2011 Kansas Technical Rescue Conference

Thursday–Saturday • September 29–October 1, 2011

Kansas Training Center, Building #365, 2930 Scanlan Avenue, Salina, Kansas

Key Leaders Discussion/ Workshop
Pervasive Readiness: Pipedream or Possible?
A Practical Approach to Implementing Public Safety Ecosystems

Ari Vidali, CEO, Envisage Technologies & Founder, The Readiness Network USA

With the advent of Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-8 (National Preparedness), government organizations at all levels are facing intense pressure to establish and measure readiness in the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises and natural disasters. Readiness as a concept is easy to grasp in principle, yet exceedingly difficult to implement due to the fragmentation of processes within the public safety sector and a fundamental failure to understand the basic difference between capacity and capability necessary to build and achieve Readiness. A strategy is required that enables heterogeneous public safety communities to achieve operational agility before, during and after a crisis while optimizing their allocation of funding and resources to arrive at a balanced readiness posture.

No single individual, department, agency or organization has all of the information necessary to continuously measure readiness within its geographic boundary. Participation in standardized measurement is often stymied by disparate data storage, fragmented processes, budgets, politics, culture and resistance to change. Yet it is recognized that readiness saves lives; therefore a practical approach is required to establish a framework for effectively measuring readiness against a government’s prioritized Risk Assessment. The Indiana Department of Homeland Security has made significant progress in uniting all of the major stakeholders into a cohesive public safety ecosystem. Indiana is taking an innovative approach to achieving, measuring, and optimizing readiness.
During the workshop, we will lead a discussion involving participants about new models, significant lessons learned, best practices, processes, and feasible approaches to structuring public safety in view of optimizing a state’s readiness.

Workshop Objectives

• Facilitate dialog between public safety leaders on aspects of policy, structure, funding, process, measurement and technology.
• Ask questions and explore answers in light of new developments and emerging models for Public Safety.
• Learn about Pervasive Readiness concepts and gain an understanding of the people, processes and technology involved in constant readiness monitoring.
• Gain an understanding of the information that must be aggregated and the process necessary to perform wide-area risk and readiness assessments.
• Discuss issues that impact the Ready, Respond and Recover continuum.