The success of today’s Emergency Management enterprise and its long-term viability is dependent upon many things, among which are
- the accurate definition and assessment of new challenges,
- the alignment and the integration of the organization’s vision and strategies by the leadership,
- the cohesiveness and dedication of committed stakeholders, and,
- the ability of the “troops” and population to adapt to the ever changing state of conditions.
The authors contend that these changes create a new 21st Century World, a new normality which needs to be addressed in a forthright manner so as to reduce the stress and strain on Emergency Responders and their communities. We also need to ponder and address these issues differently in order to manage the plethora of challenges arising from this brand new world.
These changes have created this time of transition. Our next phase if we take an evolutionary growth model, includes several factors. The most challenging are the economic conditions. The fundamental question is – what is the value of the services we provide? Its corollary is – What is our public willing to pay for them? Everyone sees the need for emergency services but we are faced with funding – how do we invest in the programs? For instance, all communities need decontamination capabilities, but unless the government grants are appropriated, will the communities or regions pay for these facilities themselves? Will the return on investment (either financial or emotional) enable the communities to find ways to fund them? How many communities themselves have been able to satisfy that need and desire financially?
Other economic considerations and changes that are currently taking place include the willingness of public and private industry to cooperatively fund emergency management needs. In the past patriarchal paradigm, the expectation was that government would “take care of things.” With the advent of the changes in macro- and micro-economics, reduction of work forces and increasing transfer to private sector services, Government agencies are realizing the escalating costs of emergency management while trying to realize the fact that people still want, and expect, government to “take care of them!”
With the realization of the many costs of emergency services there is a bona fide need to explore the remuneration for work in emergency response management (both emergency management and emergency medical services). Issues need to be addressed with updated assumptions. For example, in the “take care of me” era, the labor force and management was able to encourage that belief system and meet that desire with the provision of community-funded emergency response services. New realities dealing with economically-related assumptions have had to be explored and resolved to allow us to move forward through these developmental and evolutionary phases. These assumptions include:
- There are present threats that did not exist 10 years ago
- The need for emergency preparedness and emergency response service has not diminished
- Communities do not have the funds to afford all the desired services
- Expense of traditional delivery of service is forcing communities to seek new ways of delivering services.
- Labor force differences exist, often limiting the ability of staff to deal with training for the 21st century
- Communities are looking to address the consolidating of services due to cost and resource constraints
- Continuing regulatory requirements impact management systems
In addition to economic factors, additional issues influencing our thinking and behavior have emerged. For example disease outbreaks, whether intentional, such as small pox, or naturally occurring, pandemics such as Bird Flu or SARS, have had an impact. The Nation as a whole is concerned with the emergence of these influences and the impact it may have on us. The populace expects protection from such catastrophic outbreaks, yet the question remains as to the availability of appropriate and adequate funding.
Violence whether it be terrorism or street crime, is another area of major concern. Again the population wants to be protected and shielded from all these events. Again communities are not able, nor in many cases willing, to fund anti-violence initiatives due to the shift in economics. Pockets are no longer seen as deep, and we appear to be finding their bottom!
Politicians are trying to balance the demands of the present with the realities of the 21st century. They are weighing the vulnerability of each community to disaster and the probability of it. They are attempting to increase the emphasis on prevention through awareness, preparation for an event, mitigation, and the transition from response to recovery. This is being complicated by the increasing severity of disasters and the resulting recovery efforts. Catastrophic events such as, Oklahoma City, tornadoes, terrorism, Hurricanes (such as Katrina), California earthquakes, and Southeast Asian sunamis have emphasized our needs.
As a result of all this complexity, many organizations are trying to figure out ways to work together. There is a growing emphasis of private/public/regional partnerships. The relationships need to be built, trust established and economic relationships initiated. These relationships will assist in finding solutions to the gamut of challenges now acknowledged. Communities are compelled to develop new attitudes toward relationship-building beyond traditional thinking. Organizations and their leadership continue vying for “political” and financial control of preparation efforts and ultimately, response and recovery services. Realistically there are many political forces that create gaps in many aspects of the emergency management system. For example each agency has its own priorities on funding allocation. Often these priorities conflict with one another; this in turn creates further conflict between all the components of the system. Major questions asked today are: Who is getting the funding? Who is controlling the funds? What are the terms of compliance if I receive funds? What constraints, or what freedoms, are part of the funding?
Another critical part of the puzzle is determining who plays the role of watchdog. For example, Federal analysis of Katrina appears to indicate a billion dollars abused in the response and recovery efforts. The role of watchdog is not popular. Yet it is essential to ensure and assure that the limited funds are being used on the right targets, for the right reasons and in the right ways.
Development and implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS ) has spearheaded significant advancements in emergency management capability, and progress has been made with the development and implementation of these standardized approaches. These systems are being created to help address needs and ensure adequate delivery of services. Additional advancement have been created and implemented in regards to the Response Information Management Systems (RIMS). Organizations such as the United States Government have created Federal mandates to compel implementation of performance management processes that tie directly into any funding received by communities and/or community agencies.
Everyone and everything are impacted by events that have already occurred in the 21st century. These events have clearly demonstrated that incidents often not only affect the local community, they affect the region, the state, and sometimes the nation (depending the enormity of the incident and the agencies that are involved). Questions now emerge as to: Who pays? Who is in charge? Who follows up? The questions go far beyond our 20th century “Incident Command System” thinking of “Who is in charge?” Today we also address the quality of the response, mitigation issues that were and should have been addressed, issues of responsibility and culpability, as well as economic costs and political factors. There are many more variables associated with emergency response addressed today.
We need to focus on three significant areas: leadership, relationships and integration of new challenges into our thinking. We need to train current and new leadership as well as stakeholders who are charged with creating organizational sustainability and growth through the execution of strategic plans and visions while developing human capacity and capability, with a series of updated beliefs, thoughts, skills and behaviors.
Leadership
- Getting out of the box – traditional thinking has a place, but changes are happening to rapidly to rely on that approach alone.
- Leaders need to have a clear sense of what jobs must be done and who is best suited to do them. Having this pre-determined and understood by all participants will allow those involved to take on the responsibilities and accountability for real actions to real events.
- Stay out of the politics. Allow politicians to be political. Allowing emergency managers do their jobs without have to encounter and overcome political boundaries.
- Create leader, community and regional visions that include all the related parties in the public and private sectors.
- Create, embody, and support a broader emergency management mission.
- Anticipate actions and the needs for the long term. Quickly get past the short term aspects.
- Develop clear resource sharing strategies rather than fight for turf control. It will save everyone a lot of work.
- Identify your passion and don’t be afraid of expressing it, to this will help drive desired relationships.
Relationship
Relationship is the bonding of all stakeholders into an aligned commitment toward organizational vision, mission, and strategies. A big advancement in the 20th century was the creation of Mutual Aid Agreements. Today we need to include public and private agencies that can provide services to communities in needs. We also need to create and the relationship with the communities on an individual and regional basis. We need to get beyond the traditional thinking and begin to address relationships which in the past might have been unconventional. We need to determine what services we really need to provide and determine several ways of providing them. We need to foster relationships with others who can contribute to the mission in ways not considered before. For example, if relationships were built with trucking companies to call on should an event occur that necessitated barricading of large areas (e.g. airport fence-lines). Anticipate the need and build the relationship and trust.
Integration
Integration of new challenges comes about due to the development of strategic vision and tactics that take our organizations to news levels of growth and sustainability. In order to accomplish this, communities and their stakeholders need to create ‘group think’ process addressing:
- Strategic planning
- Implementation planning
- Operational planning
- Continuous growth and improvement
- Project sustainability
We need to think and practice differently. For example, typical communities will identify an area to exercise. They will conduct the exercise and evaluate the exercise highlighting those “lessons learned.” So read the reports, and then it is over until the process starts all over again at some other time. Consider now to be the time for communities to change their 20th century ways and incorporate 21st century concepts and realities to create new ways of growth and development of their emergency response systems. All exercises should be enhanced with “lessons gathered,” an analysis of changes needed to be made and their impact on the different components in the process. Then a community will conduct smaller exercises in those areas that need further attention. Now, when they exercise the response system again, people are ready and able to perform in these new ways.
We as a profession need to determine how to shift our culture from patriarchy to one of cooperation and collaboration. We have to learn how to deal with transition by addressing difficult issues in win-win-win ways. We need to continue developing standardized response processes that can be used in crisis situations where the sharing of resources (human and financial) can occur. As Emergency Managers, we all need to embrace behavior modification – be willing to “step out of the box” into the 21st century.
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