Do I need this BRCK?

Posted on May 23, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

I’ve been very pleased to be able to back Ushahidi’s project on Kickstarter. If they reach their target (and they are very close) I should, in due course, become the proud possessor of a router designed to be really quite resilient. In this post @thehaitian explains with some passion why he needs this BRCK.

He lives in Haiti. I live the UK. Do I need a box that will handle wifi bridging, mobile networks and phyical connections as a router and shift the connection as flaky connections drop out?

In a word. No.

So why am I backing the BRCK?

Because the use case for this device in much of the world is overwhelming. Lots of people need the BRCK. If Ushahidi builds it they will come.

Because I like new things, especially resilient tech, especially built by cool Kenyan companies.

Because I think there is a use case in the UK. Of the top of my head I can see BRCKs being deployed into rest centres (essentially evacuation reception centres). People need to get connected to let their freinds and family know they are safe and in emergencies, even in the west, connections come and go and power is flaky. And festivals, digital projects in rural areas or critical locations.

But the truth is, if you are in the west you may not need a BRCK. Even so we all need you to back it with some actual money. For not very much of your actual money you could make a really important piece of tech happen and, potentially, get a lovely Ushahidi t-shirt.

Go on, back the BRCK

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Posted in tech

Open and shut: social networks can improve your information picture

Posted on May 23, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

“Last year all this was surrounded by water”

Not surprisingly the emergency planners of Wales are very interested in flooding. The received wisdom is that the biggest risk to communities is from the sea but the astonishing weather of 2012 brought rivers into the homes of thousands of folk many of whom have yet to return.

I was at the Spring Conference of the EPS Wales Branch. I was there on a speaking gig but I would have gone as a delegate. The fact that the committee managed, once again, to deliver a quality event that really meets the needs of their members should be an inspiration to other branches and other societies.

I won’t go into detail about many of the presentations because some of them were the no-holds-barred stuff you get amongst peers and may not suit broadcast on a public blog.

But two presentations did seem to link together to tell a story.

We heard from a local authority emergency planner who had been involved in the response to a significant series of flooding event. Some things had gone well, some had gone less well but thankfully there were no deaths and low levels of injuries.

As has happened in every emergency I have ever been involved in they had struggled with the information picture. Sitting in your office while storms rage around you and teams of people on the ground are very concerned with operations and less concerned with sit reps can be a frustrating experience. But without the picture it is harder to make good decisions.

Then we heard from the excellent Barry Jones (until very recently at BBC Wales) about how the BBC had approached the coverage of several emergencies across Wales last year. This was in itself fascinating but most striking was his analysis of the social media traffic around the specific incidents discussed above.

He had no doubt that there were sufficient data in social networks to build a much improved imformation picture around that incident.

There is a presumption amongst those of us who work in this sphere that monitoring social media should help responders to understand what is going on. In the UK many emergency planners and responders continue to rely almost exclusively on traditional models for collecting and analysising data. It is practically hard to prove that there is data available that they are missing by not monitoring the onlibne environment.

But this was an open and shut case.

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Posted in benproctor.co.uk, Emergency Planners, Information Picture, SMEM, Social Media

The naming of things: agile and vost

Posted on April 30, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

The naming of things

I was quite tired at bluelightcamp. I pitched a workshop and went to the wrong room. Then I concluded that no-one had turned up and went about my lawful business. On the train back home I confused the tiny town of Wem (where I worked for four years) with the sizeable town of Shrewsbury (where I lived for 10). I also nearly failed to exit my train at the correct stop.

That said I was very awake for the workshop on agile pitched by Rowena Farr. She wanted to explore the extent to which agile methodologies could be used within the public sector and the degree to which the language of agile is unhelpful.

As someone trying to punch an agile sized hole in a local authority it was great to hear from colleagues within public sector organisations who are making agile work in software and web development.

It was also really interesting to hear from Kate Norman about her experience of applying some techniques learned in an agile development environment to an in-house comms team.

I found myself sticking up for waterfall (sort of) at one point. Tales (and they are legion) of projects that have gone badly off track or over-spent under waterfall do not mean that we should scrap PRINCE2 and embrace SCRUM (though it is possible that we should). They are often symptomatic (in my view) of organisations with unhelpful cultures, where failure is not tolerated, where people hide risks and relationships are poor.

Even so I still think agile orientates people in healthy directions in the context of public sector web work.

But the language can be an issue. Product owners, scrummasters, sprint and stand-up do not resonate in the way that project managers, risk logs and PIDs do.

Even so I think it’s important. Agile is different, it has different roles and requires specific skillsets. Unless these roles get specific names they will get mapped onto people’s current frame of reference. Suddenly scrummasters get asked for PIDs and we are in a very weird world.

And this connected with something Sam Thomas said to me on an entirely different topic. It was after a workshop in which I had talked a little about crisis mapping and related skills to see how they could be better connected with UK responders. She pointed out that the name is unhelpful. Google crisis mapping and you get a lot of big stuff, especially from across the developing world. This doesn’t resonate with your average police inspector.

Earlier Angus Fox had used the term “online specials” to illustrate the sort of roles he thought volunteers with smart apps could play. Simon Redding was comfortable with the idea of community wardens online.

I’m involved in the VOSTUK project looking to promote the idea of volunteers helping the emergency services online. VOST started in the USA, the language works there but maybe we need to tone it down a bit for a UK audience?

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Posted in Barcamps etc, Emergency Services, Social Media

A really quite useful research project

Posted on April 21, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

Ruta de Evacuatión

DFUSE Smart City Evacuations

A group of academics from UK universities have been beavering away for a couple of years now on the DFUSE project. I mentioned this last June.

They have been examining the question of how social media might affect evacuation from a range of different angles. They’ve spoken to professionals, they’ve run computer models and they’ve reviewed real incidents.

Like a lot of research they often conclude that more research is necessary. Even so the key findings from the project should already inform practice.

Some of the project’s findings with my observations and recommendations for practice

  • Different cities have different orientations to using social media in an evacuation and this should be considered in city wide social media strategies.
    I found this really quite really quite a striking conclusion. I’ve noticed, anecdotally, that Shropshire and Herefordshire though apparently very similar have very different orientations towards social media use.
    Responders should consider describing the orientation of their different geographies and developing their plans as a result.
  • Old media is still the most effective medium for warning and informing the general public.  Social media may increase the effectiveness of warning and informing, but the impact is marginal.
  • There is huge time sensitivity in terms of the effectiveness of warning and informing the general public.  There remains the problem of warning the population in the middle of the night when traditional warning systems may be more effective (sirens, door to door).
    Really interesting findings these. It draws heavily on modelling real world behaviour so they looked at how many people might be watching TV vs logged in to social networks vs listening to the radio at various points. Then they modelled how likely it would be for an individual to find out about an incident through different media. My caution is this refers to alerting an unaware public that an incident is in progress. It also glosses over the issue of media coverage (if you are watching the national news you are unlikely to be informed about a local gas explosion).
    Responders need to maintain a full toolkit of mechanisms for alerting the public. Social media may not be the most sensible tool for alerting the public. 
  • For social media to be of use by citizens in evacuations information should ideally be both accurate and timely.
    At first sight this is a statement of the blindingly obvious. Then again, we all know  how hard it is practically to build a clear information picture in a fast moving confused situation. Timely for social media is minutes not hours. Accurate at speed is really hard. Accurate, at speed, between many agencies is really hard. But not impossible.
    Responders should plan for an exercise the delivery of accurate and timely advice on social media.
  • Communication between agents does not always help.  In one of our evacuation simulations if the number of communicating agents exceeds the optimal ratio then agents are `over-informed’ and frequently change their minds during the process, slowing down the overall efficiency of the evacuation.
  • In a simulation of the evacuation of a UK city, communication between agents caused congestion.
    These were complementary findings from two pieces of modelling. Remember in a networked society you are not in charge of the relevant information flow. Citizens can update each other with live situational data “St Owens St is closed, avoid the area”.
    Responders should revisit planning, training and exercising evacuations to include the complexities of a dynamically informed public.
  • In an evacuation it is plausible that social media communications will follow situational awareness categories over time (Perception, Comprehension, Projection) and that this has implications for engagement with social media by authorities.
    This was a great piece of work worth a blog post all of its own (on its way).

Overall

These are the findings that leaped out at me. There was more research including looking at resource allocations and preparedness strategies.

I really do recommend reading the public report. I think it really highlights some important issues for planning, training and practice.

They call for more research. Let’s hope they get some.

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Posted in Emergency Planners, Incident Management, Information Picture, Recovery, SMEM, Social Media, Warning and informing

Cardiac surgery in hoodies

Posted on March 11, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

Puffles & BB
Over lunch at ukgovcamp @pseudograph asked me if any of my twitter celebrities were there. I said no. There are great people who I really admire but I kind of know them so they’ve lost that celebrity cache for me. Then I found myself in a workshop with @steiny and I had to admit, I was a little bit geek-struck.

It was a workshop about celebrating ukgovcamp and talking about he future.

[UPDATE 12th March 2013 should have said the workshop was pitched by @hadleybeeman and @annkempster and already blogged about by @juliac2.]

It pottered along quite pleasantly until Tom lit some blue touch-paper. What he asked (and I paraphrase quite heavily) was how many people at ukgovcamp or in the wider community are likely to become chief executives in the next few years.

We probably all agree that chief execs are going to need the sort of skillsets possessed by and taken for granted by those in the govcamp community. If the community doesn’t produce them then where are they going to come from? Probably from the same place they always come from.

He explained it with a tale (which I may have embellished in my remembering):

Imagine a couple of hundred cardiac surgeons get together each year in London. They talk about the latest developments in surgery, future cardiac trends and the impact of 3D printing on distended aortas. Imagine those surgeons could see that there were fundamental problems in the NHS leading to poor outcomes for patients. They should probably do something about it shouldn’t they? In fact some would argue they had a duty to do so.

Not everyone was sold on the idea that there is, in fact, a problem. Or if there is a problem it may be being fixed without us. Or if it isn’t being fixed it may not be our job to fix it.

We got a bit hung up on the idea of a manifesto. I guess in a public sector context manifesto is a loaded term though in that company I thought agile rather than political.

And I could not but see links between this workshop and the morning’s workshop on women in digital pitched by @teacamplondon and the later workshop pitched by @loulouk on a mentoring network for digital.

Things are not, to my mind, sorted. It is not the job of ukgovcamp to sort them, nor can anyone claim a constituency from the govcamp movement.

But those who agree that there is a problem can, if they chose to, try to do something about it.

A manifesto may not be the right way to frame the problem. Maybe some user stories might be more appropriate. Here’s my starter for 10.

Things that should work betterin the public sector

  • Chief Executives of public bodies should have a good grounding in technology, digital and networked society issues so they can lead transformation in contemporary organisations.
  • Digital professionals should be able to develop strong leadership and networking skills so they can take on the most senior roles in the public sector.
  • Those appointing senior roles in the public sector should be able to understand why digital and technology skills are important so they can appoint future leaders.
  • People at all stages of their career in digital roles should have access to mentoring, development and support to ensure they can progress alongside their peers from traditional professions.
  • I wish it went without saying but it clearly doesn’t, men and women should have equal opportunities at all stages of their careers so they can live and work in a culture that is not rubbish.

Comments really welcomed.

Image is Puffles and BB by Alex Jackson used under a Creative Commons licence

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20 random thoughts from #commscamp13

Posted on February 26, 2013 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

CommsCamp_26Feb_082

A long time ago no less a person than Dan Slee, overwhelmed with learning from UKGovCamp, suggested that it might be prudent to capture the top 20 thoughts at the front of one’s mind. And this has become the a sort of public-sector-webby-innovators-campers meme.

And I like nothing better than a meme. Especially a sort of public-sector-webby-innovators-campers meme.

  1. Birmingham is a cracking city.
    (I used to live there. There was an exhibition once of portrait photographs. A photographer had set up their stall in one of the shopping centres and had taken posed shots of the general public. The exhibition really demonstrated the cultural and ethnic diversity of Birmingham but one thing was constant. Behind every subject was a bunch of their mates laughing and taking the mickey out of them.)
  2. That said you really should visit Herefordshire. In fact why not stay here and make a day trip to Birmingham.
  3. It’s great to meet old friends at these events. Catching up with colleagues from around the country and comparing notes is worth the cost of the train alone.
  4. It is particularly nice to catch up with the dragons.
  5. And it’s even better to meet new people and people I only know from twitter. There is so much good practice across the country and so many talented people working in and with the public sector.
  6. It’s worth reflecting on what we are talking about when we talk about the things we talk about.
  7. Talking about open data leads the conversation in a data direction. Talking about citizens and the things that bother them leads the conversation in a different direction. Even though I know this in theory I keep talking about open data.
  8. Open data is more about the open and less about the data.
  9. Cake is an excellent addition to any unconference.
  10. Asking people for their help and advice is a very good idea if you want to pitch a workshop.
  11. Comms leadership means working in networks and helping others work in networks.
  12. There would appear to be no substitute for talking to users about how your website works for them. In fact why would you build a website in any other way?
  13. Social media is not a comms issue. Or rather it is not just a comms issue.
  14. Social media is more about the open and less about the social media.
  15. Communication is about behaviour.
  16. Open is about behaviour.
  17. Quite a lot of things, it turns out, are about behaviour.
  18. Paul Clarke: I’m working with the GDS
    Me: It’s the coolest place in the public sector
    Paul Clarke: Well, it is now
  19. It turns out I can go a whole day without talking about emergencies
  20. It’s nice to be home

Image is by the extremely talented Paul Clarke and used under CC BY 2.0

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Posted in Barcamps etc, Corporate Comms, government, Social Media, tech

2013: The year of the map

Posted on January 31, 2013 by likeaword — 2 Comments ↓

Yesterday an unprecedented three and a half hours passed between my alarm and my first coffee. That coffee was delicious when I finally arrived in the great city of Manchester. I was there for an LGComms seminar. I had a great day and learned loads. I also gave a presentation. The slides are attached but, as is traditional on this blog, they make no sense without a commentary.

So I’ve written one.

The year of the map

Organiser of the event, Darren Caveney, asked me to

“do your usual stuff on emergencies”.

It is quite gratifying (I think) that I have usual stuff. But he also set a general theme of exploring the trends for 2013. The more I thought about it the more I thought we’ve probably got beyond the idea that social networks have a role in warning and informing. The more interesting (and far-reaching) issue is how citizens use the technology.

Visit Herefordshire

I am ridiculously proud to have a job working for the council that serves my home council. I really think that people should visit Herefordshire. That Amanda Coleman confesses she wasn’t really sure where Herefordshire is. I said

 

Visit Herefordshire can have that for free.

See the Mappa Mundi

This is a thing you should definitely do when you come. It’s a medieval map of the world. It would be pretty useless as an aid to navigation but it is excellent as a representation of how the world is ordered (Jerusalem in the centre, England right on the edge). It reminds me that we tend to have a narrow view of maps which really stems from their development as a way of facilitating the rapid movement of troops and ordnance. Technology makes it increasingly easy for citizens to make and edit their own maps.

Putting things on a map

Volunteers in the west midlands of the UK have chosen to put gritting routes on OpenStreetMap. These are not lines drawn on the surface of the map, it is coded into the mapping data. You could get your satnav to navigate you only by gritted routes.

As it would happen, Andy Mabbett who is involved in this project was there. He said:

 

Maximising disruption

This dates from 2010 and it purports to be an attempt to use google maps to crowdsource data on where riot police were located during protests. This could facilitate disorder in areas away from the police.

Protect Prague

Ushahidi is best known for monitoring elections and providing data feeds in a crisis. Here it is used to map reports of concerns about the built environment.

I wrote about Ushahidi last year.

Independent sources

There is a practice emerging around Ushahidi (and other platforms) of crisis mapping. Mapsters are trained and practiced in techniques that enable them to work in groups and robustly process data feeds from online networks. The standby taskforce does this really well. A UK project worked across the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Had something serious happened this would have provided a live feed of emerging issues created by a new group, not journalists, not emergency responders, not necessarily in the UK.

Giving voice to the voiceless

Al-Jazeera English are doing interesting things including this project.

Flu near you

I found this project mapping reports of flu by reading Kim Stephen’s blog

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Posted in Barcamps etc, benproctor.co.uk, crisis comms, SMEM

A GDS for local government? Really?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by likeaword — 22 Comments ↓

Whirlpool

I am the recruitment bellwether (possibly)

I honestly think that the Government Digital Service (GDS to those who can’t be bothered to type all that) is recruiting by seeing who tweets regularly in my “Gov-Types” list on twitter and hiring them.

Clearly I don’t really.

I think that I follow some really interesting and innovative government types and the GDS is recruiting really interesting and innovative government types.

Make no mistake. This is a really, really good thing.

I want my government to be excellent. I want genuinely talented people to find roles driving innovation and transformation in the civil service. I want innovative, talented and creative people to be successful, to have rewarding and fulfilling roles and to work in the public sector.

The GDS is tasked with transforming government digital services. It’s recruiting talented folk. It’s working in innovative ways.

On finding that the excellent James Cattell is leaving the world of local stuff to join the world of national stuff I did tweet that I worried on the implications for local government. Not about James specifically (he’s good but other talented folk exist) but about inexorable the pull of the centre.

Actually is there a problem?

The arguments that say this is good for local gov:

  • if the cabinet office is doing it then it strengthens the case for local authorities doing it
  • these innovators that I see being sucked into Whitehall may not stay there forever and when they come out, imagine what skills and talents they will bring with them
  • this is the 21st Century and GDS recruits aren’t locked into a black box and prevented from communicating with the outside world. Rather the opposite. We can collaborate, learn and innovate together

The arguments that say this is bad for local gov:

  • if all the people with talent, drive and innovation go and work somewhere else, local government will be a poorer place
  • the GDS is part of a vicious circle of London-centrism, the GDS is in London, talented people are in London, if you want to do innovative cool stuff you have to do it in London. One of the really great things about local government is that it is massively decentralised and, er, not really based in London
  • as the GDS becomes better, faster and stronger the case for central government running local digital services will grow ever stronger

The arguments that say it makes no difference at all:

  • there are a lot of talented people to go round. So a few of them sign up to the civil service, there are plenty more where they came from. And the GDS is pretty small in the grand scheme of things
  • there are massive cuts in the public sector weighing very heavily on local government, these people wouldn’t have jobs for long anyway
  • this is nothing new, the civil services has always saught to drag talented folk to London and the world has not ended as a result

Let’s build GDS Local..?

Most of these arguments seem to me to have some viability. There’s been some chatter on twitter today about a GDS for local goverment. Which I have, at that level, heartily supported.

It does raise the interesting question of what would it do?

Linking it to my bullet points above. I guess it would need to

  • transform local government digital services (especially if they’d been innovating in Whitehall)
  • recruit, nurture and develop talented innovative folk
  • not be the only place where talent resides (or assume that it is)
  • not be based in or near London. In fact better if it were decentralised across the country.
  • be managed by local government (maybe local public services) not central
  • be open, collaborative and innovative part of the central government and local government family as well as being part of the wider community

And I look at this and I think. What does this look like?

We already have FutureGov, KindofDigital, Helpful Technology and the govcamp movement?

Is it a digital innovation college: Bramshill or Easingwold for local government digital stuff?

Or is it a series of collaborations and partnerships?

Or to put it another way. What is the problem that we need a local gov GDS to fix that we cannot fix with what we have?

 

And my head starts to spin and I have to stop writing.

 

Image credit Horizonte de sucesos by Ignacio Sanz used under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 2.0

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Posted in Barcamps etc, benproctor.co.uk, government, Social Media, tech

Getting volunteers to monitor digital spaces in emergencies

Posted on August 9, 2012 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

This has been cross posted to the VOSTUK site. A version is planned to appear in the September edition of “Resilience” magazine.

There is a practice emerging in the USA called VOST (Virtual Operations Support Team). Emergency Managers in some areas are recruiting teams of volunteers to help out online in an emergency. For a quick introduction see this slideshow put together by Carolyne Milligan (@mm4marketing)

 

I wanted to find out what it was like working with a VOST so I had a chat with Cheryl Bledsoe from Washington (state not DC).

I started by asking her what day job is

Cheryl: I am the Emergency Manager for Clark County WA. I report to an Administrative Board and am the conduit between our elected officials and our first responders/emergency responder agencies.

During peace time, I have 6 staff who report to me and when emergencies strike, we bring in about 40-60 people from various agencies to assist and help coordinate emergency response. When we aren’t in emergencies, we’re planning for how we would respond and training our emergency responders and volunteers on the plans. Day-to-day, we deal with hazardous material situations, search & rescue and weather alerts. We’re also in charge of community preparedness.

 

Me: And you use social media?

Cheryl: We started using social media in 2008 after a flooding situation occurred near here and 3 ladies in a church started a blog and began posting truth and rumors which resulted in much publicity. Our agency began to realize that we needed to figure this stuff out. So, my staff now are trained in regular use of social media and it has been a huge benefit for in connecting with our local communities & residents.

We have blog at www.cresa911.blogspot.com, a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cresa.911 and two Twitter handles at @CRESA and @CRESATalk

 

Me: And you have a group of volunteers supporting you online: a VOST. Can you tell me what that brings you?

Cheryl: We are still freaked out about whether we will be able to manage the influx of information during a large-scale disaster which is why we began looking at the VOST concept. I had met Jeff Phillips several years ago who originated the concept and began participating on teams myself. I have served as an activator, team member, team leader and now am a team administrator for our CRESA VOST.

 

Me: And what do they actually do in an incident?

Cheryl: A VOST Team Activator for an emergency response agency defines the mission for the team.

For example this was the mission for a recent activation in Oklahoma
1) Watch these hashtags: #OKWX, #OKTwister #Oklahoma #Tornado for questions, concerns about the emergency response
2) Watch the National Weather Service Twitter accounts and retweet anything they say with timestamps.
3) Watch the community conversations & encourage regular timestamping of data….watch for old data
4) Collect any damage assessment pictures from the tornadoes with any specific geo-location data on those pictures if you can find it.
5) Watching the livestreaming news media for accuracy of reports

 

Me: It’s all very public. I think that might unnerve some emergency planners in the UK.

Cheryl: The only thing that is public is that it’s gathering public information into one place. You’ll notice that how Oklahoma was responding to the tornadoes isn’t listed anywhere in the work of the volunteers.

The VOST teams watch what is public and gather that into one filtered location so that an emergency manager can periodically check in and ensure that the emergency response is meeting the community concerns & expectations.

 

Me: So as an Emergency Manager is this really adding value to your work?

Cheryl: Yes! As an emergency manager, I’m way too busy to watch the internet. Prior to use of a VOST, we just simply wouldn’t listen to the community. We would connect with emergency response organizations and limit our engagement with those who would just call 911. That is a very limited view of the world and opens us up to all sorts of media scrutiny for perceived failures in the community. And we’ve had enough of those “respond to the media after the bad situation” moments.

Our engagement now leads the media to contact us first and those improved relationships have gone a long way to improving our community-based reputation.

 

Me: So where do VOST volunteers come from?

Cheryl: VOST folks are, at their core, trusted agents who can filter down what they see online for someone who is coordinating emergency response. Instead of having to watch the whole internet for how a situation is being reported or affecting the community, I can now touch base with a team leader who can tell me right away what the local community is concerned about.

Volunteers get the adrenaline rush that any of us get out of helping out their community. At their heart, people like to feel like they are in the “know” or the “thick of the action” and being able to watch the online community chatter about the event and feel like they can share good or valuable information taps into that “I’m helping” and makes folks feel good.

 

Me: Would there be circumstances when a VOST might not deploy or might not be appropriate: I’m thinking about the English riots say?

Cheryl: One of the key activation things for VOST teams is that they serve at the behest of either an Incident Commander (who is in the field) or an Emergency Manager (inside an EOC who serves in a support/coordination role). There is a little debate about whether VOST teams can or should self-deploy, but my fear with self-deployment is that the information that is collected may go nowhere and the work may be wasted.

There is always a role for individual VOST members to play in terms of encouraging people towards official information sources and encouraging good timestamping of socially shared information, but that is not really a VOST activation. There are some organizations like Red Cross, HELP Foundation, Humanity Road and Standby Taskforce which serve more of a recovery-based role and support community and humanitarian response, but that is a slightly different mission than VOST teams which focus on the Response hours of a crisis.

 

Me: If you had $1million to help with social media what would you spend it on?

Cheryl:

  1. I would privatize the development of VOST teams so that they aren’t entirely reliant on volunteers because I don’t think it’s ultimately a sustainable model because it requires a fair amount of time and effort. Right now, we are reliant on volunteers as they are available. If demand exceeds availability, we will have a problem.
  2. Then I would set operational standards, training recommendations and consistent outcomes for team so that emergency responders could hire teams during their responses for limited duration response (they would monitor, share concerns and archive the social traffic)
  3. Then, I would establish regional teams and ensure quality assurance among the teams….This is my long-range vision for where this stuff needs to go to become a reliable resource to the emergency management community.

I wouldn’t waste money on tools….I’d let the private sector worry about that. Govt needs to be out of the tool-development game in my opinions. We’re too slow and really can’t keep up with the market.

Here in the states, I’d like to see VOST teams be placed into the national resource typing categories & standards so that they can become deployable assets. And through the VOST Leadership Coalition, I’m trying to softly encourage consistency of standards among our developing teams.

The failing of other large national volunteer groups is that too much ground-up development results in teams doing different things. The more this resource can be defined and developed, the more the public and communities will benefit from “in-touch” emergency responders.

 

You can find Cheryl on twitter at @cherylble.

There is a volunteer-led project to develop the VOST concept for the UK. To find out more, to help the project or to explore ways in which local responders can develop VOSTs visit
www.vostuk.org or tweet @vostuk.

VOSTUK is a member of the VOST Leadership Coalition.

 

 

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Posted in Emergency Planners, Information Picture, SMEM, Social Media, tech

The final word on Exercise Watermark

Posted on August 2, 2012 by likeaword — No Comments ↓

Robert waving goodbye

The UK Government along with the Welsh Government have published their response to the final report on Exercise Watermark.

That’s not a beautiful sentence. Let’s unpick it a bit.

In 2007 there were widespread floods. Following the clean-up the Government asked Sir Michael Pitt to review the response. He made a load of recommendations. One of these was that there should be a national exercise to test flood response arrangements. That exercise took place in April 2011 and was called Exercise Watermark. It was massive. Lots of learning came out of the exercise which was captured first in a draft and then in a final report. The final report made a series of recommendations. The government has now responded to the recommendations largely by saying “good idea” or “we’re already on it”.

Why do you care about this?

Because I wonder how many organisations really reviewed their policies, procedures and plans in the light of Exercise Watermark. The Exercise highlighted a range of ways in which organisations behaved unexpectedly, poorly or confusingly. These are areas of risk. I was particularly focused on the communications risks which were significant. If I may just highlight one area in particular:

In LRF areas there were some problems with Police Gold Commanders exacting rigid control over the multi-agency media cell, even to the extent in one area of stopping the Environment Agency issuing such flood warning press releases, until they had passed through the local Gold clearance process, which led to more delay.

We don’t exercise SCG/Gold comms cell procedures very often. How often do comms staff across the LRF even look at the plan.

But there was lots of learning, not just in comms.

Isn’t this old hat now?

The world has moved on a little since April 2011. Even so an excellent organisation (and partnership) should be able to whizz through the Exercise Watermark final report and tick off their compliance (much as the government has “good idea”, “already done that”).

And what it’s worth stressing is

  • the learning is, in the main, applicable to multi-agency response in general, not just flooding
  • the learning is, in the main, applicable to Scotland even though the exercise was based in England and Wales
  • the learning is applicable to all cat ones, cat twos and other relevant bodies whether or not they played in Exercise Watermark

The largest multi-agency exercise ever conducted (or ever conducted in peacetime (or something)) is already fading into the mists of the past. In years to come people will meet at conferences and shake their heads at the memory.

“Exercise Watermark”

they will say

“Those were the days”.

So let’s wring that last drop of value from it before it goes.

And that is my final report on the matter.

 

Photo credit: Image is “Robert waving goodbye” by  Noelle Gillies used under CC BY-SA 2.0

 

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Posted in benproctor.co.uk, Corporate Comms, crisis comms, Emergency Planners, Incident Management, Information Picture, SMEM, Social Media, Warning and informing
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