The audit, ordered by FEMA's Office of the Inspector General, was done by KPMG LLP, an independent accounting firm. The audit's objective was to determine whether FEMA acquired, developed and maintained the NFIRS 5.0 in a controlled manner according to relevant federal guidelines.

The good news is that the NFIRS audit vindicates the three fire service magazines that each reported early in 2001 serious inconsistencies and possible illegal activities in the USFA's Information Technology Services Directorate.

The bad news is that after 25 years of trying to develop a system to capture fire department incidents across the country, the USFA's NFIRS system is still not producing usable statistics. While the Department of Justice has real-time numbers for police activities, the fire service fumbles with data that is old or gathered by stratified random sample surveys. While some numbers are better than none, the fire service should seek to emulate the statistics-gathering of U.S. police departments.

Why should you care? Well, do you need more dollars for your department? How can you justify your need if you don't have statistics to prove you need the money?

The KPMG report points out several glaring problems. Since 1996, the USFA has spent $4.5 million on NFIRS 5.0, but the audit states that the procurement documentation did not meet Office of Management and Budget requirements.

The audit also states that when software vendors complained that the USFA was in the software business, USFA officials countered “no software existed in 1996 to meet USFA's local, state and federal functionality requirements” and wasn't available until “after December 2001.” However, the specifications were not released to vendors until December 1999, and then were changed without advising vendors. This action resulted in the demise of many vendors, from almost 60 in 1983 to a handful today. FEMA claims that they had not intended to provide free software in the form of its Data Entry Tool, but did so at the request of the “constituents.”

Finally, the audit notes that NFIRS 5.0 is not reliable or dependable and has frequent breakdowns. Based on this report, the USFA spent millions on a system that wasn't officially contracted, and the ITSD created software that was in competition with fire service vendors and still does not produce results we can stand behind.

This tale is getting old — you don't keep putting quarters in a vending machine that's broken. Judge the report for yourself at www.usfa.fema.gov/inside-usfa/nfirs11.cfm. At a time when the fire service again is waiting for precious dollars, money is thrown into a black hole with few results.

We respectfully make five suggestions:

• Appoint a new itsd head director who has both fire service and technology experience. Allow this person to revamp the program and mandate fire departments to send in their data.
• Exit the software business. Private-sector systems currently exist that offer real-time statistics. There's no reason to reinvent, research or start over with capturing numbers.
• Simplify the incident reporting form. Whether it's adapted for handheld computers or a single sheet of paper, simplify the information that's gathered. The lone captain on a call at 4 a.m. needs to be able to fill in the blanks while returning to the station. Once every fire department is participating, the information requests can be increased.
• Listen to the experts, the vendors who are still in business. It started that way in 1980 when the incident reporting system was created.
• Stop funding boondoggles and put computers in every fire department.

This fiasco has gone on long enough. The fire service begrudges police its yearly truckloads of money, but fire departments must insist their incidents are recognized shift by shift, department by department. Every state fire marshal should head up such an effort in their states.

Welcome to the 21st century.