by Eric Holdeman: Emergency management in the blogosphere
Subscribe via RSS | About this Blog | Contact Eric Holdeman | Blog Roll
It is important to recognize that following a major disaster, "Someone has to take the blame for when things go wrong." Just ask any number of emergency managers who have had bad things happen on their watch.
The latest casualty is the head of Chile's National Emergency Management Office While there is a transition of governments underway, the departure of the director was not under favorable circumstances.
Another person noted in the article linked above was Mariano Rojas, head of the office responsible for tsunami warnings. He was fired last Friday.
All of this reminds me of an Op-ed I did for the Seattle Times a number of years ago. They titled it Better Safe than Fired which I guess might be true. But my point was if I'm going to be fired it will be for attempting to do something, and not for a lack of effort. Something I learned from my own tsunami warning experience.
I think what you have to remember is that for the elected official there has to be someone to blame. Even if the disaster was so overwhelming that no one could possibly have done better--heads must roll. I use to joke that following the big disaster in King County it would be my head on a pike outside the entrance to the county courthouse as a warning to future emergency managers not to screw up, or else!
Jeanette Sutton, a co-conspirator on social media ideas has a new blog posting on Crowd Sourcing
This is exactly the type of collaboration that is happening now and that we need to tap into. I'm working with the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) gang to look at doing a project on a Disaster Wiki. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to demonstrate how government agencies can "let go" and get more done by empowering individual citizens to be part of the solution during all phases of emergency management
We've moved on, right? American Idol has us talking around the water coolers about who got bumped from the show, etc. Meanwhile the tragedy that is Haiti, on a good day, continues.
You could say that the disaster response is over given that the hospital ship USS Comfort has sailed for home. Haiti Two Months Later continues to be a disaster waiting to happen. The recovery, if you want to call it that, is still feebly moving forward. A country with few resources and an international aid system that is overwhelmed with the size and scope of the disaster struggles to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake.
Recovery is never easy. The EMForum.org had a session on the 2008 Iowa Flood Recovery earlier this year. A nation with seemingly endless resources has trouble also coping with the long term recovery efforts of its states.
Our experiences are nothing compared with Haiti. They have struggled and will continue to struggle just for survival. Let's not forget their needs. These people are so much more important than finding the best person who can sing a song.
Thanks to Bill Cumming for both links above.
As you well know by now I'm a fan of maps. The future for maps (currently anyway) is in GIS technologies. I see that ESRI is having a Homeland Security GIS Summit in July 2010.
Why do all the big technology conferences have to be in California anyway? I know they are a hotbed for technology, but when you can't travel--it is a long way to walk!
If you are able to travel, or live down the street from San Diego then this might be an event for you and your GIS support crew to attend.
Eric Kant shared the following blog post with me: The Truth about the Average Twitter User
The numbers are not all that surprising. I believe in the 80-20 rule that seems to cut across just about everything in life. For example, in churches 20% of the people give 80% of the funds.
For those heavy into social media Twitter has become an easy and quick way to stay abreast of the news and other happenings.
In reading blog post linked above you might surmise that all the hype about Twitter has come and gone. I keep wondering what the next social media craze might be? How will it change the way business and government function?
HLS Watch has a blog posting that lists all the Homeland Security Grants and then invites you to take a test to see if you can match up the description with the title of the grant. I got 20 out of 23 right. Try your skill and see if you might be the next HLS Grants Manger for your organization.
See also the comments section and the one by Marko Bourne that gives you a little bit of history and the internal struggles within the federal government and then too, states and local jurisdictions.
Glen Woodbury tipped me off to this blog posting.
MaryAnn Tierney was kind enough to participate in an interview with me. It is now available online at Emergency Management Magazine Philadelphia Emergency Management Official Addresses the City's EOC, Building Relationships
I think you will enjoy her responses to my questions. Her story is a good one of coming into a program as the director and revamping things. One of her staff, Edward Vassallo, Ready Coordinator, City of Philadelphia participated today as a presenter in a Social Media Workshop in Seattle (via web-cam).
See how your program measures up to what she has cooking!
One of the downsides of using blogspot to blog with is that I can't attached a Word or PDF file. So, to share my notes from the event with you they are pasted in below. A lot longer than my normal blog posting. These came from a Social Media Workshop held today in Seattle, Washington and sponsored by PNL as part of the Interagency Biological Restoration Demonstration (IBRD).
Social Media Workshop for Emergency Management
Sponsored by IBRD
Seattle Washington
March 10, 2010
Glen Woodbury, Director, Center for Homeland Defense and Security Naval Postgraduate School: Implementing social media is all about trust. Can you have trust established between people and organizations that have never met in person?
Police have a different "feeling" about who or what to trust. Certainly there are different opinions based on where you are coming from.
How do you decide which social media systems will be adopted? You can suppress a technology, let it just happen, or champion it. There are those who just defer (postpone?) for a period of time. Some organizations will chose to adapt to the technology. Washington D.C. for instance noticed people forming groups and organizing on social media. You can choose to adopt social media for your purposes. Some organizations see social media and decide to make it work for them by "influencing" the use of the media.
The issue with social media is that it is going to happen. You can't control it. The expectation from the public is that we will be there. If we (government) don't participate the messages will be disseminated with or without us being part of the conversation.
What are we trying to accomplish with social media:
⢠Build trust
⢠Communicate
⢠Save lives
⢠Promote participation in government
⢠Share information
⢠Transparency
There are two key words in play. Trust and fear. Fear drives people to do nothing.
Is it better to go where the people are versus building your own system? If you build a "government" system will people have the same trust dynamic by participating in a government sponsored social media?
Quote: "You must treat information as a commodity as important as the more traditional and tangible commodities as food, water and shelter." Jane Hull Lute
Bill Schrier, Chief Technology Officer, City of Seattle. With a champion like him in the city they will be doing great things with technology and social media.
Great progress has been made in the 20 years since the invention of the Internet. Audience here at the workshop is heavily into social media. Is this session preaching to the choir?
Sean Whitcomb, Seattle Police: Seattle Police Department is a heavy user of social media. Previously they were very reactive to the media. That media landscape is changing rapidly. Not just the newspapers, but now also television.
They found that people want speed over accuracy. People are more forgiving if you can get information out quickly. They will let you correct it and update it. They are using Word Press for their blogging, and they are on Twitter at SeattlePD
They started putting the blotter on line. They also have Seattle 911 on line. Longer drawn out events draw a lot of interest. It gives them a direct connection to the people without filtering it through the media. It started with the blotter and then moved to Twitter. It is not "in real time" so that bad guys can't know specific tactics being used at an incident site.
For now they are not allowing a two way communications with the public. Right now they don't have the staff to moderate heavy comments brought on by police work. Perhaps they will move to a "Ask the Chief" feature. They want to add video to their blog. The sky is the limit. It has been significant in building trust with the general public and the media. They have integrated social media into their regular work. It does save time because it provides a forum for the posting of information.
There is no internal review for the posting of information. They just follow the normal procedures for talking to the media.
Branding your social media is important for governments. Establishing the brand when things are slow will help you when things turn hectic.
Brian Kemper, Seattle DOT: Smart Transportation systems are no longer the wave of the future. It is being used extensively. It started with the installation of traffic cameras. They put snap shot images and put them on the web. Now with streaming video. www.seattle.gov/travelers/
They have information on arterials and also the state highways. They have a number of remote ways to detect and count traffic to provide traffic projections on real-time conditions. They have integrated both the Washington State DOT cameras and their own for sharing video with the public. They had 20M visits to their cameras last year. Incidents and construction are also depicted on their maps.
They track how people find their pages of info and 83% of it came from neighborhood blogs (Seattle has a strong neighborhood basis).
They will have a new improved version coming soon (couple of months) that will include travel times. They are also looking to install license plate readers. Also coming soon will include an "iPhone friendly" capability. In the future parking availability will be provided via signage to indicate what the capacity is for individual lots.
The above illustrates how once you are on the technology train you can't get off. It just keeps moving and improving and adding features in the future.
There are about eight or more other jurisdictions in this Puget Sound Region and there is a discussion ongoing about consolidating these systems to provide a regional map.
Mobile access is becoming much more important. Seattle is looking to have a third party take their web products and make them fully mobile capable for all types of mobile devices.
www.Seeclickfix.com/seattle not a government site, but available nationally. Seattle watches this site.
Panel with Public and Private Sector representatives. Puget Sound Energy is a player in social media. They loaded their own page on Wikipedia to get their information out there. Started their first blog in 2009. Andy Whappler (sp?) is their blogger on energy conservation and efficiency. Flickr for posting photos is being used. They want provide photos that the outside sources can follow. They would like to include in the gallery section photos on the emergency response phase. They would like people to upload their pictures to Flickr to get situational awareness.
Twitter has shown how they can leverage their communications. They have about 700 followers. When an incident happens they see a spike. The local media is following them. They monitored during a heat wave that started outages being reported/talked about on Twitter. They knew about the event almost an hour ahead of the normal media inquiry.
What are they doing now and into the future:
- Listening and listen some more
- Learn from peers
- Play, test and review
- Create process and expectations
- Active engagement
Learned lots from talking to others in industry who have a reputation for using social media. They do have some people designated to use social media. Employees are expected to use the "first person" when talking about the company on their own.
They need to have active engagementâ"regular posts on Twitter and other social media. Maintaining an ongoing presence. They are not trying to respond to every inquiry when there is an emergency. They will respond generically.
Walter Neary, Public Relations Director, Comcast â"He has worked in an EOC and worn "the vest" in a hospital environment.
They are very agile in responding to customers because people have choices. They found by accident that they can use Twitter to respond to customer complaints. They are using blogs and still use forums. He personally has found crowd sourcing to work in getting questions answered.
He believes that there is no substitute for a robust web site. You also need a way to quickly get information out. Sometimes the web page is not the fastest. Green River flooding was prepared for but not experienced. They acknowledged that their local office in the area would be flooded. They are going to link to sites that are updated frequently and relevant.
Being on Twitter now during a non-disaster lets you get ready and capable before there is a disaster. Get to know the format.
EHA: Social media is a fulcrum that gives you much more authority beyond the size and scope of one person or jurisdiction.
Lind Simonsen, Pierce Transit, Community Relations: They paid attention to comments about "lack of communications" during a big ice storm that gave other organizations a black eye. They listened to that and took action. Their decision was to jump into social media. The initial reaction from the leadership team was laughter. The thought was that it was frivolous to delve into social media.
All their buses have GPS locators and two way communications. They are flowing information out of the web site to Face Book and Twitter. They are at PierceTransit on Twitter.
There are standard detours for their routes that can be easily updated based on the circumstances.
James Graybeal, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Public Affairs NORAD and US Northern Command. Working to protect the United States from attacks. Formerly looked only outward, now looking inward too since 9/11.
He has been charged with using the new social media tools. Previously the PAO was focused on the national media. People are consuming their information differently. Not going to the NY Times for their news or CNN. Social media is directing people on what to read.
People are consuming information via social media versus other traditional means. NORAD has 1,200 people (workforce) selling their brand. He is trying to get the NORAD Commander to focus on inside communications so that the workforce takes care of the external audience.
They have hired a social media specialist and there is a Commander's Blog. They are on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube. They've been doing this hard for the last 10 months. The commanding general has given them free reign to make a difference and assuming the risks that might come from providing the freedom.
The 21st Century "Information Chain" has totally reversed the "Chain of Command." You have to trust your people that they will represent you well. They want to keep people informedâ"that is the mission.
Now they immediately update their Facebook and Twitter pages before doing a news release. They are building a network of communications that will serve as the foundation for when "bad things happen."
Now that the tools are in place they will be doing an internal push.
Social media is a grass root effort. When you make connections it can bring about a dialog with people who don't like you as an organization. They wrestled with how to handle the negative comments and opinions. They stopped trying to counter all the arguments against them. Now they just "let it go" because only the most relevant show up. If you take them onâ"you lose.
Things that are more successful include:
- Information about their people
- Missions and events they are doing (Haiti earthquake for example)
- 9/11 Events--still
- Super Bowl
- Vancouver 2010 Olympics
The Commander's Blog is trusted because the commander is trusted. They tied President Obama on re-tweets on Christmas Eve.
NORAD future goals:
- Increase fans & followers
- Increase awareness of missions
- Increase agency partners cross communication
- Be the site for military emergency information
- Keep up with the main-stream Social Networking
Laurie Van Leuven, Seattle Public Utilities:
Social networking, Mashups, Wikis, Blogs, Twitter are all tools
She likes the value of Wiki and what it can do.
She did her master's thesis [I hope to get a copy and share with you separately] on the 2007 California Wildfires. Huge impacts during that event. Government was using the traditional means of news releases, talking points, information hotlines, etc.
Web 2.0 technologies filled in the gaps.
KPBS, PBS: News releases of PDFs by email is old tech. Just give me your RSS feeds. PDFs can clog their system. They experienced the 2007 wildfires. Huge increase in social media since that time.
Sabra Schneider, King County, Washington Web Master: Establish a voice before the crisis. Her observations on what happened during Hurricane Ike was all the mainline media, with little information coming from government. The Houston Chronicle was exemplary in the way they shared information.
They have found other people to supplement the media team to do the social media side of things in the Joint Information Center (JIC).
The preparation for Green River Flood helped and provide an opportunity to become better prepared for coordinating their messaging.
The public expectations:
- Public expects up to the minute current information
- They will turn elsewhere if they don't get it
- 10 levels of approval won't work
- It's not always a press release
- One update can and sometimes should feed all social networks
EHA: Is the press release dying? Seems to be so during emergencies.
If you are not fast at releasing information others will fill the gap.
Edward Vassallo, Ready Coordinator, City of Philadelphia participated by Skype. They have had an active social media program since January 2009.
What has been learned from a two way dialog? Situational awareness was improved by people sharing pictures of what was going on at train stations during their snow emergency.
They are using their social media sites for disaster preparedness information.
Leave a comment
It was not that many years ago that snow, even lots of it was not considered something that the federal government got involved with. State and locals might shovel and plow all day and all night, but yet it was their responsibility to pay the bills associated with snow removal.
Jump ahead to 2010 and you can read the FEMA Snow Assistance Policy that now exists. I'm sure there are litterally dozens of jurisdictions seeking "Snow Assistance" following the big snow storms that hit the Northeast.
Overall, I think this is the type of program that will have to be cut in the future as we strive to reduce spending at the federal level. The financial responsibilities cannot continue to be passed up to the federal level for what would arguably be called a large scale emergency.
Sometimes you have to shovel your own driveway and not expect to get paid for doing so.
Bill Cumming shared the link to the policy.
Emergency Management Magazine has an article on Fusion Centers, Information Sharing Top State Homeland Security Priorities, Survey Says which comes from Elaine Pittman, a technology writer who I respect greatly. She has good insights into what is going on in technology.
While it is sounds like Fusion Centers were the states' priority, they have also been the Federal Government's priority and have gotten preferential treatment in grant funding.
I did note with interest the references to Web 2.0 which I do not think is as pervasive as the interviewee alludes to. We are talking about law enforcement and intelligence activities and they are a very reticent group to have anything happening outside of closely controlled communications pathways.
Tomorrow I hope to attend a social media workshop. It will be interesting to see what people and agencies are saying there on the topic.
Another factoid from the survey that was taken included the following statement about citizen preparedness information:
- 90 percent post the information on their agency's Web site.
Lastly, the "Emergency Manager's Curse" is about to strike all the Homeland Security Advisers as elected officials and their appointees rotate with the upcoming 2010 elections. Rebuilding the relationships will take a little time to accomplish. Maybe social media tools can help with that task.
Leave a comment
Latest Emergency Management News
Helicopter could provide critical on-site intelligence following a nuclear disaster.
Report commissioned by DHS found E-Verify overlooks a large number of illegal immigrants applying for jobs.
The digital transition opened new channels for public safety, but a failed FCC auction has put the future of public safety broadband in jeopardy.
Latest Blog Posts 
Chile: Someone Has to Take the Blame
Crowd Sourcing: Now This is What I'm Talking About!
The Wisdom of the Crowd
