2024 Lessons Management Forum Proceedings

Lessons management: where to from here?

Day 1 - Tuesday 28 May

Program

00:00 - Welcome and Acknowledgements
Des Hosie, Fire & Emergency New Zealand

06:07 - Opening Address
Rob Webb, AFAC

16:39 - Building a culture of learning, how FEMA's continuous improvement program has grown and continues to evolve
Mike Icardi. United States FEMA

1:13:22 - Lessons on lessons: A unique view of continuous improvement by Queensland's Inspector-General of Emergency Management
Alistair Dawson, Office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management, QLD

1:47:07 - Lessons learners as learners in lessons: A Lessons Occupational Development Continuum
Wayne Snell, Australian Civil-Military Centre

2:19:41 - Status Quo is not an Option
Dorothea Huber and Mark Semmler, Australian Maritime Safety Authority

2:53:52 - The South Australian State Emergency Service's (SASES) new Lessons Management (LM) WebEOC Board and the potential application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the LM process
Diana Macmullin and Sara Pulford, South Australia SES

3:24:08 - Empowering Emergency Response: Harnessing Microsoft 365 Power Platfroms for enhanced Lessons Management
Benjamin Hebart, Department of the Premier and Cabinet, SA

3:52:10 - Lessons Management Award Winner
NSW SES for their project 'the Operational Improvement Data Base'

4:16:59 - Lessons as a blueprint for an uncertain future
Kimberley Wilson, NEMA

Day 2 - Wednesday 29 May

Program

00:00 - Welcome and one recap
Des Hosie, Fire & Emergency New Zealand

05:50 - The AI storm comes: are we ready for AI's impact on disaster management?
Charles White, Deep Space Engineering Technology

1:00:50 - Three strategies for embracing learning culture across all levels of emergency management
Ben Norling, The Yellow Company Pty Ltd

1:29:30 - Community-led post-bushfire learning review
Zoe D'Arcy, Fire to Flourish

2:00:59 - Sharing lessons management in Africa
Christine Miller, B4Crisis

2:28:03 - Mainstreaming Emergency Management Lessons into exercising: A Process Development Initiative
Tim Lewis-Nicholson & Lee Dalgleish, Emergency Management Victoria

3:03:36 - Building Evaluation Capability the key to Lessons Management
Cameron Scott, National Broadband Network

3:23:23 - The road from lessons not learned to learning from experience
Mark Cuthbert, Australian Civil-Military Centre

3:51:59 - Forum reflections
Des Hosie, Fire & Emergency New Zealand

2024 Lessons Management Award

The Lessons Management Award recognises efforts to develop lessons management capability within an organisation and across the sector.

Winner: The Operational Improvement Data Base
New South Wales State Emergency Service

The Operational Improvement Database is an innovative way to share lessons and to embed lessons and operational improvement within NSW SES. The database makes lessons readily available and searchable to all members of the Service. It also provides a platform to record and report on the implementation of lessons.
Developed in Microsoft PowerApps, the database was developed over a two-year period, with consultation and executive support. The database can be accessed by all members through a link on the Service’s intranet site - mySES, which is accessible on both computers and mobile devices.

The database contains lessons from internal after-action reviews for major weather events and support activities, as well as those from Independent Reviews, Inquiries and relevant lessons from Royal Commissions.
Members can search for lessons or recommendations from specific events or via key words. This makes the learnings readily available for use as a learning tool for individuals, incident management teams and local Units. Unit Commanders and Training Coordinators have indicated that they will be using the lessons and recommendations to help inform training sessions and exercises. Capability Development Groups in NSW SES are also utilising the lessons to inform their workplans. Through the database lessons are now readily available for reference in business plans and to provide evidence for business cases for additional resources – both internally and to government.

As well as being a learning tool, the database is utilised as a reporting and monitoring tool for implementation of lessons and recommendations. The database allows staff members who have been allocated a recommendation or action for implementation are able to access the system and provide their monthly updates. The Operational and Improvement and Lessons (OIL) Team are then able to view the comments and evidence provided and amend the status of the recommendations and actions. This replaces the previous manual update process involving multiple emails, phone calls and entry of data into a number of locations.
The database is linked to a PowerBI dashboard for reporting on progress of implementation of lessons. The dashboards provide a visual tool for overview reporting and also allows searching and reporting on multiple criteria. The dashboards are used for reporting to internal lessons governance bodies and to the government on the implementation of findings from external reviews.

A series of quick reference guides and videos were developed to educate members on the use of the various aspects of the database. Members entering updates into the database have provided feedback that feedback received from staff entering utilising the database indicates that the system is easy to navigate and to enter commentary.