our third witnesses mister chris curry from the government accountability office. mister currie is the director of emergency management national preparedness and infrastructure justice team at gao. thank you for your testimony. >> thank you chairman paul, rent ranking member baldwin and other members of the committee. it's an honor to be here to talk about national preparedness. i think it's important to first talk about progress fema has made over the last decade. before 2006, fema was not responsible for national preparedness. the post-katrina act of 2006 changed that. it gave fema several broad responsibilities in this area. first, to implement the national preparedness system across all levels of government. the second was assess the capabilities and preparedness of state local partners and third was to manage and provide all the department of homeland security preparedness grant to these partners. in progress across these areas has been mixed. fema has made progress in establishing the structures necessary to coordinate preparedness across federal departments.