National Incident Management Systems

1. National Incident Management Systems Session 18 Slide Deck Session 18

2. Session Objective • Explain the Policy and Practical Implications of NIMS Implementation for Stakeholders at All Jurisdictional Levels Session 18

3. NIMS Adoption • Adoption might be both logical and generally beneficial • Adoption can be an action that carries no actual or perceived value • Each stakeholder is unique with regards to: • Authority and autonomy • Relationship to other stakeholders • Reliance upon federal funding • Other factors • For each stakeholder, there are positive and negative consequences associated with adoption Session 18

4. NIMS Implications • Stakeholder to Stakeholder Relationships • NIMS, Jurisdiction Type, and Concerns About Autonomy • Impacts on Organizational and Operational Flexibility • Effects on Established Professional Relationships • The Fine Line Between Compliance and Competence • The Effect on the Efficacy of Mutual Aid • Impacts on Safety and Liability • Financial Implications Session 18

5. Stakeholder to Stakeholder Relationships • Adoption affects relationships that exist between different emergency management stakeholders. • NIMS is flexible / scalable, but its structure affects how stakeholders interact with each other. • Does NIMS bridge the gap between agencies that have drastically different cultures? • Positive effect on the relationships between stakeholders that might not typically interact • But NIMS formalizes a relationship that might otherwise function better in an informal setting Session 18

6. NIMS, Jurisdiction Type, and Concerns About Autonomy • There are differing / conflicting perceptions between agencies and stakeholders in small and large communities about the value of NIMS • Is NIMS appropriate for both urban and rural settings? • Has NIMS been handed down to the local level? • Rural America – a culture that is resistant to outside influence • Rural America is less formal organizationally • In rural areas relationships are easily formed because everyone knows each other Session 18

7. Impacts on Organizational and Operational Flexibility • Does the NIMS structure limit organizational and operational flexibility? • NIMS prevents ‘freelancing’ • There is a certain sense of uncertainty with disasters that often requires an ability to change course ‘on the fly’ Session 18

8. Effects on Established Professional Relationships • NIMS is effective in situations where stakeholders have very little or no experience working together • When stakeholder organizations are familiar with each other, and have worked together, NIMS will cause a loss of familiarity and assumed roles and responsibilities • NIMS replaces the personal and professional relationships that have already been established through planning, meetings, drills, exercises, mutual aid efforts, and past disaster experience • Do ESFs only pretend to use NIMS in actual practice? Session 18

9. The Fine Line Between Compliance and Competence • It remains to be seen whether stakeholders are actually using NIMS in operations • “Practitioners have either refused to change the way they've done business for years, or they've continued the same old practices with a different vocabulary. “ • NIMS competence must be led from the top • “NIMS compliance is a total-entity effort, and therefore needs to be coordinated by the highest authority with total-entity powers, usually the chancellor or president.” Session 18

10. NIMS Impact on the Efficacy of Mutual Aid • NIMS facilitates cross-agency mutual aid • Federal Government not involved in 99.9% of incidents, as they are managed locally • Some feel the Federal Government created NIMS to make things better in all incidents using Fed involvement as the standard of practice • Because of NIMS, all mutual aid becomes subject to the policies and protocols laid out in NIMS • Some feel that all that was actually needed was a coordination system, like the Multi-Agency Coordination group (MAC). Session 18

11. Impact on Safety and Liability • Two of the greatest positive impacts of NIMS are: • An increase in incident operational safety • An associated decrease in the likelihood of negative liability implications resulting from on-scene accidents • NIMS compliance and competence increases the likelihood that: • Commands are understood • There is an operational awareness of all actions and the individuals tasked with performing them, and that all incident needs are accounted for • Fire chiefs who don’t follow the NIMS leave themselves open to liability or, worse, criminal malfeasance Session 18

12. Financial Implications • Positive and negative financial implications for emergency management stakeholders: • Grant eligibility • Reduced emergency preparedness and response costs • Grant eligibility is probably the most obvious financial implication • “It’s quite simple: in order to receive federal funding for preparedness, your organization must adopt ICS and NIMS both formally and in practice.” • NIMS can reduce costs by increasing operational efficiencies Session 18