September 17, 2009 By Elaine Rundle
The idea that all disasters happen locally has been heavily stressed by Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. To garner a better understanding of what its residents could contribute to disaster response and recovery, Adair County, Iowa, is surveying its citizens to determine their availability for volunteering and how they'd be interested in contributing.
Robert Kempf, emergency management coordinator of Adair County, said in the past the county has relied heavily on service clubs if it needed volunteer support. "With the more advanced planning that we try to do now, we've decided we should try to solicit more people instead of depending on the groups," he said. "In the rural areas, the same groups get called on again and again to help."
The emergency volunteer survey asks residents when they would be available and what type of help they're interested in doing -- food services, baby-sitting, clerical work, answering phones, etc. It also finds out of residents would be willing to donate the use of their chainsaws, tractors or other machinery that could be used to aid emergency response.
For more information, read Emergency Management magazine's article about Adair County's emergency volunteer survey.
This Digital Communities white paper highlights discussions with IT officials in four counties that have adopted shared services models. Our aim was to learn about the obstacles these governments have faced when it comes to shared services and what it takes to overcome those roadblocks. We also spoke with several members of the IT industry who have thought long and hard about these issues. The paper offers some best practices for shared government-to-government services, but also points out challenges that government and industry still must overcome before this model gains widespread adoption.
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