What are the Target Areas of Assistance?

All technical assistance deliveries, including electronic communications, telephonic assistance, regional grantee workshops and/or site-specific visits with grantee staff, is designed to address the following areas of grants management:

Specific Issues

• Evaluation and Performance Measures:  Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding lack the skills to develop evaluation protocols and to identify meaningful measures for assessing impact of homeland security activities, particularly measures affecting both process and impact.

• Electronic grants tracking and management systems:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding cannot track the enormous amount of equipment being purchased under grants, maintaining an inventory of goods and services being procured, guidance on recommended systems, and compiling/analyzing data provided by the subrecipients.  Such systems will also allow the decision makers with analytical information necessary to make sound strategic decisions.
• Auditing practices:    Direct recipients and subrecipients are subject to as many as three separate audits each year – federal, state, and county/municipal.  Since many of these are first time DHS federal funding recipients, they are often unfamiliar with fundamental auditing practices and guidelines. In addition different statutes and policies are applied and each audit focuses on somewhat different aspects, states and subrecipients are expending significant resources to prepare for and reconcile these audits.  If the recipients of DHS federal funding are not adequately trained in the appropriate auditing principles, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to require the same level of accountability from their subrecipients, much less to provide adequate training to their subrecipients in this critical area of successful grant administration. 
• Building public/private partnerships:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding lack many of the skills and knowledge to build relationships with neighborhood communities, non-governmental organizations and the business sector, agree on roles and responsibilities, and integrate stakeholders into a comprehensive strategy.
• Financial and program monitoring:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding need protocols and training on policies and procedures to ensure that accountability and program integrity are achieved. 
• Conducting and applying research:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding need training on methods to collect and analyze information and data to achieve strategic decision-making and priority setting.
• Expedited procurement practices:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding need to expand options and develop new procedures for procuring equipment and services in a timely manner.
• Strategic planning:  Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding need strategic planning skills to further develop their homeland security investment plans and proposed solutions, as well as for management of their grants administration operations and responsibilities.  Strategic planning guidance has become a more crucial and time-sensitive issue as many states move to regionalizing jurisdictions within the state.
• Public information and media relations:    Recipients of DHS/FEMA federal funding are besieged with requests from the media for information, leading to issues in handling the volume of requests; providing appropriate information, and coordinating responses.  Equally critical to recipients of DHS federal funding and local first responders is identifying an efficient and proven method of educating the private citizen, as well as public officials, about the needs and methods to prepare their families, businesses and communities for a terrorist or all-hazards incident. 

This project is supported by Cooperative Agreement #2007-TH-T7-K004, awarded to the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA), from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Points of view or opinions contained within this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and/or NCJA.