A crisis centre in the age of coronavirus
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What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a crisis centre? Staff milling around, a big screen displaying information, twenty-four hour news, social media feeds and a powerpoint slide to tell you about the days meetings. Lots of tech eye candy. Then imagine one almost empty of staff or no staff at all. A crisis without a crisis centre does not mean no response it just means that the response is distributed and held together by collaborative digital applications. Distributed crisis responses occurred before the coronavirus with the use of video conferencing but many of these took place in meeting rooms decked out with audio video equipment. Now to a higher degree those responding to a crisis are not present in a central crisis centre or another building elsewhere they are at home. What do you lose running a crisis with a distributed crisis management team online at home.
Like all changes you win or lose when your crisis response is not based in a crisis centre but is distributed to responders who in many cases are at home in front of a laptop.
Losses
- Food. An army marches with a fully belly so too does a crisis response. The prospect of a pizza can occupy the mind of a crisis responder sat in a crisis centre for hours. What if you instead delivered food to your crisis responders front door.
- Sit down next to me. Sitting in a crisis room gives you a wealth of knowledge. Conversations are happening all around and with a good ear you can pick up so much information. Online crisis responding, that knowledge is still there but you have to listen in different ways to the chatter that is on Teams or Slack to pick it up,
- Eye candy. The church has its altar but a crisis centre has its video wall. The only wall you have being a digital responder is a tiled video conference wall featuring your fellow crisis responders.
- A bottle of lemonade or something stronger. All crisis end, then it’s time for some light refreshments. Raising a glass online is better than not doing it but a crisis centre wins when it comes to a celebratory drink.
- Online crisis responders build up bonds but an online crisis response all your interactions are online through a screen or at the end of a phone. What you recognise your fellow crisis responder post coronavirus crisis after weeks of only seeing them online. Not seeing people fully can make it harder to forge close bonds even in a crisis.
What is gained.
6. More participation. Digital crisis responders are not new by any stretch. If you have a laptop and can get online you can help in a crisis. Social media work and digital mapping to name just two have been able to respond to crisis without needing to be in the crisis centre. Crisis centres are places you travel to either by public transport, car or taxi. An online crisis response allows more people to join the response including those with disabilities for whom navigating public transport is not easy or those with childcare commitments unable to make it into a crisis centre.
7. Greater adoption of existing technology tools by necessity. For services like Teams, Slack or any other collaborative technology the reliance on it during a distrbuted crisis response can drive greater adoption and skilling up. Not because someone has gone a course but because these digital tools are even more necessity when a crisis is being run completely online.
Crisis work have always relied on technology and as an environment to test out innovative new technology. The move to using a distributed crisis response with responders in their own homes will not displace the crisis centre in the future but it will mean fewer people who should be in a crisis centre will be able to participate in the crisis response as an equal to those in the crisis centre.
