New and Old EAS Regimes Need Improving, GAO Says, Seeking FCC, FEMA Outreach

States have gotten “insufficient guidance” on implementing the newer Web-based Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, said the GAO report, dated April 24 and released Thursday after a 30-day period for the involved agencies to review and comment on it. The Public Safety Bureau last month released a study of that test, 16 months after the exercise (CD April 16 p5), and earlier this month reminded states to comply with EAS rules (CD May 3 p8). “FCC and FEMA had taken limited steps to address problems identified in the nationwide EAS test,” said GAO (http://1.usa.gov/1222B0H). “FEMA officials told us that it will take a combination of FCC rulemaking, developing best practices, and correcting technical issues to address the problems that were identified during the nationwide test, but implementing some of these actions could likely take years.” FCC and FEMA spokespeople had no comment beyond their agencies’ responses to GAO.

Web services like Google Public Alerts could get access to the newer IPAWS alerts as of September, GAO noted. FEMA and other officials had said major websites were interested in such access (CD June 8 p6). Such websites and app developers “can retrieve and redistribute IPAWS alerts to the public through their own services, such as websites, mobile phone applications, email, and text messaging,” GAO said. “An alert redistribution service must complete a memorandum of agreement with FEMA, which then grants them access to the IPAWS Public Alerts Feed from the alert aggregator.” Government and industry officials have said Common Alerting Protocol, which the FCC required all EAS participants to be compliant with last year, may never supplant the daisy chain as a way of distributing alerts without needing to broadcast them (CD Sept 17 p6). GAO heard similar sentiments, judging by the report.

Warnings about bad weather and other events in CAP are “an added capability, not a replacement, to the traditional national-level alert (i.e., EAS daisy chain relay distribution system)” in the view of FEMA officials interviewed for the report, GAO said. “FEMA officials said they anticipate maintaining both systems into the foreseeable future as parallel alerting systems.” The officials said talks with the White House about whether to use IPAWS during a presidential alert were ongoing, and such a warning wouldn’t be distributed through the Web-based method, GAO said. “FEMA officials said there are additional challenges to sending a national-level alert directly to EAS participant stations through both IPAWS and the traditional system."

"Although FEMA has taken important steps to advance an integrated alerting system, barriers exist that may impede IPAWS implementation at the state and local level,” the GAO study said. It said public-alerting authorities and industry officials stated the hurdles include “insufficient guidance on how states should fully implement IPAWS,” the “inability of state and local alerting authorities to test all IPAWS components,” an “inadequate” amount of “public outreach on IPAWS capabilities” and “limited resources” among all levels of government to fully implement it. Officials at all levels of government said “the public is generally unaware of IPAWS capabilities, especially alerts sent to mobile phones,” read the report. “FEMA officials told us that a training course to educate the public is under development."

A reason the FCC delayed issuing last month’s national EAS test report was that the agency was trying to get more results from industry, GAO said. “FCC recognizes that outdated state EAS plans contributed to some of the reception and retransmission problems during the EAS test, and is being more proactive in requesting states to submit updated plans.” The commission has updated state EAS plans from only seven states as of October, GAO said. “Officials stated that they would continue to ask state emergency communications committees to submit updated EAS plans to review, but that FCC has no authority to require the filing of EAS plans.”

Such lack of authority speaks to the difficulty of the federal government spurring state-by-state rollout of CAP by municipal and state governments, said the head of Nevada’s emergency communications committee in an interview. About half of states have a CAP server, said the official, Adrienne Abbott, a former broadcast journalist and engineer who last worked for Gray Television’s KOLO-TV Reno. The report is “another voice telling state executives that CAP is a good thing, that you should definitely consider this,” she said. “Broadcasters are frustrated because we have been saying this for years and years, but there is nothing the feds can do other than encourage states to request this technology.” NAB and NCTA spokesmen had no comment.

"FCC recognizes that outdated state EAS plans contributed to some of the reception and retransmission problems during the EAS test, and is being more proactive in requesting states to submit updated plans,” GAO said. It said commission officials said a working group in coordination with FEMA has been examining such issues, “but neither agency could identify progress made by the group more than a year after the test."

The Homeland Security secretary should direct FEMA, with the FCC, to establish procedures and best practices for states and localities to install and test IPAWS gear, GAO recommended. It sought work to “develop a plan to disseminate a national-level alert via IPAWS to increase redundancy and communicate presidential alerts through multiple pathways.” The FCC chairman in conjunction with FEMA should update rules for the Commercial Mobile Alert System that gets alerts from IPAWS “related to geo-targeting, character limitations, and testing procedures,” said the report, by Mark Goldstein, director of GAO physical infrastructure issues. Goldstein, who has written reports on the FCC over the years, didn’t respond to our questions.

The Department of Homeland Security “concurred with all of the report’s recommendations to improve IPAWS capabilities,” said GAO. “DHS noted that FEMA intends to create toolkits for state and local alerting authorities that will include alerting and governance best practices, technology requirements, and operation and usage information on IPAWS.” The FCC, which didn’t tell GAO if it agreed with the recommendations, included “potential actions” in last month’s Public Safety Bureau EAS test review that could address what GAO wants, the report said. Bureau Chief David Turetsky told GAO his agency looks forward to “continuing its work with FEMA on outreach to state and local government agencies and the public on IPAWS capabilities and to develop a strategy for regular testing of the EAS.”