The WFP IT Emergency Preparedness and Response Branch (RMTF) was eerily quiet last week as many had flown to Germany to participate in OpEx Bravo 2015.
Jakob Kern, CIO and Director of IT, and Robert Kasca, Chief RMTS, arrived from HQ in Rome mid-week and held a full staff meeting with just 11 people or so. The meeting was short.
We caught up with Jakob to get his thoughts on how exercises like OpEx Bravo help IT responders, and where the future lies for IT emergency response.
Q: Humanitarian assistance in emergencies is relying more and more on digital aid. How does an exercise like OpEx Bravo help facilitate this?
JK: In emergencies, you always need connectivity first and that includes VSATs, WiFi and the internet. You still need the whole range of IT support to allow the use of digital tools. You cannot start with digital tools.
Connectivity is still the one thing needed and OpEx Bravo concentrates on that. Without connectivity, nothing will work.
Who are the recipients? Up to now, the ETC concentrated its effort on supporting humanitarian workers but soon this will be extended – in line with the ETC 2020 Strategy – to also support and reach the affected populations. After all, communications is aid, as the ETC 202 Strategy nicely points out.
What still needs to be defined is the fundamental question: do we provide communication tools for them (affected populations) or do we communicate with them. For is a bigger challenge as we would need to provide them with the tools, which is a huge challenge. OpEx Bravo would have to add extra tools to its exercises for communicating with or for the population without forgetting the primary need which is connectivity. If there is no access, there is no tool in the world that can help.
Q: How does OpEx Bravo specifically help train humanitarians prepare for and respond to emergencies?
JK: OpEx Bravo helps participants learn how to work under stress and in stressful conditions. It's one thing to do your job at home or in an air-conditioned office but when you are outside sweating in the heat or shivering in the freezing cold, it is completely different. But we have SOPs in place that are designed to help so the mechanisms are there.
OpEx Bravo also teaches participants to use these mechanisms in an environment they are not familiar with, such as very little sleep or no sleep at all. It is all about teamwork, speaking in the same language with people who have the same expertise. The colleagues you work with in OpEx Bravo are likely the ones you’ll meet out in the field and if not them, then people that have done the same training. In a language school you learn the same words, it is the same in OpEx Bravo: you find common ground.
It focuses on the team and also encourages a bit of competition which really tightens the team and brings everyone together. You are stuck together for a week and you are widening your network.
Q: Where do you see the future of IT emergency management training and simulations?
JK: IT disaster training in the future is moving towards managing and coordinating and less focused on the technology side. We will see more customer relations management (CRM) and less hands-on technical work; the latter will be left to local staff on the ground. You won't need to fly in tower specialists as all expertise will be locally available through building partnerships.
There will also be more focus on networking and analytics. When you start dealing with hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries and you need to analyse that volume of data coming in, you need a tool for that and IT will have to provide those tools.
So analysis, coordination, CRM, partnerships – this is the path ahead so we all need to be going in that direction.
