Who Are Disaster Response Leaders?

Leaders at all levels of community and government who are tasked with preparing to respond to disasters and support recovery.

This can include (examples pulled from Southern Oregon):

• Local government emergency managers, for instance county and state teams
• Local Long Term Recovery Group or Community Organizations Active in Disaster organization
• State agencies who support response and fund local recovery efforts including OREM and OHCS via ReOregon.
• Software and others vendors who support these agencies and efforts.

Challenges

• Being trusted by typically underserved communities in moments of crisis so we can efficiently capture complete data of impact and need.  See the Trust page for more.
• Herding cats (local organizations) in a moment of great challenges
• Standardized data collection practices and databases.
• Informing funding and community partners about remaining needs and resources clearly and quickly
• Reporting on partner efforts and overall progress efficiently and accurately

Values

• Leaving no community members behind in our response and recovery efforts.
• Accurate, timely reporting on status and remaining needs.
• Equity, efficiency and effectiveness of programs.
• Seeing disasters not as isolated events but as set backs in our neighbor’s social determinants of health.  This is just a new set of people who suddenly have needs that could threaten their health and wellbeing.
• Strengthening the ties between culturally and geographically specific organizations and the organizations focused on SDH is the key to a resilient community.

Use Cases

• Central registry for reunification, immediate needs in response, and long term recovery needs.
• Systematic tools for managing disaster case management.
• Complete, accurate, timely data collected, updated, and analyzed.
• Reporting on status of recovery and program impacts.
• Analysis of program impact and potential adjustments to rules or implementation.

To Consider

• Focus on Subject Rights as in the EU’s GDPR model (starting with Chapter 2, Article 7 – Consent) to empower subjects to control the accuracy, release, and uses of their data. 
• Quality of data relies on trustworthiness which is built upon
  • Control of my own data
  • Verification of need that limits abuse and is flexible enough to work with complex social realities
  • Linkage of providing data to tangible benefits
  • Accountability – that my data is used for my own and my community’s benefit, not law enforcement.
• Seek to gather data in partnership or alongside trusted local partners.
  • Or, make your solution secure and open enough to allow local organizations to partner with you to collect complete, timely data on the state of recovery for people as well as properties.
• Make very clear statements about who has access to the data and who does not. Make it very clear what you consider your partner organizations providing care and under what conditions law enforcement can gain access to the data. Has this ever happened and in what cases? This clarity is crucial for subject trust in underserved communities.
  • How data is anonymized for analysis
  • How organizations gain access to the data and at what level of visibility of personally identifiable information.
  • Subject rights to disappear or be anonymized in the data.
• Empower local partners to view and update subject data on behalf of subjects with their permission.
• Allow local partners to analyze data they have been given rights to read and or update. This will support their impact analysis and future grant writing.
• Make the solution accessible to communities even if the disaster is too small for state or national designations.
• Open an anonymized set of roll up data available for analysis by community organizations and jurisdictions so they can analyze their efforts and impacts in context.
• Budget for and partner with local organizations to do the field work of collecting, verifying, updating subject information for those who cannot self-serve.
• Budget for analysts to ongoingly monitor and improve data quality including the ability to create tasks for local organizations to verify, complete, correct and update data.
• Focus on building trust and adoption by linking immediate resources with the collection of the data. Tie long-term resources to the same list via the DCMP and unmet needs process.
• Ensure a smooth data and personal transition from DCMP to ongoing care via the CIE referral system.
• Consider an ombudsman or third party anonymous feedback service so that partners and subjects feel empowered to share their feedback without fear of reprisals.

Next Steps

• Ensure solutions are people-centered, from data structures to security and sharing.  Communities are people, not buildings. 
• Focus on the people and their businesses and the buildings will be rebuilt.
• Small businesses make our community possible by offering jobs, taxes, and goods and services. 
• Tap into local COADs as focus group hosts for program and ISA design decisions by identifying paradoxes to be balanced and potential solutions.
• Create ISAs that protect subjects’ privacy and empower local organizations to meet needs of clients, funders, and their own organizations.
• Build timely and transparent reporting dashboards on the primary goals and commitments of the project.
• Host listening sessions with subjects and local organizations at least quarterly during the crisis to solicit feedback and offer progress data on agreed goals.