Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Google, The Ultimate Emergency Preparedness Solution?

Prior to the presentations at Showcase Ontario, we spent time looking for specific emergency management websites in Ontario, with some but limited success.

It was obvious that the opening page of www.ontario.ca did not have any emergency management information. Here is the current opening page, maybe you can find it?



When speaking with representatives in the EMO booth, they agreed it was not there, and mentioned that all of the ministries try to get on the Ontario.ca website. He said that you
just needed to take a few extra steps. You will easily find that unless you know what you are looking for ahead of time, that going to the http://www.ontario.ca/ website will probably give you a challenge to find anything on emergency management and you will get easily frustrated.

Do not take our word for it, if you are an emergency manager; ask a family member or someone off the street to find readiness information. Prove us wrong.

Does that mean that emergency preparedness and notification is lower priority in parts of Canada? Do disasters not occur in Canada? We all know that is not the case.

That being said, the question was asked, so how do I get the information. Could you please show us those "few extra steps?" We clicked down and were unable to find it. Too much frustration.

As this approach did not work, the conversation quickly changed to find us the information we were looking for, without knowing the exact website.

It was suggested that we "Google" Ontario Emergency Management and start from there. That search did result in the website we were looking for.

So to get the information, you have to make the effort to get the information, and there is no or very limited push to give you the information. In order to be prepared, you need to know you need to be prepared. Expect the unexpected? How does someone
do that?

However, many solutions such as citizen alerting could not be found. That is because beyond an alert system on the news, both radio and television, there is no text or phone based alerting system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So true. But that is not a real solution.