GAO urges FEMA to strengthen National Risk Index guidance and feedback
The GAO report recommends FEMA improve user guidance, sensitivity analysis, and feedback mechanisms for the NRI, with all recommendations currently open.
The Government Accountability Office released a report assessing FEMA's National Risk Index (NRI) and issued three recommendations for the agency's administrator. The recommendations call for additional user guidance, systematic sensitivity analyses, and a structured process to collect and incorporate user feedback.
GAO found that FEMA has defined the NRI's purpose and disclosed methodological details, but it has not provided users - such as state and local hazard mitigation planners - with concrete instructions on how to apply the index results in risk-reduction decisions. The agency also lacks a routine mechanism for gathering user input to gauge the tool's usefulness for resilience planning.
The first recommendation asks FEMA to supply information based on common use cases to help planners translate NRI scores into actionable decisions. The second recommendation urges consistent use and public disclosure of sensitivity-analysis outcomes whenever significant data or methodological changes occur. The third recommendation directs FEMA to create a process, strategy, or user group to systematically solicit, collect, and incorporate stakeholder feedback during NRI updates.
The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA's parent agency, concurred with the first and third recommendations but did not concur with the second. DHS argued that the lack of planned NRI data updates eliminates the need for sensitivity analyses, a position GAO maintains is necessary to meet federal information-quality standards.
All three recommendations remain open, and GAO will track FEMA's actions to determine when, if any, the agency implements the suggested improvements.
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