One of the many reasons for the quality of the US Army's desert warfare is the National Training Center, which is basically a gigantic simulator for (as far as I understand) brigade-sized units to train. Cameras and observers are everywhere and there is a resident Opposing Force that kicks the butt of units that come in to train. Units are graded on their performance at the NTC; doing well or poorly can make or break the careers of senior-level officers and enlisted. TOPGUN is a similar setup for Navy fighter pilots; Red Flag serves the same purpose for the Air Force.* You learn from failure, you learn from the best.
After Katrina, some people (myself included) thought that local, state and federal officials should undergo the same process. Once every two years, obvious and non-obvious scenarios, results to be disseminated to the public. Today's reports of problems with coordination between DHS, state and local officials is more evidence for the idea.
This stuff (coordination among agencies that don't talk to each other on a regular basis) is HARD** -- that why they need to practice. Yeah, they run exercises all the time, but those drills are drills. When you get to decide that your fake earthquake is going to be at 10 am on Tuesday morning, you're going to be all prepped up for it. A recorded, game-speed simulation would be a much better measurement and learning tool for government officials at all levels.
* Air Force pilots described flying in the 1st Gulf War as being "almost as hard as Red Flag."
** An amusing point from Afghanistan: there was a funny story from the initial invasion where it was discovered (during the course of a desperate battle) that the Air Force uses degrees, minutes, and thousandths of a minute, whereas the Army uses degrees, minutes, and seconds. Now picture an F-15 backseater doing conversions on his calculator watch during bombing runs. (Everything turned out all right, read more here.
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I'd ask folks (myself included) for some level of sensitivity on talking about Ike's aftermath (and Katrina's, for that matter.) The government is obviously fair game, in my opinion; the folks on the ground, less so.
I would argue that testing and rigorous simluation of disaster traing scenarios is good but only in the event that it is performed by independent testers and organizations, especially when concerning today's incarnation of FEMA. As politically motivated as gov't appointments are these days, one would expect test results to display excellent performance.
In retail stores, the concept of "mystery shoppers" is the closest example i can think of. they were hired by the company to test the stores performance at sales and customer service. While not as flashy as Jim's military example, I think this would be more in line with civilian run agencies.
I agree that there shouldn't be any thumbs on the scale, etc. I think my proposal would offer is recording and dissemination of the results to the press.
Presumably, we're all mystery shoppers when it comes to the government. It just matter whether we pick up the phone to our local representatives, etc.
For my idea, you really don't need all that much other than several rooms, interlinked with phones and computers and a central "back room" where the scenarios were being gamed out. Get your governor, local mayors, a couple fire/EMS-types, your cops and your local FEMA idiot and play a little phone tag. It'd be fun, even though it'd be deadly serious.
Jim, are you suggesting that repeated brow-beating can positively influence learning?
Rich, for some people, repeated browbeating is the only way to learn. Public officials included, I suppose.
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