Note to Reader: After reviewing the DHS posted transcript, I have made very minor edits to correct spelling (program names), punctuation and missing words that were on the posted DHS transcript where this text was taken. Additionally, links to the various programs mentioned are also provided for additional details. No actual content was changed.

QUESTION: First of all, compliments to the Ready team. Downtown D.C. has Ready ads I think at every bus stop, including — I’ve seen at least 10 of the regular Ready ads, so they are out. My compliments to them. And to the Preparedness folks in FEMA. I just came from the Stakeholder Forum at the Red Cross. You had a really quite full house, and it was interesting to see the diversity of companies and the broad spectrum of companies there. You had everything from Anheuser-Busch to BENS [Business Executives for National Security]. So that was quite good. And there obviously — there’s been a lot of forward leaning by that particular portion of FEMA. And you brought up the logistics folks in your comments. Obviously Katrina uncovered a lot of logistical gaps –

MR. PAULISON: That’s an understatement.

QUESTION: Well, let’s be diplomatic. Again, there’s gaps and you guys have obviously streamlined the organization chart to make it a direct report to you. You’ve hired an SES. You’ve done the executive program with the UPS Exec. You’ve done those particular things, but it seems the logistics office is the one portion of FEMA that isn’t leaning forward as far as its engagement of public/private sector on its requirements. And it’s almost a tale of two FEMAs here, that you guys are being very aggressive on this but when it comes to requirements, collection or engaging of private sector folks, the logistics branch — I know from companies that either I work with or that talk to me - they either can’t get meetings, or they won’t sit down with them. I guess I’m concerned about whether we should we have confidence in the logistics folks especially when I think people are certainly having concerns about what is being done with their preparedness and their role in the NRF and all of that. But it just seems that the logistics folks aren’t being as proactive as I think your other portions of your Agency are.

MR. PAULISON: Part of it is — and they are, in some ways. One of the examples was we had a flood in Nevada. And our water supply is in Moffett Field, California. And instead of shipping water all the way across — halfway across the country, we contacted Wal-Mart and had them ship water from the next town over with their drivers and their trucks and delivered it and distributed and everything else. So we are doing that. We have to be careful with some of it. Part of the issue is everything we do has to be competitive. And I’m a firm believer in not using sole-source bids, or — you don’t want to give somebody a leg up. I mean, I’ve already got FedEx complaining why didn’t we use them instead of UPS? That’s all on the Executive. So we’re going into this kind of carefully. We are doing the business things like we did today, and we had a workshop not too recently with the private sector also. How do we get them more involved? And we’re trying to use the Business Council and other groups, instead of using individual companies and giving them a seat inside the joint field offices set-up. So they can have their fingers out into the private sector, more tap and dip.

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: There’s also this Aidmatrix.

MR. PAULISON: The Aidmatrix is a donation system where when donations do come in, there’s a central — it’s a computer system. A central place where everything is located and we know where it needs to go. We know where the gaps are. And so that’ll help for private companies wanting to donate supplies and things. The other thing we’re doing is instead of FEMA just handling FEMA logistics, it’s going to be the logistics coordinator for the entire federal government, including the Red Cross. Where we know where all of those supplies are, and where they are out there. Somehow we have to tap the private sector into that. Greensboro, Kansas, we ended up — we sent a lot of stuff there. So did the Red Cross. So did Veterans’ Administration. And we duplicated. We had so much stuff they didn’t know what to do with it.

And we got together — I got together with the Red Cross president, who at that time was Mark Everson, and said we can’t do this anymore. We’ve got to do a better job of whoever has the closest stuff, that’s where it’ll go.

When we had the wildfires in California, I got a call from the Red Cross. They got a request for 10,000 cots, and they needed them that night. And theirs were way on the other side of the country. And so they called me and said, “Can you provide the cots?” I said, “Sure. Ours is in Moffett Field.” But then I thought, why would we do that? We’ll get a hold of the military. There’s two military bases right there, and within four hours we had 10,000 cots at Qualcomm Stadium. And that has never happened before. So it’s a matter of knowing where all the resources are at least at the federal and non-profit side of it, and be able to tap into those right away. What we need to do is, like I said, is we’re working to — how do we get the private sector in there without stepping across that line of giving one company a leg up over another when it comes to doing business with the government.

QUESTION: When it comes to the requirements or what are needed for an area, obviously, you know — Southern California with its fires and earthquakes and just about everything else, is it better to work on that on a literally region by region basis? Deal with the folks in Region 10? I mean, their needs are certainly going to be different than what Region 2 in New York might be. Is it better for the public and private sector companies to work with the organizations that are in that area? Should they work that directly with the FEMA Region rather than trying to come up from a Headquarters?

MR. PAULISON: Probably at least for the sake that we know whether — where the resources are. Because nobody knows a town better than the people who live there, and nobody knows the state better than the people who live there, and nobody knows the regions better than the people who work in that region. So probably the answer would be yes as far as — at least knowing where the supplies are. What I can’t have is a food fight over supplies from one region to another. So we have to control that centrally. I’m trying to decentralize almost everything I can in FEMA. That’s why you see us putting all those people we’re hiring — 80% of them are going out to the regions. We have literally doubled the size of this organization in two years. The Secretary’s been in tremendous support of that, and the President and Congress to give us the money to do that. And — but most of those are going out into the regions. But logistics almost has to be controlled other than that. During Hurricane Andrew — it has to be controlled centrally. Otherwise the logistics don’t necessarily go to where the priorities are if you let it — if it’s done out on the regions there.