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Executive Summary

At no time do communities, small businesses, and individuals more need access to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) “3 C’s” of capital, counseling, and contracts more than in the wake of disaster.  SBA’s Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plan (DPRP) ensures that all available agency resources are both provided and integrated into the federal government’s overall support to disaster survivors.

Recovery Cycle:  When focused on recovery, the 3 C’s are sequenced as capital, contracts, counseling, and capital again.  SBA’s immediate effort begins with the deployment of Disaster Assistance staff from one of its two Field Operations Centers (FOCs) to make disaster loans available to homeowners, renters, businesses of all sizes, and private nonprofits.  These physical and economic injury disaster loans are critical to repairing damage and sustaining cash flow in a community.  Almost as quickly, the Office of Government Contracting and Business Development (GCBD), often in concert with the local District Office, reaches out to other federal agencies to offer waivers and other contracting flexibilities to ensure the engagement of small businesses – especially ones in impacted communities – in the process of rebuilding and recovering.  Through counseling and technical assistance, small businesses are able to adjust their plans to account for the “new normal” after a disaster.  Ultimately, this is at the heart of successful recovery:  Small businesses, in combination, are sometimes the local economic engine, but they are almost always critical to a community’s character.  The recovery process can be said to have resolved into the business cycle when the final steps in small business recovery are financed with SBA Offices of Capital Access (OCA) and Investment and Innovation (OII) programs investing in that same “new normal.”

Legal Authority:  SBA’s disaster planning is focused by Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8, National Preparedness, and Section 40 of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 657l).   The latter directs SBA to maintain a comprehensive, scalable plan that integrates all elements of the agency to meet the needs of disaster survivors.  The former establishes an overall framework linking five mission areas – prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery – and associated planning and training to create a National Preparedness System.

Planning Hierarchy:  PPD-8 establishes a tiered planning structure:

• National Preparedness Goal – The goal sets national targets for 32 core capabilities necessary to deal with great risks, and can be applied in an integrated, layered, and all-of-Nation approach as a foundation to planning.
• National Planning Frameworks – Five mission area frameworks (Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery) describe how the whole community integrates the core capabilities and works together to achieve the National Preparedness Goal.  They are designed to enhance understanding of how we, as a nation, coordinate, share information and work together to prevent, protect from, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from natural and manmade disasters.  SBA has a role in mitigation and response frameworks, but its major effort focuses on the National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF).
• Federal Interagency Operational Plans (FIOP) – For each mission area, there is also a FIOP that builds on the guidance outlined in its respective framework.  These FIOPs guide the activity of the federal government within the respective mission area.  SBA, again, focuses primarily on the Recovery FIOP and the joint Response and Recovery incident annexes that have been created.
• Departmental and Agency Operational Plans – PPD-8 directs each department and agency to develop a suite of operational plans to ensure timely, integrated contributions to the federal efforts outlined in the FIOPs to support the whole-of-nation approach contained in the planning frameworks.  Because SBA focuses primarily on long-term disaster recovery – with contributions to mitigation and coordination with response – we maintain a single operational plan, the Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plan (DPRP).

DPRP:  The DPRP is revised annually and made available to all staff through the intranet and to the public through the SBA website.  It supports four outcomes:

• Processes coordinated with federal guidance and protocols for preparedness, especially for recovery as specified in the NDRF.
• A customer-focused, transparent, scalable, outcome-driven model of performance.
• Timely decision-making and available resources (human capital, facilities, technology, and partnerships) throughout the Disaster Loan Making process.
• Support of long-term economic recovery by providing access to capital, counseling, and contracting services for disaster survivors to rebuild and withstand economic injury.

The DPRP lays out an overall plan for the Disaster Loan Program, both for smaller scale events when ODA resources easily meet demand and for larger scale ones requiring greater participation from all agency leadership and resources.  Because Disaster Loans are only the initial tool SBA applies to facilitate small business and community recovery, the plan also specifies how all SBA offices contribute to long-term recovery.  Key to long-term coordination of SBA’s efforts is the designation of the impacted District Director(s), along with Regional Administrators, as the face of SBA’s recovery efforts.  Typically, these individuals will interface with field coordinators from the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, which coordinates the overall Economic Recovery Support Function established by the NDRF.

To provide support to District Directors (DDs) and Regional Administrators (RAs) faced with disaster recovery challenges, the DPRP designates the Disaster Preparedness and Operations Team (DPOT).  The national DPOT prepares DDs, their staffs, and local resource partners on how to best enhance existing community relationships with emphasis on disaster preparedness and recovery, as well as how to best connect with state and federal interagency partners.  The team also provides post-disaster reach-back capability for DDs needing specific subject matter expertise or assistance to contribute best to the overall recovery coordination structure.