Responding to Congress: Importance of Participatory Crisis Management

 

 

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Responding to Congress: Importance of Participatory Crisis Management

vía CrisisCommons de Heather Blanchard el 7/07/11

Hi Everyone!

Wow! I am amazed! Just really great work from everyone who contributed and participated in providing content, editing and inspiring our submission as a responses from Senator Mark Pryor's questions he asked us to submit for the record after our May 5th hearing, "Understanding the Power of Social Media as a Communications Tool in the Aftermath of Disasters."

Just to recap here is what we provided to Congress:

• Oral Testimony – Watch on View
• Written Statement of Record
• Written Questions for the Record – Org Charts

There are so many inputs we have received from people from all over the world. Content came directly from emergency management practitioners who participate in the Social Media in Emergency Management Initiative (just follow the #SMEM hashtag on Twitter), engagement in the National Level Exercise and lessons learned from CrisisCamp responses.

Here are a few highlights of the questions for record submitted today:

• Participatory Crisis Management:Following the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the United Nations moved toward a 'cluster system' to create greater inclusion in the response and recovery process. We would look towards this kind of cluster approach in guiding the creation of a national participatory crisis management system, which would be a collective of groups and individuals working together in an open and cooperative process. While there are challenges in this model, a cluster system designed around the participatory culture could sit alongside the current Emergency Support Function structure, and become a dynamic rallying point where response agencies could onboard new actors in a team environment.
• Liaison Role with Volunteer Technology Communities:At CrisisCommons, we believe there isa critical need to have a liaison role between volunteer technology communities (VTC) and government at all levels, including FEMA. This was a major finding for CrisisCommons response activities. We believe there is a need for requirements to be delineated from response agencies to the VTCs. Once VTCs understand what is needed they could then provide mutual assistance and surge capacity and support a "Whole of Community" approach to the response and recovery effort. Without requirements from response agencies and other affiliated response organizations, VTCs are marginalized and have little ability to identify and provide productive and constructive support activities. There is the old adage, "the time to exchange business cards is before disaster." This concept also applies to technology and data. We learned from the Haiti response effort that during a crisis is not the time to implement new business process or technology tools  that are not used  both by either headquarters and/or field elements.  We do see a great need for initiative and empowerment within emergency management to harness their ability to work with VTCs and other external actors to problem solve to fill unanticipated just-in-time needs.

We called for a new office at FEMA for Technology Innovation, Operations and Adoption:

The office concept – lots of ideas and possibilities:

We want extend a big thanks Commons community. There are so many people from all kinds of backgrounds who have been supportive and gave their lunch hour, evening free time not just for these documents, but all the effort which these documents reflect. These ideas came from CrisisCamps, SMEM Camp and weekly #SMEMchats, participation in the National Level Exercise and all of the response efforts which so many have been a part of over the last 18 months.

Here's to all the folks who went the extra mile to make all of these things happen, especially for this round of writing: Kim S., Pascal S., Lynnette M. and Gin B. at the National Academies of Science, Bill B., Lloyd C., Alison W., Clarence W., Lea S., Steve D., Chris and Cat at Humanity Road, Cheryl B., Alia P., Whitney Z., Maria L., John B., Jim H., Louiqa R., Deb B., Suzanne F at the Pacific Disaster Resource Center., Alex R., Jeanette S., Tim S., Ka-Ping at Google, Mark P. at the Sahana Foundation, Glenn P. at the National Libraries of Medicine, J. Bass, Willow B. at Geeks without Bounds, Teri C., Richard B., Marcus B., and Stephen C.

We also want to thank Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross for their Crisis Data Summit last year which created our first initial schematic on the connection between the response operations center and how that could connect with volunteer technology communities like CrisisCommons.

We also want to show appreciation to FEMA and Facebook for inclusion in their disaster planning processes. We especially are grateful for Craig Fugate and Richard Serino's  leadership in the use of social media and their view of how citizens are assets in a crisis not a liability. We hope that this feedback may rally more awareness and interest in the need to help emergency management as well as planning for and engaging volunteer technology communities throughout all aspects of the emergency management spectrum.

Thanks again to everyone who participated! We hope that these comments continue the discussion of how we can help our emergency management community connect better with volunteers who want to help their communities prepare for, response to, recover from and mitigate against crisis.

Thanks all!

Heather, Andrew & Noel

CrisisCommons

 

 

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