Government Agencies, Businesses, Non-profits Ill-prepared for Crises
New York University’s (NYU) Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR) and The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI), a non-profit research institute focused on risk management training and education, recently unveiled the results of a study of crisis readiness among government, business, and non-profit organizations across the United States. The findings reveal a large number of organizations lack effective preparedness programs to respond to and recover from a crisis despite forecasts that future crises may be more frequent and complex.
The report, ‘Predicting Organizational Crisis Readiness: Perspectives and Practices toward a Pathway to Preparedness’, was authored by Dr. Paul C. Light, the Paulette Goddard Professor for Public Service at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the principal investigator of The Project on Organizational and Community Preparedness at CCPR. Among his concerns is a broadly held belief that a direct relationship exists between population and hazards such that as population increases, the number of hazards proportionately increases.
In the report, Dr. Light, author of a new book on government reform titled, ‘A Government Ill Executed’ (Harvard University Press) examines characteristics that better position organizations and government to recover after a crisis, identifying those that serve as significant predictors of crisis readiness. He also presents recommendations for enhancing organizational preparedness. The report includes the results of a survey of opinion leaders from government, for-profit, and non-profit sectors comparing crisis characteristics of organizations.
Among the key recommendations are:
- Priorities: crisis readiness should be given the same organizational priority as other mission-centered activities, such as fund-raising and sales, marketing, branding, and measurement.
- Budgeting: crisis readiness should be given an identifiable line in the organizational budget and it should not be subsumed in another budget.
- Accountability: crisis readiness should be given clear grants of authority from the leadership and board.
- Stafford Act Reform: raise the limits of support, and decease the barriers for application, for small businesses in the aftermath of a disaster.
- Regulation: set voluntary standards for crisis readiness through statues and award programs.
For a free download of the report, click here.
Tags: crisis management, crisis readiness, Disaster Recovery, emergency preparedness
