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• Ill prepared: Pandemic flu could cripple government
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Ill prepared: Pandemic flu could cripple government
By AMY DOOLITTLE
October 15, 2007
When you ask federal officials around the country if they are prepared for a pandemic flu, the answers are unsettling.
“It is kind of a train wreck if we get into a pandemic because if it hits the entire country at once, if it spreads at lightning speed, it has the potential to overwhelm us,” said Ray Morris, executive director of the Minnesota Federal Executive Board. “I would agree that even though a lot has been done, a lot more needs to be done.”
The country is overdue for an outbreak of pandemic influenza, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn.
Concerns in recent years have focused on the possibility that the avian flu that has hit select parts of the world could morph into a deadly human-to-human disease for which there is no known cure.
CDC warns that such an outbreak could disable up to 40 percent of the federal work force — either by making them ill, killing them or forcing them to stay at home to care for ill relatives or as a safety precaution. In all, experts say, a pandemic could sicken as many as 40 percent of Americans and kill as many as 200,000.
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Most agencies have continuity-of-operations plans that explain how to carry on after a disaster. But few if any have such a plan tailored to the unique challenges posed by a pandemic.
Unlike with other disasters, such as a terrorist attack on a building, an earthquake or flood, a pandemic flu could affect the whole country quickly, leaving each region to fend for itself. And large numbers of employees who are not sick from the flu would not show up to work for extended periods, either because they fear catching the flu or because they are caring for family members who are ill.
To deal with such a situation, agencies must know which critical operations to place priority on during a pandemic. They must have infrastructure in place to permit large portions of their staffs to work remotely from home or at alternate sites.
They must put in place emergency command-and-control plans and identify critical staff and numerous backups to replace them if they become incapacitated, among other steps.
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But agencies haven’t done many of these things, say federal officials involved in preparedness exercises conducted around the country.
Lack of planning
The most critical problem is a lack of planning.
The government’s current national response plan for a pandemic flu does not identify which organizations are responsible for coordinating and practicing agencies’ responses.
But unofficially, that responsibility has fallen upon the Federal Executive Boards (FEBs), which are regional associations of top federal career executives.
“We would like to see [FEB] executive directors devote at least 50 percent of their time toward pandemic and other emergency preparedness efforts,” said Kevin Mahoney, associate director of OPM’s human capital leadership and merit system accountability division, at a recent Senate hearing.
But neither OPM nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency has yet provided the 28 FEBs across the country with guidance and standards on how to help feds prepare for a pandemic.
As a result, FEBs lack clear direction on how to practice and coordinate preparedness among federal agencies in their regions. And they lack the authority to force state and local governments to work with them, officials say.
Kathrene Hansen, executive director of the Los Angeles FEB, said she’s worked hard to develop good relationships with local officials in the six counties her FEB region covers. But when new officials come on the scene, she has trouble explaining why she and her board matter.
“We have no authority, we can’t make anybody do anything,” Hansen said. “If we could point to a plan that says, ‘You are supposed to work and play with us well, now do it,’ that would help. And we do not have trouble most of the time. But when you get a new person in town, you get, ‘Who are you? Why should I give my home number?’ If we could point to something in the plan that says our name, that would be great.”
OPM and FEMA officials are hammering out a plan that outlines a role for FEBs in the government’s pandemic flu preparedness. That plan is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
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“More work can be done to develop and standardize performance measures,” OPM’s Mahoney said. “We will be consulting with [FEBs] as we work through the technical details of the [memorandum of understanding with FEMA] this fall, with the goal of having a signed document by the end of this calendar year.”
Holding exercises
Meanwhile, FEBs have been busy holding tabletop exercises to develop and test coordinated response plans.
Still, some FEB directors, like Morris from Minnesota and Hansen from Los Angeles, admit that if a pandemic hit tomorrow, they would be caught off guard.
In other types of disasters, such as an earthquake, where infrastructure is damaged, employees can work from alternate offices. Critical employees might have one backup employee.
But when a pandemic strikes and social distancing is required, it’s a whole different ballgame, Hansen said. Planning one backup employee for each important job may not be enough — it may require planning for numerous backups for each critical job.
“One of the things we’re hoping to make people think about it is what if the person you backed up and the person to cover him both get sick or die?” she said. “Agencies are required to have a plan, but what we are recommending is that they alter their plan for the special cases a pandemic brings. They haven’t done that yet.”
Not a priority
Another problem is that some agencies don’t see the urgency of pandemic planning, said Rebecca Froboese, executive director of the San Antonio FEB. When push comes to shove, field offices will spend time and money on their mission, not planning for something that may never happen.
“Right now, most agencies are focusing on key missions and essential functions, and that’s where they really have to put their money,” she said. “To plan for something that may or may not occur can be difficult when you’re trying to get funding. If you have veterans that need care, you are, of course, going to try to meet the need of care, and that’s the No. 1 emphasis.”
Telework is frequently cited as an ideal solution for how agencies could continue their operations during a pandemic.
But managers remain resistant to it. There are costs involved, information security concerns and suspicion among managers that employees working from home won’t be productive. And in many cases, tasks simply can’t be done remotely or via an Internet connection.
The result is that only 35 percent of agencies have included teleworking as part of their continuity-of-operations plans, according to an OPM report released earlier this year.
Among those with no plans for telework-based operations are the Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs departments.
That’s sure to cause problems if a pandemic occurs, FEB managers say.
“I just don’t think the infrastructure is in place, and I don’t think the agencies recognize what it will take to get it there,” said Gladean Butler, executive director of the Dallas-area FEB. “It’s a difficult process.”
In Cleveland, however, FEB executive director Michael Goin said he sees a growing interest in teleworking among his board’s members.
“It’s one of the things agencies need to work toward,” he said. “Agencies are asking us to assist them with it, and a lot of agencies are revisiting plans and trying to increase their options.”
Some managers warn that telework is no cure-all. Many government operations aren’t suitable for telework.
At the National Weather Service office in New Orleans, chief meteorologist Paul Trotter says his 24-hour operation relies on equipment that cannot be moved. If a pandemic strikes and people cannot work near one another, he’s not sure how the Weather Service will continue its operations for an indefinite period.
Currently the agency’s emergency plan allows him and his colleagues to use the facilities of other regional offices of the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is the parent agency of the Weather Service. But if the majority of employees in the region and beyond are sick, the agency will be out of luck and important regional weather predictions simply may not happen. In the face of a pandemic, Trotter’s NOAA office plans to simply hunker down, deal with it and wait for help.
“We’ll just shutter up, lock up and try to survive locally,” he said. “The problem with pandemic is that you don’t have people coming and taking care of things two or three days after a disaster because it’s a sustained problem. So we’re kind of locked in there until you can get the cavalry to come in, which is normally the military or something like that, and we don’t know when that’s going to be available. These are things that are still yet to be worked out.”
The funding problem
Funding is another problem. FEBs often run on minuscule budgets and lack the resources to carry out needed exercises.
The Los Angeles office, for example, runs on a $10,000 operating budget.
For a planned pandemic flu exercise in December, Hansen sent an e-mail out to FEB members asking for donations to raise the $7,000 needed.
“If I hadn’t got the money, I would not have a table-top exercise,” she said.
Likewise in Boston, where FEB executive director Kim Ainsworth said she can’t afford to hire anyone to help her run exercises or the office’s other programs. If OPM wants her to spend 50 percent of her time getting ready for a pandemic, she said, it must give her more money.
“Boston is currently a one-person office,” Ainsworth told a Senate subcommittee hearing last month. “Although historically we have received adequate support from our funding agency and member agencies, our ability to continue to provide 24/7/365 communications is questionable, given our current staffing.”
OPM officials told lawmakers at that hearing that they are investigating alternate funding for the boards, such as a dedicated funding source or a per-employee agency levy in cities that have FEBs. They do not have a time frame for when those plans will be complete.
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