MODERNIZING FEMA GRANTS
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) helps people before, during, and after disasters. The agency provides funding, in the form of grants, to people preparing for or recovering from a disaster. FEMA awards and manages about 40 different types of grants using 10 different grant systems. In 2015, the agency started an initiative to consolidate their 10 existing grant systems into one. The existing systems were hard to maintain, didn’t communicate with each other, and made it difficult for users to apply for and manage their grants.
The team had two goals: to help FEMA deliver functionality quickly and build up the agency’s skills and expertise for managing and supporting a user-centered, agile software development process. Within the first nine months, we designed, tested, built, and launched a small subset of features, helping fire departments across the US get equipment and hire and train firefighters. My role during this phase of work was to create design deliverables and coach the team on user-centered design best practices.
Using the insights from the research we conducted, we created and iteration on designs for usability testing.
I created a design system to ensure that everything was consistent and met accessibility standards.
The program is now regularly releasing functionality to users. Firefighters and state officials are able to apply for grants to help them fund initiatives to train staff and mitigate disasters. The program is also is in the process of hiring a design lead, which will actually be the first of its kind in FEMA. During one of the last usability sessions I conducted, one of the participants said the quote below.
“This whole thing has restored my faith in the government. This is such a good program, and it’s an example that government is doing something right.”