OT FEMA rant (Was: Re: shame on fema)

[Alan Dayley]

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Victor Odhner wrote:
> 
- ---[clip some interesting stuff]---
> On TV it was also pointed out that the form asked for a current postal
> mail address and phone number, so they can contact you for an interview,
> and that a lot of the applicants would not have either of those.  But in
> reality, they really do need some way to contact the applicants ...

IMO, this is an example of the "cathedral" (top down, proprietary) form
of government fails where the "bazaar" (bottom up, open) form wouldn't.
 (See http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ and
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cb/ to see why I am almost on-topic.)

FEMA is a huge agency, most of whose workers are no where near the
catastrophe or the victims.  If the money the feds are/will be paying
out to the victims were simply passed down to the smallest possible
entity (Fed->State->County->City) and let the people talking to the
victim decide what recovery funds should be disbursed then the address
and phone number of the victim is less important because the guy making
the decision is already talking to the victim.

No, we must send all this data to some database in DC or somewhere, to
be processed, accounted for and an interviewer dispatched to... an
address like Veteran's Collesium so they can interview, review
documents, submit a report back to somewhere for review and checking and
accounting and then send a check to... an address somewhere.

I understand that some of all this extra red tape is intended to weed
out fraud and create some accountability somehow.  But in situations
like this, it'd be nice to have trusted agents on the ground with the
power to solve problems and spend money on the spot.  They know how many
people, give or take, lived in a certain city or town.  They know what
the value of homes and other things lost was before the disaster.
Assign a rounded budget amount for each geographic area and get the
money to the people.  Do up the accounting afterwards.

I know it is not that simple.  Even "simplifying" it the way I state is
a huge task if only because the victims aren't in their home location
anymore.  But there has to be a better way.

A lady in a tent city put up a hand-made sign that FEMA "hung up on"
her.  She called them many times to start the claim process and got
dropped to voice mail.  How could she leave a number when the phone was
not hers and she didn't know when she could get back to it?

I don't understand the design decisions here.  "Let's see, we need a way
to contact people who don't have a house or phone anymore.  Hmm...  I
know, we'll ask them to leave their address and phone number!"
Huh?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Sorry about all that.  My rant over, I'll head off to bed now.

Alan
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