Scale and Emergency Management

 For those who have been tracking the current wildfires near Yosemite (known as the Rim Fire), I wanted to point out that there are interesting management challenges that go along with the drama of the wildfire.  As the report (linked below) points out, there are currently 5000 fire fighters working to put out the fire.  This operation will serve as a test of the scalability of management techniques.  It is worth considering whether management advice that works with dozens of employees will scale to problems like this that include thousands of employees (under a great deal of pressure, with limited communication abilities, in a remote environment).  This is some of what interests me so much in the management of disasters.

What is evidence-based public management?

It seems natural to start with a description of evidence-based public management.  For a fuller treatment, check out my textbook (Public Administration Research Methods from Routledge).  The basic argument is that decision in public management should be driven by careful data analysis rather than instinct, habit, and political expediency.

Hello and welcome to my newest blog -- Evidence-based Public Management.  I will be using this blog to comment on and link to stories related to evidence-based public management (EBPM).  If you are interested in EBPM, you will find stories detailing the use of EBPM as well as commentary on where the approach is clearly needed.  There will likely be a strong emergency management component -- largely because I do a lot of reading in that area.

For more technical information on academic research in EBPM, checkout my research blog at www.researchinpm.blogspot.com.  There you will find information like my recent working papers, methods tutorials, and commentary on academic research.

You can also follow me @Robinson_OU.  There I will link to various items of interest across the research and teaching/outreach topics on the two blogs.

Check in soon for more.  I expect to update each blog every two weeks -- if not more often -- with new material.