It’s unclear if the Federal Emergency Management Agency has the American public dancing to the beat of its preparedness drum, according a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A lack of strategy and accurate performance data, however, could be keeping the agency from rocking out readiness, though, the report found.

A GAO investigation into challenges faced by FEMA community preparedness programs, including Citizen Corps and the Ready Campaign, found that the program’s impacts were difficult to evaluate because there wasn’t a good system for analyzing performance data, the data were collected by sources other than FEMA, and there was no strategy for correlating the programs with overarching national preparedness goals.

“While FEMA identifies community preparedness as an important part of its national preparedness strategy, FEMA lacks accurate performance information…that would enable it to determine whether these programs are operating in the communities in which they have been established,” the report stated. “Challenges in measuring the performance of these programs stem in part from FEMA lacking an overall strategy for achieving community preparedness or defining how these efforts align with the larger National Preparedness System.

Among the GAO’s recommendations for helping the agency get its groove on were creating a strategy for the programs, setting milestones for strategy implementation, and identifying ways to keep Citizen Corps participation active. The agency agreed with the GAO assessment.