Pervasive readiness: Pipedream or possible? A practical approach for measuring public saftey readiness

Government organizations at all levels are facing intense pressure to establish and measure readiness: the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises and natural disasters. Readiness as a concept is easy to grasp in principle, yet exceedingly difficult to implement due to the fragmentation of processes within the public safety sector and a fundamental failure to understand the difference between capacity and capability building to achieve Readiness. A strategy is required that will enable heterogeneous public safety communities to achieve operational agility before, during and after a crisis while optimizing their allocation of funding to arrive at a balanced readiness posture. No single individual, department, agency or organization has all of the information necessary to continuously measure readiness within its geographic boundary. Participation in standardized measurement is often stymied by disparate data storage, fragmented processes, budgets, politics, culture and resistance to change. Yet it is recognized that readiness saves lives; therefore a practical approach is required to establish a framework for effectively measuring readiness against a government´s prioritized Hazard/Threat Identification and Risk Assessment. The Indiana Department of Homeland Security has made significant progress in uniting all of the major stakeholders into a cohesive public safety ecosystem. Indiana is taking an innovative approach to achieving, measuring, and optimizing readiness. We outline significant lessons learned, best practices, and feasible approaches towards achieving a sustainable state of pervasive readiness which is the concept of readiness as an integral part of the very fabric of a nation.