Adapting and applying a mission-focused strategic framework for emergency management

This study assessed the applicability and utility of adapting the Department of Defense's (DOD) Universal Joint Task List (UJTL)---Mission Essential Task List (METL) process to other Federal Government agencies. The DOD's UJTL-METL process is supported by a hierarchical framework of DOD stakeholders' needs, values, and responsibilities (NVR). The research first removed the DOD stakeholders' NVR from the DOD's hierarchical framework and then combined the remaining hierarchical framework structure with the stakeholders' NVR of an agency of the Department of Transportation.; The DOD's hierarchical framework of stakeholders' needs, values, and responsibilities provides a framework to test the agency's activities for efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability to public needs. If the tasks that are conducted at various levels of an organization do not have traceability to the agency's strategic mission, they must be reviewed for applicability and viability. A task that does not trace may be meaningless to the strategic mission or, in fact, it may have a negative impact on mission accomplishment. Tasks should only be valued and retained if they track to-and-through activities in the agency's hierarchical framework to the organization's strategic mission. A mission-focused Federal agency will have the ability to trace the tasks it performs at one level of the agency up-and-through the agency's hierarchical structure and, thereby, challenge and validate the task's value at each level of the hierarchy. The research showed that a Federal agency's effort to trace activities at one level up and through the hierarchical framework will often disclose that those valued tasks at one level may have no value to or have a negative impact on a stakeholder's NVR at another level.; The use of Graham T. Allison's three models in combination with an agency's hierarchical framework of stakeholders' NVR will help identify the decisionmaking in the organization and empower the stakeholders at every level to protect their interests, including their ethical interests. This will enhance also the opportunity for effective, efficient, and accountable government that fulfills the ultimate needs of the ultimate stakeholder, the citizen.