Frequently Asked Questions: MIP Workflow – Sequencing/PALT

How and when are projects which are zeroed-out in the Sequencing Tool removed from the PALT Tool? What are the consequences of this removal?

If a user with a MOD RMC Sequencing Lead role removes all FEMA funds for a county for a given fiscal year in the Sequencing Tool, the regional dataset, which contains the zeroed-out county, must be submitted to and approved by the FEMA Regional Sequencing Lead before the change will be reflected in the PALT Tool. Once this initial approval occurs, the county will still appear in PALT, but it will have a Total Planned Cost of $0 in the County Mapping Activities screen. The purpose of having the $0 Total Planned Cost appear in the PALT Tool is to act as a flag to PALT users to let them know that a particular county was recently zeroed-out in the Sequencing Tool. This way, PALT users can then redistribute any funding that was associated with tasks tracked in the PALT Tool for that county.

In order for the zeroed-out county to be removed from the PALT Tool, a second round of approval must occur. For a second time, then, the MOD RMC Sequencing Lead must submit the regional dataset for approval. Once the FEMA Regional Sequencing Lead approves the data this second time, the county will be removed from PALT entirely.

An alternate flow of events is encountered when all FEMA funds for a county are removed by a user with the FEMA Regional Sequencing Lead, MOD Alexandria Sequencing Lead, or FEMA HQ role. Because changes made by these users are automatically approved in the Sequencing Tool, once any of these users zeroes out a county, that county immediately shows up in PALT as having $0 Total Planned Cost. A second round of approval must still occur, however, in order for the county to be completely removed from the PALT Tool. This second round of approval occurs when any of the FEMA Regional Sequencing Lead, MOD Alexandria Sequencing Lead, or FEMA HQ roles completes Sequencing activities for the zeroed-out county again, in which case a second round of automatic approval will have occurred. Only after this second round of approval is completed will a county be removed from the PALT Tool.

It should be noted that, regardless of the type of Sequencing user, two rounds of approval must occur in order for a county zeroed-out in the Sequencing Tool to be removed from the PALT Tool.

Assuming that two rounds of approvals have occurred in the Sequencing Tool for a zeroed-out county, that county will be removed from the PALT Tool. When this happens, all data in PALT that is associated with that county will be automatically removed. This means that any task descriptions and user-entered funding amounts associated with mapping activities for that county in PALT will be automatically deleted from PALT.

Group IDs in PALT exist only as long as they have activities associated with them. If an activity associated with a zeroed-out county is the only activity associated with a Group ID in PALT, when that county disappears from PALT, the mapping activity will disappear in PALT, and that particular Group ID will be deleted.

(This scenario also applies to Special Projects)

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