http://cindi.usgs.gov/>.
the capabilities of information technology research, identifying
critical gaps, and finding matches.
Management Challenges to Using
Information Technology in Crisis Management
Workshop participants noted that advances in information
technology must be accompanied by changes addressing
organizational, management, capacity, and resource issues. Some of
these issues are listed below:
• Resistance to change. Avagene Moore observed
during the workshop that people initially resist change and do not
always appreciate the value of learning to use new technologies.
Information technology can be perceived in the crisis management
community as imposing new tasks rather than providing useful tools
for doing one's job.
• Insufficient attention paid to education and
training. One example of an initiative in this area, described
by Avagene Moore, is the Emergency Information Infrastructure
Partnership (EIIP). The EIIP has a virtual forum on the Internet to
involve local, state, and federal emergency managers, along with
private-sector emergency management people who have
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an interest in using Internet technologies. A goal of EIIP's
activities is to provide education and hands-on experiences to
demonstrate how emergency managers can benefit from use of
information technology such as the Internet. The forum is intended
to enable dynamic exchange of emergency management information and
provide innovative solutions to emergency management challenges. To
that end, EIIP conducted an online exercise, WEBEX, that drew
participants from many different levels of emergency
management.
• Insufficient awareness. Though emergency managers
may appreciate the potential of information technology to improve
their professional capabilities, new tools must be demonstrably
more effective and accurate and must be affordable for them to be
embraced widely.
• Limited resources. Resource constraints were
pointed to as a fundamental issue, particularly at the local level.
Although costs have been steadily decreasing, laptop computers,
Global Positioning System units, and the like are frequently
unaffordable. Also, costs include not only the purchase of systems
but also other contributions to total cost of ownership, such as
operational, training, and maintenance costs. Available emergency
management resources may cover only basic elements of the emergency
operations—salaries, utilities, and insurance. Given a fixed
level of spending, local governments considering investment in new
technology must make trade-offs, both with other elements of
emergency operations and with spending on day-to-day operations.
Before they will allocate additional resources for information
technology, its advantages must be clearly demonstrated to
them.
• Obsolete technology base. Many local governments
have little information technology in place. Offices may lack basic
computer equipment and lack access to tools such as e-mail. Even
where local governments have made some investment in information
technology, it may be old and obsolete.
• Information technology investments that are focused on
normal operations, not crises. Workshop participant James
Morentz characterized this issue as one of the most critical ones
confronting crisis management information managers. Organizations
focus their investments on the transactional information systems
that support day-to-day operations rather than investing in the
systems required to manage the unusual situation and thus
underinvest in crisis management capabilities. One suggestion made
in response to this challenge by workshop participants was that one
might initially focus investment in innovative systems for crises
that are likely to recur with relatively predictable frequency,
such as hurricanes in the Gulf States or California wildfires.
Information systems developed for these predictable events could
then be transferred to the unpredictable.
• Investment that focuses on distribution and tracking
of emergency funds
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to victims. Jack Harrald, describing the allocation of
emergency dollars to information technology, noted that crisis
management places a premium on providing relief funds directly to
victims—functioning much like an insurance company. Thus there
is a reluctance to tap into the disaster response funding stream,
which is much larger than day-to-day operating funds, for
investment in information technology to improve crisis management
capabilities.
• Inadequate systemwide planning. James Morentz
observed that the emergency management community does not always
factor information technology considerations into overall planning.
Although virtually all of the federal response agency organizations
use software developed by Morentz's company, Essential
Technologies, their decisions to purchase the software were made
independently. No overall system plan existed that would facilitate
integration of these individual software systems into a single
system. Another problem was raised by Thomas O'Keefe, who observed
that when emergency management structures are designed, they do not
always incorporate technology that is close at hand or already in
place. Nor are interfaces that are already familiar to crisis
responders, such as the Web, always used.
• Tendencies to ''reinvent" the same solutions in each
organization. Henry Kelly observed that sharing information
technology experience can be difficult for agencies so they tend to
reinvent their own solutions using their own contractors. Thus, the
government may reinvent a technology multiple times in different
application contexts. Although this practice may have benefits in
allowing an organization to select the technological best of breed,
the resulting multiplicity of systems may not effectively
interoperate or support upgrades. In addition, when underlying
infrastructure such as the operating system changes, many parts of
the whole system may have to be replaced or upgraded. This issue is
a common one in many areas of systems integration and may be
addressed through active reconsideration of architectural and
design approaches.1
• Coping with multiple standards. Information
systems depend on standards. Thomas O'Keefe pointed out, for
example, that there are multiple standards for damage assessment
after an incident such as a fire. To integrate and compare this
information across different organizations, standards—or ways
of reconciling multiple standards—must be established for
every aspect of the information life cycle. In addition,
identifying which standards to adopt poses a very real challenge
for emergency managers purchasing hardware and software.
1One approach
is to emphasize commercial standards and components that may be
assembled into composable systems rather than relying on tight
integration to provide particular solutions.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
management community
