Scalpel or Chainsaw - Emergency Management Governance

Risk, Resilience and Preparedness Podcast - Inside My Canoehead

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Public sector governance contains a relative scant level of review, not in the form of annual budgetary allocations, but in colloquial terms, a “fit for purpose” analysis. I’ve written before on the outsized level of bureaucracy, which at the origin, was likely created in times of need, to benefit the public. We’re often quite good at ameliorating sudden onset issues with programatic interventions, what we’re far less successful at is sunsetting those initiatives. Track records demonstrate that they take on a life of their own, having personally spent well over a decade at the strategic level of national governance, I can attest to the internal force of expansionist interest. Often these initially helpful and necessary programs or agencies are morphed and adapted by what the public servants refer to as scope creep. By expanding the inclusivity of a program, the responsibilities assigned to it, it grows. It is far easier for governance to add a new category or scheme to an existing program, than to begin the regulatory and administrative changes to establish a new, specifically orientated agency.

Over time, agencies grow past the initial mandate to become an octopus of entanglement, where the tentacles of the organization are now present in a diverse range of public sector arenas, that it becomes necessary and to some degree sufficient for overall public sector governance.
The answer may be a scalpel or chainsaw, or a combination of both. The answer might be to substantially rewrite the primary legislation for EM at the national level, redistribute responsibilities or remove requirements altogether. Everything should be on the table, to ensure the best possible service levels for the resources allocated.

We don’t know until we try - and we’re not trying

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