With just over 100 days until kickoff, World Cup host cities are telling Congress what many of us have been hearing for months: security coordination is fragmented, federal funding is frozen, and the operational pressure is building. Here is what that means for agencies and how to prepare now.
This week, local officials from FIFA World Cup host cities testified before the House Homeland Security Committee. Their message was urgent and direct: security coordination is fragmented, federal funding is frozen, and the clock is running out.
One witness compared the current state of planning to a Jenga game, where one wrong move brings the whole thing down.
With just over 100 days until kickoff, cities are staring down 40 days of continuous, multi-venue, multi-agency operations - and many still lack the infrastructure to manage it.
This is not news to us.
After speaking with multiple teams across host cities - Chiefs, Mayors, Emergency Management, Finance, Legal - we know one thing is true: no two host cities are running the same playbook.
Every jurisdiction has its own labor agreements, agency partnerships, funding sources, and operational constraints. There is no standardized approach. What works in Kansas City does not automatically translate to Miami, Dallas, or Foxborough.
But the common themes prevail. Across every conversation, regardless of city or role, four challenges keep surfacing:
Reimbursement of grant funding. The federal government earmarked hundreds of millions for host city security. Cities need structured, defensible documentation to prove how those dollars were spent - down to the officer, the hour, the rate, and the funding source. Without that, reimbursement becomes a fight.
Audit-proof record keeping. When the tournament ends, the questions begin. Public records requests, audits, oversight inquiries. "Who worked, under whose authority, at what cost, funded how?" If the answer lives in spreadsheets, email threads, and text messages, it will not hold up.
Multijurisdictional staffing. Most host agencies cannot staff this alone. Coverage requires officers from neighboring cities, counties, and state agencies. Coordinating that across different departments, different systems, and different approval chains - without double-booking or losing visibility - is where things break down.
Operational efficiency. This is not one event. It is weeks of stadiums, fan zones, transit corridors, VIP movements, and practice sites. Manual coordination does not scale. Phone trees and group texts do not scale. The margin for error at this level is zero.
The congressional testimony made clear that FEMA grant funding - critical for hiring additional personnel, building out security infrastructure, and paying the people doing the planning - remains frozen. One host city official called the end of March a "drop dead date" for starting to cancel plans if the money does not arrive.
That means host cities are simultaneously trying to plan the largest security operation most have ever faced while uncertain whether the money to execute it will actually come through.
When the funding does arrive, it will arrive fast, and cities will need to move fast. The agencies that already have a structured system for tracking assignments, hours, rates, and funding sources will be the ones that can deploy quickly, document cleanly, and reimburse without dispute.
The ones still running on manual processes will scramble.
RollKall is not a staffing vendor. We are not a security company. RollKall is off-duty and overtime program infrastructure - the shared operational and financial system of record that lets multiple agencies operate as one without giving up local control.
Kansas City Missouri Police Department has already selected RollKall to manage workforce coordination for the World Cup. That decision reflects the level of structure required to manage public safety operations at a global scale.
Here is what RollKall solves for World Cup operations:
Multi-agency staffing in one workflow. Host and partner agencies schedule in a shared environment. No spreadsheets, no email chains, no phone trees. The lead agency publishes assignments; partner agencies join with controlled access; officers see the same job board.
Policy and labor rules enforced automatically. Seniority provisions, assignment rules, approval chains - followed by configuration, not memory.
Payments, invoicing, and reimbursement defensibility. Every job tagged by event, agency, role, rate, and funding source. Automated invoicing. Clean exports for grant reimbursement and inter-agency billing.
Audit-ready system of record. Every assignment, approval, hour, role, rate, and funding source captured end-to-end. When oversight asks questions, you have the record immediately.
Kansas City remains in full control. These types of events are too critical to outsource to a service provider. All details managed in a singular system, with your command at the helm.
RollKall can be live in your agency for the World Cup in 30 days. Configured to your rules, your partner agencies, your approval chains, and your funding sources. We have done this before at scale, and we are doing it right now for World Cup.
If you are a host department, surrounding agency, or city leader in a World Cup metro, the problems described in that congressional hearing do not have to be yours.
If these challenges resonate with you, it is not too late to find a solution. Sign up with your government-issued email for a short information session, and we will talk through how RollKall can alleviate these stresses.
When you are ready, we will have you live for the World Cup in 30 days.
Dedicated to first responders, RollKall simplifies every aspect of vendor-paid details.
