The false alarm about an incoming ballistic missile that sent Hawaii into a panic this weekend threatened to turn into a major embarrassment for the state and its politically endangered governor, David Y. Ige, as Hawaii officials moved to head off damage to Hawaii’s biggest industry, tourism.

The Federal Communications Commission said on Sunday that its initial investigation of the mistaken alert had concluded that Hawaii did not have “reasonable safeguards or process controls in place” in its emergency notification process. The alert was sent to cellphones across Hawaii on Saturday morning when a state employee pushed the wrong button in the midst of a shift-change safety drill. It then took 38 minutes for the agency to withdraw the alert.

The prospect of a battery of investigations by state and federal lawmakers, with public testimony about the timeline of events, suggested that the alert would probably be a dominant subject in Hawaii life for months to come.

And it quickly emerged as an issue for Mr. Ige, 60, a soft-spoken engineer and a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, and whose leadership style had already been criticized as tepid. He held a news conference five hours after the mistake to apologize, and frequently yielded the microphone to other officials.