing and learning to utilize their agency’s
325 Kelly Wolslayer, “Collaborative Policy Making: Vertical Integration in the Homeland Security Enterprise” (master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2011), 30–31.
capabilities to respond to a catastrophe. One possibility is for this level of departmental and agency leadership to concentrate on the continuity of their agency’s primary mission while their most senior operational director controls their resources previously committed to disaster response and their agency or department leader provides strategic advice to the president and their staff. This structure could allow for a division of labor for both the maximum mobilization of the agency or department while still letting part of senior management concentrate on the continued affairs of the agency or department. This arrangement would be somewhat similar to the DoD model in which service chiefs can concentrate on providing advice to the DoD Secretary and the president, and provide direction to their services while leaving responsibility for the actual utilization of their forces to combatant commanders.
When an anticipated or actual catastrophe occurs, the ESFLG transitions to an UACG. Unlike the UACG, which was exercised in NLE 2010, but which does not appear to have been adopted for further use, the new UACG would be premised upon unity of command and not unity of effort. The new UACG would have an element of unified effort that would exist between the DoD, the SFLEO, and the FEMA Administrator, each responsible for their own part of the federal response over military, law enforcement, and civilian resources, respectively. Unity of command exists in the fact that within these three positions rests complete command and control of the entirety of federal resources committed to responding to the catastrophe. In turn, these three positions are supported by the emergency coordinators for ESF supporting agencies necessary to respond to the catastrophe. These supporting agency emergency coordinators provide advice to the UACG on the capabilities of their agencies and situational awareness of activities conducted under their existing authorities and coordinated through the UACG. They assume responsibility for exercising their own statutory authorities to respond to an existential catastrophe except when otherwise directed by the FEMA Administrator.
Simply put, the UACG commands the entirety of all federal capabilities and authorities
made available by the president to respond to an existential catastrophe.326 The UACG cycle of operations can be identified as (1) identify the problem/situational awareness, (2) decide, (3) coordinate, (4) execute, (5) supervise, and (6) review.
At least one question for leadership of FEMA’s ESFLG/UACG concept remains.
The analysis of providing for unity of command over the federal civilian response to an existential catastrophe was based upon the authority of the FEMA Administrator either through the PKEMRA or as delegated under the Stafford Act. However, the FEMA Administrator must still execute their statutory responsibilities as the principal advisor to the president, HSC, and the DHS Secretary for all matters relating to emergency management in the United States. Thus, the FEMA Administrator is placed in the difficult position of being required to provide strategic advice to the president and the HSC on the one hand, and be responsible for utilizing federal civilian capabilities to respond to the catastrophe on the other. In practice, the Deputy FEMA Administrator may effectively command the UACG, using the delegated authorities of the FEMA Administrator, while the FEMA Administrator retains his primary responsibility to advise the president and the HSC, or the president may choose to switch those roles.
If this arrangement is adopted in which the FEMA Deputy Administrator is the primary operational commander for the federal civilian response, the president, the FEMA Administrator, and the Deputy Administrator will also need to determine who will be the primary conduit to the nation’s governors. While this will likely be a case-by-case answer, and nothing will interfere with the prerogative of the president to deal directly with the governors, on a strictly operational basis, the FEMA Administrator might be best suited for this role, even if the Deputy Administrator actually commands the federal civilian response, and coordinates it with the crisis management activities of federal law enforcement and military authorities.
326 FEMA also has national IMATs that effectively fulfill the mission of providing a forward senior federal presence in disasters. These teams are being reorganized for the summer of 2013; however, it does not appear they will have the authority or membership necessary to be a new UACG. One possibility would be for the IMATs to continue in their role for lessor disasters, but for catastrophes or existential
catastrophes, they would be supplanted by the new UACG, and the IMAT members would fill staff roles for the new UACG.