The Federal Emergency Management Agency will now require disaster survivors to register for federal aid using an email address — a departure from previous policy where email addresses were optional. The move, FEMA employees tell Wired, puts people across the U.S. with little to no access to internet services at risk of losing out on crucial federal financial assistance after disasters.
In an internal operational update document seen by WIRED, the agency states that the new requirements are “an important step to prepare for the transition to digital payment methods and enhance communication with survivors throughout the application process.” The changes, the document states, are intended to support an executive order signed in March aimed at discontinuing federal paper-based payments. The changes were effective August 12, according to the document.
The rollout of the new policy last week appears to have caught staff on the ground by surprise, as they were suddenly unable to register people for aid without email addresses. Two FEMA workers providing assistance to survivors of disasters in Missouri and Tennessee told WIRED that the new policy has already caused issues. These workers spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
One of the workers told WIRED they personally saw a colleague turn away a survivor who did not have an email address and could not be signed up for aid. The colleague, the worker told WIRED, wrote down instructions for the person to sign up for a Hotmail email address.
“You could tell this person was not going to be able to figure it out,” they said.
The internal update document states that more than 80 percent of survivors already apply for federal aid online. The move, the document says, will allow the agency to more effectively communicate with survivors via online accounts, which “remain the most effective way for survivors to stay informed about their application status, receive timely updates, and access critical information.”
FEMA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
In 2022, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the government agency that advises the president on telecoms and information policy, reported that one in five American households had no access to the internet in their homes. While the majority of offline households said they had no desire to be online, nearly 20 percent said that they couldn’t afford internet access. Offline households, NTIA data shows, are more likely than their online counterparts to make less than $25,000 a year, and are more likely to be racial and ethnic minorities. NTIA data from November 2023 shows that nearly 17 percent of households in Missouri and 20 percent of households in Tennessee — the two states where FEMA workers spoke to WIRED — had no internet use at all in the home.
The internal FEMA document seen by WIRED has an FAQ section; the second question listed asks what to do if an applicant doesn’t have an email address.
“Most Americans already have at least one email address, but setting up a new email address is quick and easy,” the document states. “There are many providers to choose from, and applicants can select the option that works best for them. FEMA does not endorse any specific email service provider.”
The changes to survivor signup have been made inside the program that the agency uses to manage disaster aid applications and pay out survivors, known as the National Emergency Management Information System (NEMIS). Current and former FEMA employees told WIRED that, while they have major concerns about requiring an email address to register for aid, they do believe the system is in need of a technical overhaul. (“It is absolutely an outdated system that crashes daily,” one former FEMA worker who worked with NEMIS told WIRED.)
Agency officials have also publicly expressed the need to modernize the way disaster aid reaches survivors. Former acting director Cameron Hamilton described some of the agency’s goals during a testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee in May.
“The idea [is] that when you order a pizza from Domino’s, you know when it was ordered, when it goes into the oven, when it comes out of the oven, when it’s ready for pick up and sliced and in a box. Yet we don’t have the same level of approach towards guiding and mentoring through the process of applying for public assistance or individual assistance,” he said. “We have individual survivors who wait weeks to get responses, sometimes months before they get payouts, who are in significant financial dire straits.” (Hamilton was fired from the agency a day after this testimony.) Twelve days after Hamilton’s testimony, the new acting administrator of the agency, David Richardson, met with members of DOGE to discuss a new Disaster Information Portal system, according to calendar information seen by WIRED.
According to the update document, FEMA introduced a new “Status Tracker” in June to a survivor portal on a federal disaster assistance website, which includes guidance on what types of documents are needed to meet verification requirements as well as a “visual representation of progress through the FEMA process.”
Despite agreeing that the agency’s technical systems need an update, current and former FEMA employees told WIRED they worry that excluding people without email addresses wholesale from the application process could leave out those who may need the most help. Exclusively providing information and payment through an online portal, meanwhile, could be confusing even to people with emails — especially, a FEMA worker says, to seniors.
“Email is already a MAJOR barrier for a lot of survivors, especially the elderly,” they say. “They must use the email to create a profile on disasterassistance.gov, and this is where their correspondence is. They receive an email informing them they have a new letter, but the actual letter is within their online profile. They have to do all these verifications to access it, and it’s too much for a lot of people. A lot need postal, and email is a terrible option for them even if they have an email address and know how to read their emails.”
The changes come amid a wider push from the agency to shift aid following disasters from the federal government to the state. As WIRED reported in May, the agency has phased out door-to-door surveying of survivors this summer. FEMA workers worry what even more obstacles to aid could mean for those in need.
“Ending door-to-door canvassing and requiring email to register are certainly trends in a disturbing pattern of changes by the Trump administration that abandon the most vulnerable members of communities after a disaster,” a FEMA employee tells WIRED.
Source link
Molly Taft, WIRED grist.org
