Responding to IT Needs in an EOC Part 1

I first got involved in emergency response in high school as a search and rescue volunteer.  Over the course of 10 years I trained for and participated in a number of missions, often serving as part of the management team.  During some of those same years I was able to also lend my technical expertise as a Whatcom Count IT employee to regional emergencies such as the 2009 flooding.

In the 2010 H1N1 response I served in the logistics section.  This was a unique incident in that we essentially operated a virtual EOC.  With the incident spread out over weeks and being responded to between our day jobs, Unified Command turned to technology.  The Communications Unit had to adapt.  We experimented with email distribution lists, SharePoint sites, call distribution services and even created custom software.

As both an ICS 400 trained emergency responder and a IT manager for a local government agency, I have continued to be intrigued by the intersection of technology and emergency management. With the Skagit River bridge collapse and the the much more tragic Oso mud slide it is obvious that we all need to work together.

As all emergencies are local, it often falls to the local city or county emergency management departments to host command posts and/or EOCs.  This subsequently means that it is city and county IT departments that are often tasked with technology support.

Providing technology support to an incident management team is a very different challenge from traditional IT support.

Traditional IT deals with employees who typically come and go in an orderly fashion.  Accounts are setup for individuals.  Standards for equipment (for the most part) are set.  Help Desks have business hours.

In an emergency, IT will be tasked to provide communication and collaboration tools to a diverse, frequently changing, roughly self-organizing, and mostly self-equipped workforce at a moment's notice with little staff involvement for less than the cost of a MacBook Pro.  All while respecting the principles of emergency management and ICS such as record retention, span of control and authority.  On top of that, IT will be expected to meet the technological expectations of the modern workforce.

I recently attended a local debrief of responders who worked at a large EOC at a recent large event.  It was clear both how much they could benefit from proper technology and how challenging it was for the needs to be met.

It was after this that Whatcom Unified, our local, joint, emergency preparedness agency recently asked me for ideas on how to equip their new facility to address these challenges.  It was through this thought exercise that I first documented the challenges stated above and came to the idea of a template.

Currently each agency must attempt to solve these problems on their own, often after the emergency has occurred.

What if instead, we worked together ahead of time to create one or more templates that could work for any jurisdiction, at any site or across multiple sites.

Such templates would suggest common tools, configurations, procedures and preparations.  Multiple templates could be developed to align with different jurisdictional needs but they would all be shared, even build off of each other.

Such a collection would have many benefits.  For example it would allow responders from outside the jurisdiction to come prepared for the technology configuration or allow neighbor IT departments to send assistance.

In my next post I will introduce you to what I have started and review some more of the requirements.