FEMA Releases Five-Year Data Strategy

FEMA’s Data Management Branch released a five-year data strategy in March in an effort to modernize how FEMA personnel share data across the myriad divisions and branches of the agency. The document outlines efforts to better use data to make strategic decisions regarding the response to and recovery from disasters and ensure data are being effectively used to analyze current policies and better codify access and data security responsibilities for FEMA personnel.

The agency has long been faulted for a culture that stifled internal data sharing, resulting in important information being “siloed” in different departments. The new data strategy plan calls for transforming this culture into one that encourages securely sharing information internally. The plan acknowledges that such a change would take time to bring about. “As an agency, the default thinking should be that FEMA data is safe to share unless law, regulation, or policy says otherwise,” reads a portion of the plan. “Acknowledging that this is a significant change to existing philosophy, culture will evolve over time and data will not be opened immediately and without regard for consequences.”

While struggles over the management of FEMA’s internal data impact the ability of FEMA personnel to plan and respond to disasters, the inability to access information on disaster recovery program outcomes and other data sets have also long frustrated advocates and members of disaster-impacted communities. Although agencies such as HUD maintain public data licensing processes to allow academic and research institutions to make use of program data when researching federal programs, FEMA has no such equivalent process. Although the plan is largely aimed towards internal data sharing, it does hint at increasing the level of data being shared externally in an accessible way, saying “much of FEMA’s data can and should be made public in accessible, machine-readable formats for the American people to make use of.”

The NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition and NLIHC’s Disaster Recovery Research Consortium will continue to pursue greater access to disaster recovery data for advocates and academic and research institutions.

Read the report at: https://bit.ly/3AYWPkg