Building resilience: The history and future of US crisis management

 Crisis managed?

Building resilience: The history and future of US crisis management

McKinsey, August 22, 2022 | Article

By Tony D’Emidio, Zoe Fox, Jon Spaner, and Ophelia Usher

The crisis management community has made great progress on building resilience in the past two decades, but much work remains to prepare for a future of more frequent and damaging disasters.

Two decades have passed since the tragic events of 9/11 and the subsequent implementation of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This landmark legislation spurred the largest reorganization of the US federal government since the National Security Act of 1947, uniting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with 21 other organizations under the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS).1

Since 9/11, the crisis management community has made great strides in addressing the negative impacts of disasters on American lives and livelihoods. Congressional appropriations for disaster response and recovery have increased to historic levels, with FEMA allocating $45 billion between 2017 and 2020 to disaster relief and financial aid.2 New approaches to recovery and mitigation have emerged, including the development of the National Response Framework and the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. Federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) agencies are more integrated and coordinate more effectively. Indeed, the past two decades have seen significant progress. Yet new challenges are emerging, and the crisis management community will need to work hard to overcome them over the next 20 years.

In this article, we acknowledge the significant progress made by the crisis management community since the signing of the Homeland Security Act and review the data suggesting that the next two decades may bring more frequent and worse disasters affecting more people. We then explore five questions that the community can consider to ensure the security, resilience, and prosperity of communities in the future.

We explore five questions that the crisis management community can consider to ensure the security, resilience, and prosperity of communities in the future.   ....' 

Military Digitization

 An approach to military digitization, also for peace time efforts of crisis management and disaster recovery. 

German Armed Forces Order Deployable Mission-Critical Communication Networks from Motorola Solutions to Drive Greater Digitization  in BusinessWire

Contract value of the framework agreement is worth 254 million euros.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Digitization is one of the highest priorities for the German Armed Forces. It will help to increase efficiency of operations and safety for soldiers and civilian personnel. Secure and reliable voice communications as well as access to data are central drivers for efficiency and responsiveness on any successful mission.

Cross-agency communication is also a prerequisite for successful cooperation between different teams, particularly in the event of a crisis or disaster. As part of the digitization of land-based operations and to ensure fast communication in various areas in the field, the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) are procuring deployable communication networks, which are available in two versions, mobile and stationary. The modernization marks an important milestone within the Bundeswehr's military’s digitization strategy.... "

Supply Chain Best Practices after Crises.

Good overview in APQC regarding management after and during crisis.

Keys to Maintaining Best Practices in Supply Chain After a Crisis

As one-third of 2020 is behind us, what’s next for supply chains? What are the keys to maintaining best practices in supply chains after a crisis? The answers are tied to foundational management practices: sound data management, strong process management, a focus on future-ready skills, and enhanced digitization. In short: an acceleration of trends already underway.

Many organizations are still hip-deep in dealing with the impact of the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, with the impacts and degree of disruption varied by industry and business model. However, strong supply chains are vital to survival during the crisis and thriving after the crisis. While individual organizations may take different routes and while the crisis may exacerbate existing weaknesses in some organizations’ supply chains, the path forward to maintain best practices in the new/next normal/abnormal will have some similarities.

Sound Data Management
The number one enabler to making better data-driven decisions in many organizations is sound data management.

One regional supply chain master data manager APQC interviewed evaluated data quality, governance, and processes in his organization. “It all pointed to a lack of discipline, end-to-end process, and focus on data. Each department’s data responsibility was a small part of someone’s job. Regrettably, how that data impacted others upstream and downstream in the supply chain was not considered, nor was it understood.” His organization then created a supply chain data management program to standardize, align, and improve efficiency and quality in data management. (For more insights, read this APQC case study: Applying Supply Chain Data Management at a Large Healthcare Organization.)

Building a solid data management foundation is critical to enable advanced analytics. In APQC research into supply chain analytics, we found that almost 80 percent of organizations have seen their investment in supply chain analytics increase in the past three years. This is significant because supply chain leaders are turning to advanced analytics to help make business decisions specifically related to supply chain optimization, reducing cost, and improving customer satisfaction—and the insights from the analytics are only as strong as the data upon which they are based.  ... "