Part 1 - ICS Alberta - Redesigning a Provincial Program
The link for part 2 of this blog is at the end of this post.
Introduction
When I accepted the position of Director, Training, Accreditation, and Standards at the Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) it included the role of Chair of the ICS Alberta Committee. My background did not include much ‘command and control’ experience. My education and experience was mostly business management. Before moving to this role my past work at AEMA included managing its disaster financial assistance program which was more grant delivery and policy development and less incident command. I had been with AEMA for seven years and had education, training, and experiences in emergency management (EM) but my view of EM was through a ‘business management’ lens.
The ICS Alberta committee was in its seventh year and the majority of the committee’s strategic objectives had been met. There was a high focus on program inputs, activities and measuring outputs ( e.g. number of students and instructors trained) but not much focus had been placed on developing and measuring long-term outcomes (e.g. jurisdictions are responding together seamlessly).
When groups and teams focus on outcomes they generally feel more connected to the vision, the mission, and the organization. So, the vision was to develop an ICS Community across Alberta, one that was connected, could participate in the development of the program and one that had open access to a transparent system.
By 2017 countless hours, by many dedicated emergency managers in Alberta, were spent progressing ICS in Alberta which is why it is an ICS leader in Canada. Several Alberta communities were developing sustainable ICS programming, but many did not have the time and resources that are needed to administer a well functioning ICS program.
Moving Forward
If the province was going to move collectively towards having a sustainable and effective provincial ICS program that produced long-term outcomes, the development of more training was not the answer. ICS in Alberta needed to adopt governance that would move to the next level.
By 2017 Alberta had:
just over 250 instructors
trained almost every community in the province
developed online ICS training (with AHS)
25 committee members
The AEMA team responsible for administering and managing the program was barely able to keep up with the day to day demands of the program (answering instructor and student questions, conducting the intake of instructor applications, providing instructor training and support, managing records, organizing the ICS Alberta committee…etc) which meant that a lot of work that is needed to develop and maintain a well functioning program was not getting done (quality assurance, evaluation, documentation of process and new policy). so this is where we started to focus our attention.
It took six months to complete a:
review of the program’s initial design, objectives, inputs, activities, and outputs,
a risk assessment, and
a work plan.
Interviews were conducted with stakeholders and committee members. We sifted through years of meeting minutes and we compared the current state of the ICS Alberta committee to more mature committees such as the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) plus we worked extensively with the Alberta Public Agency Governance team to determine, legislatively, how we could evolve the committee. One of the big questions was, could ICS Alberta operate at arm’s length to the government?
Part 2
In part 2 of this blog, the three year plan for change will be highlighted with what is left to develop.
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Author: Brad Ison is a professional disaster and emergency management coach. He’s held various position specific roles in the Alberta Provincial Operations Centre and had decade long career at the Alberta Emergency Management Agency where his focus was on Disaster Recovery and his last role served was as the Director for Training, Accreditation, and Standards.
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