How the Australian Emergency Services manage lessons

 Emergency Management Victoria coosrinates support for the state of Victoria, Australia during emergencies such as floods, bush fires, earthquakes, pendemics and so on. Core to their success is the effective learning of lessons from carious emergencies.

The diagram above summarises their approach to lesson learning, and you can read more in the review document itself, including summaries of the main lessons under 11 themes.

• They collect Observations from individuals (sometimes submitted online), and from Monitoring, Formal debriefs, After ActionReviews and major reviews.
• These observations are analysed by local teams and governance groups to identify locally relevant insights, lessons and actions required to contribute to continuous improvement. These actions are locally coordinated, implemented, monitored and reported. 
• The State review team also take the observations from all tiers of emergency management, and analyse these for insights, trends, lessons and suggested actions. they then consult with subject matter experts to develop an action plan which will be presented to the Emergency Management Commissioner and Agency Chiefs for approval.
• The State review team supports the action plan by developing and disseminating supporting materials and implementation products, and will monitor the progress of the action plan.

This approach sees lessons taken through to action both at local level and at State level, and is a very good example of Level 2 lesson learning.