Disaster Recovery Workshop for States

1. Disaster Recovery Workshop for States From Plan to Implementation: Lessons Learned Personnel

2. Where/how to find skilled staff? • Reach out (Find CDBG expertise) • HUD • COSCDA • Other State CDBG Offices • OCD first hired key managers • Key managers then hired their own staff • Advertise (Get the word out) • Standard LA State procedures

3. OCD Hiring Procedures • Used existing personnel procedures to hire “Unclassified” positions • Expedited process • Provided salary flexibility to encourage experienced personnel to relocate • Hired Managers from Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, North Dakota, and Kentucky

4. OCD Existing Staff TOTAL NUMBER OF CURRENT DRU STAFF: 54 TO ADMINISTER A $13.4 BILLION PROGRAM

5. Restructuring LRA and OCD combining offices Total Combined Staff: 79 Total Positions Vacant: 24 • DRU Assistant Director • Housing Specialists • Hazard Mitigation • Economic Development • Planning

6. OCD Organizational Chart

7. Future Challenges • Maintaining knowledgeable and experienced personnel in an uncertain environment (restructuring, longevity of program) • Assuming contractor responsibilities as program winds down • Developing longer term program monitoring capabilities • Streamlining process for future disasters

8. What would you do differently? • Establish emergency hiring and contractor procurement procedures BEFORE a disaster • Identification of experienced personnel and resources across state agencies • Create a ‘Reserve’ list of State employees or retirees to ‘borrow’ until you have the time to hire permanent staff • Policy and Implementation under one roof • Staff up faster • Hire as many positions as possible early on • Use contractors if necessary (private sector can staff up faster)

9. How to seek/qualify consultants? • Follow Procurement Best Practices • Look at consultants’ capacity (how many sub-contractors are necessary to provide the service?) • Talk to prior clients and subcontractors regarding past performance • Less emphasis on knowledge of funding sources (CDBG/HMGP) and more emphasis on management experience and customer service

10. Building Surge Capacity • OCD enlisted the assistance of other state agencies DHH, DSS, for some programs • OCD required consultants to have subcontractors in place as part of the SFO process • In general FEMA, ICF, and others were able to build surge capacity through: • Extensive use of consultants and subcontractors • Salaries commensurate with experience and disaster recovery efforts

11. Building Surge Capacity • Road Home Contractor, ICF, was required to hire over 2,000 employees in less than 1 month -38 subcontractors including 2 non-profit agencies and 3 educational institutions -Job Fairs • For meeting closing and other benchmarks, the contractor had employee competitions and rewards

12. Recommendations • Streamline state civil service requirements to expedite the hiring process and salary flexibility in a disaster • Establish a “Reserve” list for disaster recovery efforts (employees and other agencies). • Development of a COSCDA Disaster Rapid Response Team