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Have your say on interoperability
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is asking Category 1 and 2 responders, and the organisations that support them, for their help with a new research paper into inter-operability during major incidents. By taking a few minutes to fill in an online questionnaire respondents can give their opinion on a variety of issues that may help to make inter-operability easier in the future.
Over the last few months, RUSI has been revisiting research first carried out in 2005-6, which led to the research paper Communications Inter-Operability in a Crisis. While that paper focused primarily on technological solutions, the new research is more concerned with human factors and operational processes. Face-to-face interviews with senior practitioners and policy makers from across the emergency responder community, including the three blue light services, local authorities, central government, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the NPIA, BAPCO, volunteer agencies including RAYNET, and technology providers such as Airwave Solutions Ltd and Gold Standard, have helped to determine the questions that are now being asked in the questionnaire survey.
Initial results that have started to come through are showing some interesting trends. For instance, early indications reveal that while most respondents think interoperability has improved over the last five years, more than 80 per cent feel that responder agencies still need to be more joined-up. In particular, more than 90 per cent feel that more needs to be done to join-up C2 responders with the wider response community.
Inter-operability continues to be driven forward through Local Resilience Forums in particular as well as through mechanisms such as the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) Guidance on Multi-Agency Interoperability, published earlier this year and increasing opportunities for joint training and exercising offered by the Fire Service College and the Emergency Planning College, providing an excellent base on which to build even better mechanisms for the future.
Hard statistical data on how well responders think different approaches are working will help to focus future efforts into improving inter-operability even further, which is why is it important that as many C1 and C2 responders as possible take part in the survey. The final results of the research are due to be published in July 2010.
For more information on the research and on RUSI's Emergency Management research programme, please contact Jennifer Cole at jenniferc@rusi.org
