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Mass Communication Technology
7 Best Practices for Emergency Notification
8/1/2007
Technology by itself won't save the day when a crisis hits. If it did nothing else, the Virginia Tech massacre taught us to think about instituting best practices—before we purchase that next solution.
At the university, students and parents pilloried administrators
when the school's president conferred with police and made the decision not to close
the campus after the shooting. No, this was not Virginia Tech; it was California State
University-Fresno, May 7—three weeks after the East Coast massacre.
- At another major university, after the Virginia Tech mass murder, a public safety officer researching how to enhance communications on campus is told by his president, "I don't care how much it costs. Get it."
- At a recent IT tradeshow, one vendor selling a messaging system that can be used in times of crisis described his company's solution in glowing terms, mentioning Virginia Tech at least three times in the first two minutes of the sales pitch.
- In the two weeks following the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings, at least 14 vendors of campus communication solutions (and similar) released "thought pieces" through the major PR wire services, with headlines such as, "Could Emergency Phone Notification Have Prevented Virginia Tech Massacre?" "Rapid Notification Critical in Emergency Situations," "Personal Preparedness: Last Line of Defense in Tragic Shooting Situation," "Emergency Notification System Allows Schools to Reach Students Instantly," and "Campus Safety: How Do We Communicate During a Crisis?"
Indeed, schools have found religion when it comes to solutions designed to deliver critical information to the campus community in a timely fashion. And the vendor community is now offering a multitude of routes to the Promised Land. The question is: Will the "right" technology solution solve all your mass communication problems? Those who have weathered campus emergencies that depended upon fast, effective communication with the campus community say technology is only part of the solution. Following, from those who have "been there," are seven critical best practices for emergency notification you need to put into place now.
1) Know Your Resources and Their Alternatives
John Lawson, former CIO of New Orleans' Tulane University, and currently vice provost for IT and CIO at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, recalls that during Hurricane Katrina, the Tulane campus lost e-mail communications right away. Although Yahoo! quickly stepped in to set up a replacement e-mail system, Lawson's team couldn't recreate what existed before because it didn't have all the account names. "That was one of the big complaints; losing that system," recalls Lawson. And circuits in the 504 area code were jammed, so voice calls—including cell phone calls—were difficult to achieve, he adds.
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