What is the Role of Emergency Management?

We are often reflecting, especially at the beginning of each year, on meaning. Ours, the role we seek to fill in the world, the wider ideas we intend to champion. The search usually begins with a desire for the definitive. We prefer to have a homogeneous interpretation on something, far more useful as a foundation for arguments, debates and ideas. The challenge is that agreement is fleeting, temporally bound and rare. Whether it be in the political, economic, natural, cultural, ideological or familial area of influence, common tenets are difficult to find and to secure.

Within any field, there is a paradigm. This is the collection of the themes, ideas, rules, theorems, norms and beliefs of the membership. From chemistry, physics, psychology, economics to emergency management (EM), each discipline has a set of generally accepted principles that guide the mission. The paradigm is the repository for structure, but less useful for practical applications. When ideas and theorems are utilized in real world applications, there are many additional influences.

Culture, place, religion and a host of other human values impart on how a discipline is employed in a population. We only need to reflect on the overall assessment of the role of government in our lives, the responses to queries will vary greater in regions of the same nation, let alone between nations. Attempting to codify any role as a singular entity that is generalizable across all peoples is doomed for failure. We simply harbour too many different frames, lens and theoretical worldview perspectives to ascribe to a singular interpretation.

If so, then what is the role of EM in a western nation?

There are a few sources to lead us to a conclusion, the first being our legislation. As this is local to national, and to some degree multilateral and multinational, we codify our intent in laws that are geographically bounded. The state EM legislation governs the roles and responsibilities of the field in that state, with no influence or authority over the neighbouring states. In practice, the majority of regional statues in states are similar, with generally common overarching ideas. The specifics, found in the regulatory framework and administrative procedures vary, as do the authorities, often reflective of the local culture and ideology.

The second is in the communications, the public sector resident-facing official messaging, which assigns responsibilities to the population and ideally outlines the intended actions of the public sector. These have a high degree of commonality, remaining vague, generalist and unchanged in decades. The preparedness messages occur with a regular frequency, advising the population on hazards and providing advice, the effort is concentrated in persuading the residents to adopt behavoirs the public sector believe will be helpful in times of crisis. Further, there crisis communications, the alerts, immediately preceding an event or in-event messages are all local, ideally culturally appropriate and timely.

The third is the population’s belief. It is the expectations harboured by the residents, what they believe should happen leading up to, during and after an event. This is the collection of ideas related to direct and indirect support as well as delivery of services directly to the population. The notable portion of this is the face to face, the belief that the public sector will be there, to varying degrees, in person, in the time of need. These beliefs are influenced by culture, sense of place, responsibility and confidence or trust in public sector institutions. This varies across regions and nations.

If all three of these lead to a collective role for EM in a western nation, then which one is paramount, is there competition and conflict and how do we find commonality? If the legislation lays out a set of roles and standards, but that is not communicated to the population in messages and it differs from the expectations of the population, who is correct? Our default is to state that the legislation governs the roles of government institutions, provides their legitimacy and resources to execute a well defined set of tasks. This is true, through the lens of the government, from a public policy view. We know that EM communications are frail in western nations, roles are rarely articulated and the intended and expected actions of the EM agency is absent. The messages are a set of historical recommendations on the resident’s responsibility to be ready, not what the EM institution will do.

If there is an expectation gap between what the legislation states is the role of EM, the deliverables to the population, and the expectations of the population, is it fair to argue that the statues are incorrect and need amendment, or is it the population’s expectations and beliefs are inaccurate? This may seem a fleeting idea, but I believe it is the foundation of why institutional trust is stagnant or on the decline.

We need to agree on who determines the role of EM in society. Is it the practitioners and policy experts who craft legislation and write regulations? Or is it the served population who informs EM institutions on what they need to be capable of and the expected actions pre, during and post event? The likelihood is a compromise, which of note has been attempted. Usually undertaken as stakeholder engagements, or citizen roundtables, there is an effort in some jurisdictions to identify the beliefs and exceptions of citizens and incorporate those into regulatory practices.

Recent experience demonstrates this is largely a symbolic effort. In Canada, recent provincial changes to EM legislation underwent a significant engagement process with EM practitioners, academics and the population, with little to no eventual changes to the original draft policy. In one province, the subsequent publication of feedback on statutory changes from the government was a read back on the initial contributions of stakeholders. This has been repeated in a number of US states, as well as national level policy. There is a desire to be seen to be speaking to the population, but the results are an indicator that the voices heard, whether they be practitioners or affected population, have little influence on the original intent of the institution.

Research links institutional trust to meeting expectations of the served public. That requires both parties to agree to a reasonable standard of care in policy, communicate expectations in regular messaging and then deliver upon what was agreed. Negotiation and discourse are something that used to be standard, but is often overseen by those who believe they are omnipotent in their role to protect.