Disaster recovery: Actions needed to improve the federal approach

This report identifies eleven options that could improve the United States of America's federal approach to disaster recovery. It explains how these options could be implemented and the strengths and limitations of each. The federal approach to disaster recovery is fragmented across more than 30 federal entitities. This approach is the produce of over 40 years of incremental efforts to address emerging issues in disaster recovery through legislative reform as well as differeing agency regulations and politicies.

Some of the options to improve disaster recovery include:

1. Develop new efforts to clearly and consistently communicate about recovery programs.
2. Develop a single online application portal for disaster recovery that feeds into one repository.
3. Further incentivize investments in disaster resilience as part of federal recovery programs.
4. Identify desired recovery outcomes and develop a mechanism to track these across programs.
5. Prioritize disaster recovery funding for vulnerable communities across all federal programs.