After 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security was established and part of its mission is to take the lead along with FEMA during national disasters such as after hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. To address the inter-agency communication issues that were evident during Katrina, DHS spent $430million on special radios with a special secure channel for disaster-related communications.
In the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, apparently the radios weren't used so the Inspector General's office did an audit and of the 479 agency employees in possession of a radio, only 1 knew how to access the secure channel and only 25% even knew how to use the radio at all.
What a colossal waste of taxpayer money! The miserably incompetent Janet Napolitano should resign for a myriad of reasons but you can add this one to the list. As any bureaucracy gets bigger and more powerful, you expect the level of waste to increase somewhat, but this sort of thing is criminal in my mind.
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