Resilient Nation Australia - Core Values

The following were put together by Alistair (wraptinweb? ) with a hat-tip to Nathanael (NathanaelB? ) for his inspiration on Be Active. They should be read in conjunction with the Mission Statement

Core values are:
Collaborate widely
Recognize the cross jurisdictional nature of disaster responses and ensure capability and processes are developed to address this through the visibility and sharing of information.

Be Prepared
Preparation in this context means ensuring that information management and coordination tools and techniques are applied across Australia as early as possible.

Focus on Community
Recognize the importance of community involvement and response, and ensure that appropriate education and communication capability is in place.

Empowerment through awareness

• Civil emergency needs outbalance copyright during an emergency for essential life-preserving information
• Ensure maximum visibility of situation appreciation information to all members of the community.
• During disaster scenarios information and communication streams that directly affect situation appreciation, disaster response, the toll of life and property loss, are made available to the community for that limited duration irrespective of the IP and monetization potential of the information. This particularly applies to taxpayer funded or subsidized information providers
• Identification of important National and local data resources to be made available by working groups.
• The ability to extract local information and provide it to public facing information providers is a core competency (and duty) in disaster preparation. Whenever such a system in Commonwealth, State and Territory or Local Government is audited, the ability to extract disaster related information becomes a formal part of the audit assessment.
• Failure to make information available and to prepare systems containing information likely to be needed is identified, addressed and finally elevated to criminal liability, or contributory negligence status in intractable cases.

Do not make things Worse

• Understand that poorly provided information can create panic not coordination, that a partial or incorrect picture presented as totality can create poor decisions and outcomes, and that information shared can be used afterwards for unintended or harmful purposes.
• Therefore high risk information needs to be identified, and authorities notified if subsequent access to areas needs restriction.
• Panic can be managed by pre-emptive and clear information release, combined with coherent and cohesive disaster management communication.

Information Access is a Double Edged Sword - wield it wisely
Information access by the community takes priority during an emergency, however full audit trails of access to parts of the system may be required. (e.g. wind strength and direction is essential community information during a Bush fire emergency. The same information may be accessed by potential arsonists. Timing, location or IP address of access may be important to subsequent investigation – and hence reduce subsequent repetition of the emergency)

Recognise and Attribute Effort
Where individuals, teams and organisations contribute, ensure their contribution (where they permit) is acknowledged, recorded and made accessible.

Be Active not passive - go forth and Do
RNA provides a framework for working groups to allow individuals to apply their specific expertise to a piece of the larger picture. This may be identifying data sources, writing procedure manuals, recording
information segments, mind mapping specific scenarios with forward planning, prevention and response scenarios, or the ability to coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries.

Each of these working groups can produce a quantum of work, secure in the knowledge that it complements other resources and is working within a collaborative framework.

-- TWikiAdminUser - 15 Feb 2009