How the Emergency Services are resourcing real-time learning

I blogged lasy week about lesson learning in the Australian Emergency Services, and made passing reference to Real-Time Evaluation. It’s worth spending a little more time on this topic, as this is a departure from the general practice of capturing lessons only in the aftermath of an event.

My colleague Ian sent me these two examples from the Australian emergency services putting resources on to the ground to collect lessons during an incident, rather than waiting until afterwards.

Learning from the Nov 2017 Heavy Rain Event
The Victorian State Emergency Service and Emergency Management Victoria teamed up over December 2017 and January 2018 to conduct a series of debriefs at the incident, region and state level relating to the heavy rain event that occurred at the end of November.
For the first time under the new arrangements a Real Time Monitoring and Evaluation (RTM&E) team was also deployed during the event to inform real time learning. The resulting report, together with the debrief outcomes, will be analysed for insights and lessons and included in EM-Share to support ongoing continuous improvement.

RTM&E Deployed into the State Control CentreOn 19 and 20 January 2018 a small Real Time Monitoring and Evaluation (RTM&E) team was deployed for the first time into the Victorian State Control Centre (SCC) to support the real time learning of SCC staff during the recent heat event.
It was a great opportunity to look at new arrangements and inform future continuous improvement activities across the Victorian Emergency Management sector. All outcomes will be also included in EM-Share.

These are examples of what I call “Level 3” lesson learning; the proactive hunting for lessons rather than reactive capture of lessons after the event.  Please note that Real Time Evaluation is not an alternative to Post-Event Evaluation – both are needed. However the benefits of Real Time Evaluation, and the Proactive capture of lessons, are as follows:

• The level of resourcing is often greater, rather that trying to squeeze in evaluation time after the activity is over
• Lesson can be acted on, and problems corrected, while the activity is in progress
• The RTM&E team can look out for early signs of things happening, and can specifically watch out for lessons on specific topics
• The RTM&E team can capture lessons while memories are still fresh, before people start to forget.

However, given that caveat, Real Time Evaluation, and the capture of lessons as an event unfolds, can be a really valuable partner to more traditional Post-Event Review.