Where do we get the information for roles and responsibilities from?
For government agencies, the first port of call in the search for information on roles and responsibilities is legislation. Most statutory organisations are supported by legislation, which describes the general functions and powers of that organisation. These functions and powers are usually applicable to normal day-to-day life, but are also important in emergency management. For example, one of the major functions of the police is to maintain law and order, and they will perform this task every day and during emergencies. Health departments are normally involved in ensuring steps are taken to maintain the health and well-being of the public, and will perform the same function in hazard prevention and mitigation and during and after emergencies.
There also may be provision in legislation for special organisational functions in emergency management.
For non-government organisations, there is often a legal requirement to perform certain tasks. For example, industry has a “duty of care” responsibility to its neighbours, in that any potentially harmful material in their control or on their property must be handled with a reasonable degree of care to ensure that its escape does not lead to harm to their neighbours. Such potentially harmful material covers a range of possibilities, from large quantities of stored water in dams to small amounts of hazardous materials. There is also a requirement of all organisations to take reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of workers.
Beyond legislation, there are likely also to be inter-agency policies and agreements that affect the functions of organisations in emergency management.
So predetermined legislation, policies and agreements form the basis of the description of roles and responsibilities. After having consulted these, you should turn to your resource needs analysis. You will recall that this analysis assigned responsibilities for the provision of certain resources to certain organisations. Being based on your risk assessment/ hazard analysis and potential problem analysis, your studies of resource needs and availability will have uncovered almost all the tasks that may have to be performed in emergency management.
Given all of this information, how do you present it? There are two suggested ways: one is to describe the roles and responsibilities by task; the other is to describe them by organisation.
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Textbook EMA, 1992, AEM: Community emergency planning guide, Chapter 6. EMA, 2004, Emergency planning, Chapter 5. |