Lots of experienced emergency managers are retiring – like me. They aren’t disappearing; many of them stay in the loop by teaching, writing or (yep) consulting. In my case, this a great opportunity to spend more time on the elements of emergency management that I couldn’t before: professional associations like IAEM and CESA, causes like INWEM and EMPOWER, and projects like EMAP.
EMAP is an independent organization that evaluates and accredits emergency management programs against a set of national standards. They define a program as a system, not an individual office. They don’t evaluate your Emergency Management Department. They evaluate your jurisdiction’s emergency management program. A very important distinction.
I was an early EMAP supporter. I was in one of the first assessor training courses, and my Master’s Thesis was about an analysis of the EMAP baseline assessments for state programs between 2003 and 2004.
Not long ago, I was on an EMAP assessment, and spent some time with the other assessors discussing one of major findings in every assessment – lack of documentation. For purposes of program assessments (this one or any other kind), documentation of standards is critical. There really is a difference between doing something and writing it down. Why is that? Because one of these days, you aren’t going to be there, and somebody else is going to have to figure out how to activate the EOC, or how many generators you have and where to get more, or where we filed all those NIMS completion certificates?
What it comes down to is documenting institutional memory.
When I wrote my thesis back in 2005, I wrote about three issues that interfered with a jurisdiction’s ability to get accredited: leadership, financial support and this one. What I wrote then:
Very often, the knowledge of policy and procedure and the experience with implementing them are just not written down. They are in somebody’s head and passed along by word of mouth. They are part of institutional memory and not part of any formal documentation.
Referring to the clerk in the movie and television series M*A*S*H, who could find and acquire anything, (Steve) Charvat (University of Washington) said: “I call it the Radar O’Reilly factor. How do you document something like that?”
Because of programs like EMAP, documenting institutional memory is becoming more common – especially with the emphasis on having COOP and COG and similar mission/business continuity plans.
Which brings me back to retired, or retiring, emergency managers. How are you going to document YOUR institutional knowledge? When I knew I was going to leave UC Davis, I spent six months creating an administrative manual and put everything I could in it.
Was it helpful, Nick?
