Although I've written about this before, it struck me again yesterday while in a meeting with other emergency managers. Another item that put this into perspective is I've been reading a book on the Roosevelts during World War II. Eleanor was a social activist and one of her efforts centered on a small community who she had tried to help bootstrap to have better lives. After helping them with a number of different initiatives, she found on one visit that they appeared to have lost their initiative and were sitting there, waiting for her or someone else to come and solve their problems.
There is a large exercise coming up next year that will involve thousands of participants from multiple states. The one hitch is that there is no funding to support any of the participation by state and local jurisdictions. Still, many if not most have stepped up to the plate to find ways to participate, which is a good thing. But, when the topic came to how to involved social media and incorporate the ability to simulate the use of it in the exercise, the initial knee-jerk reaction is that we have no funding for something that could cost thousands of dollars per day to pay a vendor to provide a platform to use.
Admittedly there was a short discussion of how might this be achieved with other resources like a university. But what if we prioritized what resources we do have to accomplish something that needs to be done? At this point in our social media evolution, it might be that having a social media simulation tool does not hold any value to many since they are not deeply committed to the need to incorporate social media.
I found it interesting that the electeds in the room participating in the meeting sounded a bit incredulous that given the deep penetration of social media into our society that social media would not be a significant part of the exercise. That was a great reality check!
Now I know that we:
- Can't print money
- Can't rob banks
- Need to prioritize our spending
Last week during a talk I was giving, someone asked if we were prepared for disasters, meaning the big "we." I said no because we've converted our state and local emergency management programs into federally funded organizations that can only do what the grant guidance allows. We have allowed the feds to assume what should be our responsibility as states, counties and cities to fund a basic public safety function -- that being emergency management.
To be truthful, this has happened across the board with fire, police, public health, etc. The end result is that it has robbed us of our initiative and left us beholden to those who control the purse strings.
