Local government has always held a critical role in coordinating the preparation, response, and recovery efforts for local area emergency management, including:
Maintaining critical business services, systems, and local infrastructure before and after an incident;
Creating and deploying a crisis communication plan;
Supporting emergency response agencies; and
Initiating community recovery services after a crisis situation.
As local government resources have been divested and outsourced, though, it’s no longer possible or practical for councils to be the primary provider of resources during an emergency.
The growing need for council officers to perform multiple roles within one position, coupled with limited professional development opportunities means that the local government pool of expertise in emergency management is shrinking.
To provide an effective ongoing emergency management capability, councils need to focus on improving coordination with other responsible authorities and optimising the skills and resources of each agency.
Fortunately, modern communications tools are evolving to help facilitate this coordination, enabling councils to effectively balance the community’s expectations, requirements under the legislation, and the realities of scarcer resources.
Meeting community expectations:
Local governments have cradle-to-the-grave involvement in their constituents’ lives, and during emergencies, councilors, especially the mayor, are expected to provide leadership, support, community advocacy, and open, up-to-date information.
Residents need to know what to expect, and affected people and businesses need to be informed of what’s next, and how they will access the support they need to recover.
Councils' links to the community groups and day-to-day role in its development provide a sound foundation to help build holistic resilience, facilitating opportunities for other agencies to implement programs in a coordinated and strategic way.
Maintaining legal compliance:
A layer of overlapping legislation mandates different levels of emergency management responsibility for a crisis event.
In Victoria, for example, this includes the Emergency Management Act 1986, Regional and Metropolitan Fire Acts, Planning & Environment, Building, Electricity Safety, Public Health & Wellbeing, and Water Acts.
Emergency management responsibilities also grow from the delivery of council services, like the operation of child care and kindergarten services, which require formal plans to manage internal and external risks.
While baseline responsibilities can be legislated for, there’s often role creep and the expectation that councils act as the lead agency for local relief and recovery, even where this is not prescribed in legislation.
Even with the best intentions, the scope of these responsibilities is often beyond the capacity and capability of most councils.
A more nuanced approach is needed that draws on councils’ strengths in planning and community coordination to provide holistic community resilience before, during, and after a critical event.
Before a crisis
“Governments nationally focus too much on recovery, at the expense of directing resources towards better-preparing for future disasters” (Productivity Commission, 2015).
Councils should draw on their extensive experience with local planning to deliver crisis communication strategies in partnership with other agencies.
Agency-specific skills can be matched to councils’ local knowledge to ensure hazard planning matches the realities of conditions on the ground.
Partnership with local councils in neighbouring areas can help deliver wider-reaching outcomes through larger, more strategic risk mitigation programs, which are more likely to receive State or agency funding.
Councils can also draw on community knowledge to facilitate planning and preparation. Creating an easy mechanism for residents to share information on current or potential hazards widens the scope of emergency planning and insights. And, finally, ensuring contact information is kept as up-to-date as possible mitigates the risk of messages not being received during crisis scenarios.
During a crisis
Councils have established networks that can be used to communicate critical information to local communities as a crucial first step. While official warnings should be issued by lead responders, such as the police or SES, a council's crisis communication team has the ability to disseminate this information so that it’s accessible to the community
This includes physical connections to the community, as well as digital channels like council websites, social media, email, and SMS.
Adding a local filter to the information being published can also help build community trust in the reliability of these communications.
Proactive communication is also beneficial, as it means you can mitigate the risk of people looking to untrustworthy sources and external audiences to get their news. Even if you don't have all the information, being forthright and transparent about potential risks relevant to your community will go a long way in fostering trust.
After a crisis
Assist community recovery by continuing to deliver core community services, including managing and restoring local infrastructure during and after emergencies, as well as supplying mechanisms to support volunteer management.
Continuing to supply timely and accurate information on the status of recovery efforts will also boost confidence, as well as being available to answer questions - which may come in the form of organising press conferences. Research shows that in natural disasters, the public perceives the success of the operational response by the amount and speed of relevant information they receive from the emergency response officials.
Communications strategies to support the effort
So what are some of the best practices your crisis management team can employ to support an integrated and effective communications approach with local responders and the community?
Have a dashboard of the affected area that’s visible to all responders:
State-of-the-art crisis communications platforms now allow community contacts to be stored alongside up-to-date situational maps, to allow all responders to view and communicate across affected areas.
Text-in information channel:
Provide an inbound contact option so that the community or responders can provide in-field updates through simple form captures, including images of the affected area. This can be an essential tool for allowing residents to share updated information on the current status of unfolding events simply and consistently.
Secure, remote-hosted communications infrastructure:
When a severe weather event like flooding or fire affects a community, the local government needs to be able to communicate without disruption. There is a very real risk during these emergencies of data centers and communications infrastructure being impacted. Secure, distributed, cloud-hosted platforms will remove critical information assets from the path of disaster, allowing responders to keep communicating even in the worst-case local damage scenarios.
Automate information feeds through API integration:
Best-in-breed communications suites are connected through API integration to existing IT platforms and databases to trigger automated messaging flows, providing a range of automated, high-value communications options, including:- Automatically publishing news and alerts to social media channels;- Publishing information via RSS feeds to the council website or third party news sites as needed; Automatically replying to in-bound messages with an appropriate response; and- Continuing to provide status updates after an emergency event.
Prepared message templates to suit most emergency scenarios:
Urgent communications to the right people - ie your community and media - are usually needed when an emergency strikes. Pre-approved holding statements can be useful tools to be able to update and deploy information rapidly so you can get out a quick response as soon as a critical situation occurs, and should be prepared to suit most common scenarios during the crisis planning process.
Centralise communications from a single tool:
Best practice communications platforms allow information to be published to multiple channels from one consistent source. Messaging across multiple communication channels ensures people receive the information on the device or source they prefer, including email, SMS, Voice, or social, and respond back through this same channel. These tools can also provide comprehensive reporting and message delivery status transparency to track the status of communications during an ongoing crisis and after an event.
Learn more about our cloud platform that automates intelligent, rich communications for crisis management, operations and community engagement here.
