The Virtual Joint Information Center:
Why Anything Less May Be Too Late
Technical Paper for Industry IDS Online Conference
June 2004
By Gerald Baron
Founder of PIER Systems, creator of PIER
Douglas MacArthur is credited with saying that all lost battles can be summed up with two words: “too late.” Reputation battles waged in the era of instant news too frequently end up as lost causes and for precisely the same reason. The company, person or organization being reported on in the media or attacked by accusers may respond effectively and appropriately—but too late. Unfortunately, those responsible for providing up-to-date information about major natural disasters, environmental catastrophes, major fires, accidents, or terrorist activities too frequently are also fighting a losing battle. Ironically, too often what hampers them most is the design of the tool intended to help them communicate effectively: the Joint Information Center.
The Joint Information Center (JIC) concept evolved with the Incident Command System (ICS). The federally mandated multi-agency incident response management system established a clearly defined management scheme specifically for responding to a fast changing event. After the Department of Homeland Security was created, it became a requirement that all first responder agencies were to implement the ICS in all security-related incidents.
Like the ICS, the JIC was designed to improve the effectiveness of the response by creating an instant multi-agency organization whose lines of authority are clear and supercede those of the individual organizations represented in the response. When a JIC is in place, all those involved speak with one voice and the Incident Commander or Commanders have assurance of control over the information disseminated. There is increased efficiency and management issues are resolved within the pre-established organization structure. Both the ICS and JIC have proven to be very effective in a great many incidents and in a wide variety of events.
Despite the success, the JIC concept was built for one technological era, but the news media and the communication tools available today make the physical JIC a highly questionable notion.
How the Traditional JIC Operates
For those not familiar with current JIC operations, this will serve as a brief introduction. We will use an oil spill as the example event. A large-scale oil spill involves numerous agencies—both public and private. The company owning the oil that has spilled is responsible for the response, cleanup and associated costs and is designated the “Responsible Party” or (RP). Oil companies typically contract with companies that have been established by the various companies in the region to share response resources such as boats, booms, personnel, infrastructure, etc. These are usually called Oil Spill Response Organizations or OSROs. There may be at least two involved in a spill of any magnitude. Government agencies involved in responding to a spill will likely include the local department of emergency management, local police and fire agencies, city or county staff responsible for environmental protection, the state environmental agency, and at least one federal agency responsible for spills—either the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the US Coast Guard (USCG). Other groups likely to be involved include tribal leaders or staff, wildlife groups, neighborhood organizations, and humanitarian groups such as the Red Cross and local crisis response volunteers. It is not unusual for more than 30 or more agencies to be actively involved in a significant event with the response staff growing into the hundreds.
It is the function of the Incident Command System to provide the mechanism for this rapidly expanding and very ad hoc team to work together very quickly and effectively to manage the response. A few important keys to the success of this management system:
- An Incident Commander is always identified and this person has full authority to made decisions regarding the response including communications
- The establishment of Unified Command when government agency representatives are on scene
- The prioritization of safety as the first consideration in all plans and actions
- The identification of key operating sections including Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Finance
- The value of separating the planning function from the operations function
- The “span of control” limitations make certain that the organization does not become too top heavy and restrictive
- The establishment of communications as the Command Staff function.
The issue of Unified Command is important to understand. When agencies with regulatory or compliance authority are involved and on-scene, a strict command protocol is established . A “Unified Command” structure is put in place with one official from the lead federal agency serving as the Federal On Scene Commander (FOSC); one official from the lead state agency, usually the state department of environmental protection (SOSC); and one official selected to represent all the local agencies, frequently the director of emergency management (LOSC). Additionally, if tribal lands are involved in anyway, a tribal representative also serves as part of Unified Command. The Responsible Party response manager is also, of course, part of Unified Command and normally takes a lead role within the group as he or she represents the company paying the bills. While comprised of up to five individuals, Unified Command (UC) is intended to operate as a single, unit responsible for making all decisions about response operations, safety and public communication. The reality is that differences in personal style and priorities of the agencies frequently make for very interesting UC meetings. A major impetus to working together effectively is the “federalization” process. If the Federal On Scene Commander determines that Unified Command is not adequately dealing with the response, he or she alone has the authority to supercede the UC and make unilateral decisions. This is usually reserved for very significant difficulties and once “federalized,” the ICS reverts back to a single Incident Commander—the representative from the Coast Guard or the EPA.
Figure 1: Simplified ICS/UCS Structure
The National Response Team states: “A JIC is a co-located group of representatives from agencies and organizations involved in an event that are designated to handle public information needs.” The physical location of a JIC is typically located near the EOC but most planners prefer it not integrated fully into the EOC facility. The main reason for this is that media representatives will interface almost exclusively with the JIC staff and not with the rest of the organization and there is a strong preference to keep the media some distance away from the EOC. In the cases where the JIC is part of the EOC or closely tied to it, other facilities away from the main operation center of the EOC are usually designated for press conference and media interviews. Traditional equipment for a JIC includes desks and chairs, telephones, copier, fax machine, white boards, flipchart stands and basic office supplies.
The Event
It is 6:20 a.m. and a large tanker carrying Alaska North Slope crude is nearly finished with the offloading at a Pacific Northwest refinery wharf. The crude is being pumped from the hold into the transfer lines at the wharf that will carry the crude to the refinery’s storage facilities. Something goes very wrong and suddenly crude is flowing unchecked into the pristine waters of northern Puget Sound. The first step in such an event is notifications including the refinery’s oil spill response team. The refinery employee supervising the offloading serves as the initial incident commander and begins the notification as well as giving instructions to try to shut off the flow and protect the safety of the responders.
The notification via pager to the refinery’s response team begins a complex but orchestrated process that starts with notifying the National Spill Response organization and all appropriate local, state and federal agencies. Since this spill occurs in coastal waters, the US Coast Guard is the federal agency responsible. The refinery’s information officer (IO)[1] is notified with the initial page.
Technically speaking, the JIC is established once public information officers from the response agencies arrive at the refinery and begin participating in the communication function and incident commanders from the state, local, federal and tribal agencies come together to form Unified Command. Now it becomes “joint” in the sense that the Information Officer is representing not just the refinery but also the response organization comprising all the groups and controlled by Unified Command. Consequently, the formation of a true JIC with participation from various agencies, and responding to a full-blown Unified Command, with all infrastructure in place, takes anywhere from four to 24 hours. Travel time, logistics involved in setting up the location, infrastructure limitations and initial organization challenges have the inevitable result of making it very difficult for the JIC to become operational in much less than 6 to 8 hours.
The task of the Information Officer is to manage the communication function on behalf of Unified Command. The NRT JIC manual describes three primary functions for the Information Officer: 1) gather incident data, 2) analyze community perceptions, and 3) inform the public. In the traditional view and practice, however, most IOs tend to view their task as primarily to respond to reporter inquiries. One overarching rule pervades the information function: Incident Commander approval. This is a more difficult challenge than may first appear since an incident is usually very dynamic, with new information evolving at a very rapid pace and frequently the new information may have very important consequences to the public. Nevertheless, discipline about information protocols must be maintained and the approval process strictly followed to insure that Incident Command retains full authority over the public information as well as the response itself.
Typical Information Development and Distribution Process
Under a JIC structure, the information development process is clearly identified. A JIC member working under the guidance of the Assistant IO, Internal is assigned to gather information from the Planning Section of ICS. The person within the Planning Section is called the Situation Status person and it is their responsibility to continually update information about the incident and the response. The JIC member is closely attached to them and continually feeds the production staff within the JIC with updates of the information. “Production” within the JIC means producing drafts of documents to be used for the information function. The drafts may be press releases, fact sheets, talking points, charts, or almost any other form of information. The drafts are presented to the Information Officer who may edit or direct others to edit. When approved by the Information Officer, the drafts are presented to the Incident Commander or Unified Command. Once approved, the information can be distributed to the public. This includes use by media responders in answering questions to the media as well as through pro-active distribution in the typical JIC with limited computer infrastructure, the assumed method of distribution is by fax.
The Story is Told Instantly
As was mentioned earlier, this system has proven effective in helping manage public communication in large-scale events. The problem is, the world has changed; particularly the world of public communication. The primary driver of that change has been technology. The result has been that both media and audience expectations have dramatically increased.
Perhaps the clearest way of identifying these changes is to analyze the differences in news coverage between the first Gulf War and the war in Iraq about ten years later. News dispatches in the first Gulf War tended to come from centralized locations such as Headquarters operations. They were provided by extensive and complicated satellite uplinks and were generally timed to coincide with the major news cycles dictated largely by the evening television news. The Iraq war, by contrast, was primarily told by embedded reporters who were on the rapidly changing front lines showing remarkably clear and sometimes stunning images of the front lines on a real-time, 24/7 basis. Distribution was not directed primarily at the evening news hour, but 24 hours a day through expanded cable television coverage and worldwide Internet distribution. Speed, access, and multiplication of options all greatly influenced the coverage and global public perceptions of what was happening.
We now live in an era of instant news. “Breaking News” stories or “Developing News” aimed at creating a sense of immediacy dominate local television broadcasts. Audiences want news that is happening right now, not what happened an hour ago. Print news sources are now also in the broadcast business by virtue of the increasing number of visitors to their web sites. A story that will appear in the newspaper in the morning is likely to appear many hours earlier on the web site, competing with the radio and television outlets for immediacy. The Internet means that not only can a news purveyor put information out very quickly and in a variety of audio and visual formats, but also can create global audiences at essentially no cost.
The Internet does much more than make globalization of instant information remarkably affordable. It turns almost any significant newsmaker into a broadcaster whether they want to be or not. In Now Is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News (2003, Financial Times/Prentice Hall) the term “Post Media World” was used to describe this phenomenon. In almost every major event, audiences using Internet news sites will turn from those sites to go directly to the source of the news if they have a high interest in the story. Examples of companies and organizations experiencing this phenomenon are frequent: Firestone’s website crashed when announcing a product recall, in November 2000 the Florida state elections website crashed under a burden of 400,000 hits per hour. Alaska Airlines experienced 1.2 million hits in the first 12 hours after the crash of Flight 261, and the US Navy site endured five million hits following the bombing of the USS Cole.
In the US there are more than 150 million Internet users and over 60% of those use the Internet every day to get news. In Europe, that percentage is even higher. When a major event occurs, the website of the news source will likely be inundated with potentially millions of hits. The website itself will serve as a primary source for reporters, members of the public, family members of those involved, key government officials and everyone else to get important information about what is happening. They expect the information provided on the site to be complete, accurate and up-to-the-minute.
Changing Audience Expectations
Ask someone twenty years ago how long it takes to have a package delivered across the nation and the answer would be a week. Ask today and the answer is a day. Our expectations change according to what we understand is possible. We now know that technology enables audiences to view first hand what is happening on the front lines of a battle half a world away—as it happens. With such expectations, no explanation about delays of information about an event such as an oil spill will be acceptable.
One example of this involved a refinery in the United Kingdom which experienced a large-scale fire. The media responder responsible for providing public information felt he was doing an excellent job of answering reporter’s questions about the event. However, two weeks after the event, the communication staff found emails from neighbors living adjacent to the facility who had emailed shortly after the incident asking if they should evacuate. A response two weeks after the event is definitely going to be considered by these people as “too little, too late.”
In the era of instant news, the audience expectation is not just about speed. It is also about directness. Audiences believe that major corporations and government agencies have access to and the capability of using advanced communication technology that will enable them to communicate via email directly to audiences affected by the event. The reality is that frequently within the JIC model, that expectation simply cannot be met.
From Traditional JIC to Virtual JIC
There are four basic reasons why the traditional JIC fails to meet the increased audience expectations of the instant news and post media era:
- Assembly of responders
- Participation of those not present
- Lack of infrastructure
- Website management and infrastructure
Assembly of Responders
As noted earlier, the assembly of the communication team in a single physical location is the very definition of the JIC. In actual practice, key JIC staff may not be able to assemble on scene before 24 hours and sometimes as long as 36 hours after notification. During that time, the story of the event has been told so frequently by all major news media covering the story that in most cases public attention has already begun to move to new stories.
In our example scenario, the refineries in the northern Puget Sound are all within a twenty-minute helicopter flight from the major television stations in Seattle and no more than an hour and one-half drive using a satellite truck. After notifications have been made including local notifications using 9-1-1, all media outlets will have been alerted. The initial reports can be expected to be broadcast within a half hour to an hour after the event. The US Coast Guard, a leader in public information response, considers the first hour of the response the “golden hour,” because of its importance in providing accurate, up-to-the-minute information. If JIC members are some distance away from the EOC, they may still be packing for their trip while the most critical news stories are being distributed.
Participation of Those not Present
While the intention of the JIC is to have all key members present, actual experience has demonstrated that is not feasible. Potential key members of the JIC who may not be present include attorneys for the responsible party and experts with special expertise in elements of the response. In one event involving a major pipeline explosion, the responsible party had multiple attorneys involved and statements involving the company required approval from attorneys located in several different cities and time zones. To insure accuracy, the Information Officer may want verification of information by outside experts who are readily available by phone, email or fax but who may not be physically present. In one large-scale drill, an oil company used its customer support center to assist with public inquiries and they were located in a downtown Houston office building although the JIC was located at a refinery location about two hours away.
It is likely that critical members of the communication and information function will not be physically present in the JIC. If accommodations are not made for their participation, the natural result will be the slowing of information or deterioration of information quality or accuracy by not being able to take full advantage of their participation.
Lack of Infrastructure
Today’s offices are routinely equipped with the latest in communication tools and technology. The most basic of these is the computer with high speed Internet access. Other tools include databases containing critical contact information including reporters, executive leadership, investors, neighbors, employees, families, government officials, response agency managers, external resources, etc. Unfortunately, what happens in a typical response is the communicators are required to leave their computers, high speed access, and all their normal tools behind and co-locate in a JIC where the communication technology is almost certainly much less sophisticated and complete than what they left behind.
There certainly are EOC’s built or under construction that are equipped with the latest technology. But the vast majority of EOCs and accompanying JICs are not equipped to match the technology of even the most basic office. One large multi-national company held a drill using a hotel as the EOC and contracted with an experienced outside contractor to provide the computer infrastructure for the JIC. Despite considerable expenditure and effort, the satellite uplink failed and the JIC staff had to resort to two laptop computers using the hotel’s dialup connection to conduct all communication operations.
Even with massive dollars flowing into EOCs with renewed emphasis on emergency prepararedness, it is unlikely that the seldom used JIC facilities will even keep up with the technology used in most offices. Because of that, it is almost inevitable that communicators arriving at a JIC facility will find their efficiency and effectiveness hampered by outdated, underperforming or unavailable technology.
Website Management and Infrastructure
It is significant that the latest version of the National Response Team JIC Manual, dated January 21, 2000, does not refer in any significant way to websites. In the few years since the development of this excellent product, the world of public information has changed dramatically. As mentioned earlier, websites for both news organizations and those involved in a major news story have become one of the most significant means of distributing information to interested audiences. Websites have become central to communication functions of most organizations where they are used to communicate with the media and with segmented audiences.
To be effective in a JIC operation, an incident website needs to be based on simplified content management technology allowing a number of people without programming skills or even extensive web experience to effectively manage content. If this is not available, it is left to a separate function of the JIC to manage web content, which adds an entirely separate function to an already over-burdened management process. The website must also be hosted on servers capable of delivering potentially high bandwidth content such as digital images and video and with the capability of withstanding many millions of visits. For example, on September 11, 2001, admittedly an unusual day for public information, CNN registered 11 million hits. In the years since that day, the number of users accessing websites for news has increased significantly.
Virtual JIC: Collaboration Without Borders
The fundamental problems of the JIC in meeting the current audience expectations and the instant news demands is best addressed by implementing technology specifically designed to provide a collaborative work environment for communicators. The suggestion by this author is to transition to a virtual JIC approach using a virtual communication center.
An example of such a technology is PIER (Public Information Emergency Response). This system was created following direct involvement in a large-scale incident in 1999, which employed a traditional JIC. Experiences gained in that situation led to the realization that the traditional JIC could not meet the current demands. Subsequent events and the increasing adoption of this technology by federal agencies such as the US Coast Guard and by leading oil companies such as Shell and BP, have demonstrated the viability of this technology.
A virtual communication center, places all communication functions on an Internet platform. This includes information gathering, drafting of documents, editing, approvals, and distribution using email, fax and Internet-based telephone messaging. It also includes web content management, inquiry management and automated audience contact information generation and control. It uses commonly adopted communication tools such as internal email and secure chat rooms to facilitate communication between team members. Further, it documents all activities enabling effective tracking and reporting of communication activities. Designed specifically to meet the requirements of ICS/UCS and JIC protocols, it has been used with exceptional results in major disasters, reputation crises, most recently and in the management of public information for the June 2004 G8 summit in Georgia. In this instance, over 120 communicators worked in concert from three locations around the country to manage public information related to security and law enforcement for the summit meeting.
A virtual JIC addresses the four primary problems identified with the traditional JIC:
- Assembly of responders
- Participation of those not present
- Lack of infrastructure
- Website management and infrastructure
Assembly of responders
Members of the JIC can become operational in the time it takes to get to a computer with an Internet connection. That means in a hotel, a spare bedroom, or their office. After signing in with a pre-authorized password, team members can immediately participate in information preparation and approvals, response to inquiries, tracking news reports and scheduling upcoming press conferences. Any authorized user via email, fax or using text-to-voice telephone messaging can distribute approved information.
It is essential in a virtual JIC operation that several members of the JIC be physically present at the EOC. The Information Officer needs to be present to work and confer directly with the Incident Commander/Unified Command, the person assigned to the Planning section needs to be present to feed real-time information into the communication center, and JIC staff people need to be available to respond to and escort members of the media who may arrive on scene. However, use of this technology has proven that when used effectively it substantially reduces the demands of responding to reporter inquiries. When reporters find they can get the information they need including digital images and video delivered directly to their desks via email and by access to a website, their need to visit the scene and call into the JIC for frequent updates is lessened. The option of submitting questions via the website further reduces the need for calling or visits, providing the inquiries receive a fast response.
Participation of those not present
In the virtual JIC model, those who are co-located no longer define the JIC. Those who have been given access as users into a virtual communication center define it, instead. Access levels are controllable so that different members have access to different functions and information than others. Also, the system is designed to facilitate both internal communication and external communication so that a larger group not included in the JIC can have access to selected information via the website which is not available to the general public. This is used to communicate to executives and agency leaders who are not present in the EOC but who wish to be kept fully informed of fast changing activities.
The inquiry management function of a virtual communications center is especially useful when operated in a virtual JIC setting. All inquiries are logged into the system regardless of whether they came in via the inquiry function on the external website, through phone calls or through traditional email. Even with a widely dispersed communication team, the IO or designated section leaders can review all inquiries and see who has asked which questions, what the responses have been and how quickly the JIC members have responded. Rumors can be quickly identified and addressed in new information updates and quality control issues quickly spotted, including violations of pre-release of changing information. This ability to review real-time communication activity can be extended to agency and executive leadership who are not on scene, provided they are given the appropriate security access.
Lack of Infrastructure
The infrastructure needed to operate a virtual JIC consists of computers with Internet access—preferably high speed. Cell phones are also essential particularly for responding to reporters and stakeholders. Cell phone numbers of responders can be provided on the website and in information releases to distribute the call load. Critical items at the EOC include two computers with high-speed access to facilitate inputs of information into the virtual communication center and the approval process of the IO. Media reception area, parking and press conference facilities are still required but may not need to be co-located with the EOC.
Current planning for virtual JIC implementation includes use of the virtual JIC for the first four to eight hours of the incident with gradual transition to a co-located physical JIC when the computers with Internet access have been secured and tested and when additional responders arrive on scene.
Website management and infrastructure
In a virtual communications center setting users have full control of the entire website including the ability to launch entirely new websites for specific information purposes. All content is managed not as a separate communication function but fully integrated within the normal information preparation and distribution process. When a press release is drafted, edited and then approved, the Assistant IO/External releases it by going through two basic steps: posting the information to the website and distributing it to contact lists by email, fax, or text-to-voice telephone messaging. All this is accomplished in seconds by selecting options within the virtual communication center.
One significant advantage of this is the ability to keep a continual flow of new updates. Media representatives or stakeholders coming to the JIC website are invited to add their name to the mailing list so that future updates will be emailed automatically to them. Users of a virtual communications center typically work to provide hourly updates of an incident, which greatly diminishes the incoming traffic of phone calls, and site visits.
A virtual communications center should be a hosted application residing on crisis capable servers able to withstand multi-million hits per day. The cost of providing this robust delivery is distributed across multiple users making it feasible for even smaller organizations to have full access to this capability. The virtual communication system is continually updated and modified which increases usefulness while dramatically reducing costs over self-built and managed communication technologies.
Another important benefit is documentation. When a JIC is used as part of meeting federal requirements, documentation is a critical element of the JIC operation. A virtual communications center eliminates the need for documentation staff as the system itself tracks and records all activities including the participation of every member. This documentation capability has also proven invaluable in post-incident briefings.
Summary
Rapid changes in news technology and the way the public gains its vital information, particularly the Internet, is requiring a serious reassessment of the JIC concept. The idea of cooperative communication among all the groups represented is absolutely crucial. But the means of working together has changed. It is time to seriously evaluate the virtual communication center technology and apply it to JIC planning.
[1] The more traditional designation is Public Information Officer (PIO). In this paper we are using the more current term Information Officer (IO) to reflect the growing consensus that the JIC and the information function is broader than public information alone but involves all stakeholder communication, including internal audiences.
