Disaster Recovery Journal, Spring 2010

vate sector does not always want to help a government test their plan if private companies were not at the table during the development process. The private sector and critical infrastructures must be included in all phases of the process. This will help create a shared sense of ownership and ultimately speed recovery and restoration. Failure to work together will result in stove piped decisions resulting in long term physical and economic distress.

One of the best ways to begin this process
is to work to develop cross sector semi-
nars and workshops to explore interdepen-
dencies. This will help develop trust and
encourage information sharing between
sectors. Stakeholders will begin to under-
stand the value of collaborating and will in
turn work to assist in follow on projects and
activities related to recommendations from
these workshops and exercises. Once orga-
nizations begin to understand how their
survival depends on other regional players,
they will more readily collaborate, commu-
nicate and trust one another.

What is needed?

In order to develop a regional process to build resilience and intelligently restore infrastructure, a structure must be created to bring together the disparate public and private groups who keep our economy, critical services and infrastructures running. While the NIPP and several state and local plans call for developing regional partnerships, none lay out a clear strategy that encourages the development of grass-roots partnerships of key stakeholder organizations working with state and federal partners to identify vulnerabilities, impacts, and undertake actions to prevent and mitigate preparedness and resilience shortfalls. The key component to this process is to create opportunities to build trust and dialogue. This simply cannot take place solely on a national level with the largest employers and national infrastructure sector councils. Resilience must be developed from the bottom up, mainly because regional stakeholders rely on one another for survival. Regional economies are driven by regional businesses and infrastructures. Businesses, government, emergency responders and infrastructures are all dependent on regional services and assets. Regions are used to working together on a daily basis to do business and provide services, therefore local perspectives are crucial in determining the criticality of an asset. Because of this, regions must include a cross sector representation of the regional economy in order to make informed decisions regarding restoration of services and infrastructure.

Many regions have trusted third parties who could assist in this process. Several non-profits and non-governmental councils exist that are made up of both public and private sector members. Cross sector regional coordination councils could be developed with the help of these trusted organizations.

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