Summary
The Disaster Recovery Regulation1 allows the Minister of Municipal Affairs to provide disaster recovery financial assistance to residents, small businesses, agriculture operations, First Nations, provincial departments and municipal governments for uninsurable losses and damage caused by disasters. The minister may approve a disaster recovery program (DRP) if the disaster has caused widespread damage to property and the cause of the disaster was extraordinary. The department has paid $903 million under various DRPs since 2010.
Between 1995 and 2015, the Alberta government used a contracted service provider to provide evaluation, processing and administrative disaster recovery services. In March 2014, the minister announced that the department would not renew the service provider’s contract. The contract expired in March 2014. The minister then signed a one-year transition contract with the service provider to complete open DRPs and transfer DRP administration to the department.
Objective and Scope
Our objective was to determine whether the Department of Municipal Affairs had adequate systems to transition services to the department that were previously delivered by a service provider. Transition refers to the department’s decision to end its relationship with the contracted service provider and the department’s assumption of responsibility for program delivery.
Conclusion
The department transitioned delivery of the disaster recovery program from the contracted service provider to itself. However, the department must further improve its program delivery systems to achieve the desired results. It has started making these improvements. We believe that once the department has completed implementing its transition work plan, Alberta will have in place a more effective and efficient disaster recovery program.