An internal look on preparedness efforts, the strategic perspective, and the causality of levels of civil preparedness.
Kyle McPhee is the Director of Preparedness Programs at Hagerty. On this episode, we share insights on why preparedness must be a focus, how preparedness and the Pandemic have impacted the US perspective on preparedness, and review how emergency managers can build upon their own programs in order to become Disaster Tough.
This Podcaast has moved to the Readiness Lab.
Host: John Scardena (0s):
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Host: John Scardena (1m 44s):
Welcome back to the show everybody, it's your host, John Scardena. I am so excited for this episode. We've had a couple other people from Hagerty on here before, former FEMA administrator Brock long was on here, we had Jessica and Aleppo on the show before Jessica reached out to me and said, hey, you got to have Kyle on the show. Kyle is the director of preparedness program. Sarah Hagerty, obviously we're a fan, worked with them in the past. We've talked about that on the show, and we're happy to have a representative back on because Hagerty has this great capability of touching a lot of different areas, especially different projects. I believe Kyle has been with them since like 2013. Maybe he can probably correct me that in a second, but he's been there for a while. He's been working on different projects with them. We can talk really in depth about preparedness and its role in emergency management. Kyle, welcome to the show.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (2m 37s):
Hey thanks a lot, John. Happy to be here. And a 2009.
Host: John Scardena (2m 40s):
So 2009, an additional 4 years active working on Hagerty and you have additional feather in your cap. Something I really liked is you're from Missouri. Am I correct there?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (2m 52s):
That's right. Yeah. Currently reside in Kansas City.
Host: John Scardena (2m 54s):
Okay. Kansas city, Missouri. Now my wife grew up here St. Louis, and she was always adamant that Kansas city Missouri is very different than Kansas city Kansas. So way to be on the good side of Kansas city, I guess. So if you're growing up in the Midwest, Midwest is dealing obviously with, earthquake or not earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, mainly with the possibility of the earthquake here in St. Louis at some point happening. Sure. If you're growing up with that, possibly that preparedness mindset, I'm sure you did a lot of drills in your school with covering your head. Did you ever do that as a kid, the tornado drills?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (3m 39s):
Yeah, absolutely.
Host: John Scardena (3m 40s):
I was telling a youth group about that in California, they didn't understand what I was talking about. I was like, man, that was every three months. As a kid growing up in Ohio, you know, got to cover your head, wait for the tornado, pass over these, these drills. So you have a preparedness kind of background, just growing up with that sense of preparedness. You went to school to study, I think counter-terrorism correct.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (4m 7s):
Well, I went to a St. Louis university actually, and biosecurity was my focus at that point. That was really my first introduction to the merger of, of some of the complex decision process that led me to, to Hagerty in the preparedness division. .
Host: John Scardena (4m 23s):
Yeah. Then once you got in, you stayed there, so that's great. Yeah. You worked your way up. In terms of like the major projects that you've worked on, some of these highlights that you've done, what really stands out to you of like, oh, that is preparedness done right?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (4m 40s):
Yeah. That's a great question. So, you know, in my time with Hagerty and seeing the company grow over the past decade, plus we've had a tremendous number of opportunities to help clients from coast to coast. So in that time, I've been able to work with jurisdictions, large and small all levels of government non-for-profit, for-profit entities. You know, from each experience we learned something, as much as we're there to support our clients at the same time, we're picking up bits and pieces along, even if it's just something as simple as what's important to our clients or where are some of the pain points they're struggling. I like to think about it as just sort of an iterative process that you're not only do we get sort of the temperature of preparedness across the nation, we also get a really extract what seems to be working well and where individual clients have been very successful. As I look back over that time, there are certain efforts that stand out that were highly complex and, and really rewarding results. For instance, we led one of the largest planning efforts in the nation's history, eight states and four FEMA regions involved and planning for an event that's sort of near and dear to Missourians. That is the new imagined seismic zone earthquake scenario. We've also done a number of more nuanced efforts around active threat and more recently, I think we're really stepping back from the incident response and looking at overall capability building, which is an exciting development for the field, I would say as we're maturing and sort of looking at risk at a structural level as opposed to the individual incident.
Host: John Scardena (6m 23s):
Okay. So in terms of the project sustain up to you, new mattered, obviously you mentioned that in terms of what you did for new mattress, what was your specific role in walking through that seismic zone? Because as I understand, there are two very different opinions in how to deal with earthquake zones, especially in the St Louis area. What were you working on and what were some of the gaps that you identified in that preparedness process?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (6m 52s):
Well, I think it's important before we dive in to just note that, you know, this has been a long identified risk to the region. There's been a lot of planning that occurred before we were involved and it continues to this day, both at the federal level and at the local and state level. My specific role, I started out at FEMA headquarters working on some of the strategic concepts as to how the nation would respond and support the regions, especially around the issue of resource adjudication. In other words, just an acknowledgement that the need would exceed the availability of resources. So there had to be a decision process built around how to allocate those resources based on a series of, of prioritization decisions process, then went to the regional level and worked specifically with the state of Missouri. So that was a real opportunity to, to sort of see that strategy translate to implementation and sort of feel like the nuances of how the individual needs of Missourians and other communities would be met if that catastrophic worst-case scenario were to unfold.
Host: John Scardena (7m 60s):
Okay. So you're going to be start talking about FEMA language versus what I've been kind of addressing on the show here a little bit is FEMA's five areas of preparedness. One of them covers response, and really what you're talking about is a response scenario and preparing for that response. But really once you get into response, you're outside of preparedness, right? So what are your thoughts then if you're looking at the five FEMA areas of preparedness, which again, they say responses, one of those areas, at one point you had to start acting, and what you're talking about is the acting part. How are you addressing that with the need of preparing Missourians for the new Madrid incident? Like what are the steps to mitigate that issue?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (8m 50s):
Well, I think that when you get sort of the overall vision identified as to what the intent would be, then you can start working through how to go about implementing those identified priorities. So, you know, when we really start translating it to sort of tactics, in other words, how does this mission get carried out at the field level? What we're talking about is capability building, so the preparedness mission is really about defining that mission as specific as possible and testing and validating that that capability exists. Ultimately when you test something, typically a component of it will fail or break, or it could be improved otherwise. So what you're trying to do is sort of just identify how to make that capability more robust over time. That's really where preparedness has a lot of value to communities is because especially for these high consequence, low probability events where, we may never see in an entire career, the actual event unfold, we don't get much practice. We have to be ready to go when it does occur and that's the value of preparedness is identifying what those capabilities are and incrementally working at, building a building that capability over time, and just the contrast to sort of the FEMA process versus that approach at the local level. This is agnostic of Missouri or any other jurisdiction. But I think the fundamental task that we have is to scale it, right, for the stakeholders and resources that are available in that community. Many times, you know, we're working with organizations who are balancing emergency management duties with many other competing priorities. In some cases, the emergency manager is a volunteer. So you really have to take these systems, processes, frameworks that have been developed and make them work for sort of the practical matter at the field level.
Host: John Scardena (10m 45s):
Yeah. You hit on a lot of points that ring well with me. In fact, Brock long talks about, I talked about on the show, you know, you fail, if you fail logistics, similarly, Tim Britt from the national strike team, national incident management team red now, technically. He was on the show and he said something similar as you, if you fail, you fail at tactics, which is directly to your point, there are nuances for every community. But really again, to your credit, when you go into different jurisdictions, there are things that resonate in every single community. You have systems in place, you have policy that that'd be aware of, you have to understand the capabilities and gaps. That definitely rings true with what I've seen in my experience, going around the country as well, responding to disasters is, okay, we have to deal with the cultural impacts. We have to deal with localized views of what emergency management is. But the other thing is we have to deal with, and man great call-out, was that the local guy is often a volunteer or, and, or it's a, it's a multiple hat wearing scenario where it's, hey, you're the sheriff all the time, but in a large-scale disaster, all of a sudden now you're the, you're the emergency manager. You walk in there and he's like, hey, I'm the county emergency manager. Great what's your hazard mitigation plan? What's a hazard mitigation plan? And that's no discredit to the sheriff, he just has a million other things on his plate. So now I think that's great. You're preparing to understand the capabilities, you're understanding those nuances and how they interplay against the things that happen in every single disaster, every single event that we're trying to reduce. But at the end of the day, we have to do something right emergency managers? It's always better to do something than nothing in a disaster, especially in preparedness and we just left national preparedness month. Right. That just closed out. So this is like a great follow-up to that. If we're thinking of this perspective here now, just for like the US’ sake, and even your sake, the way that disaster tough podcasts looked at preparedness month is how do you prepare the emergency manager to deal with the threats of the future in terms of national preparedness month during a pandemic second year of the pandemic, people are exhausted, all that kind of stuff happening. What would be your kind of immediate after action of what you thought this year's preparedness month was like? Then as a follow up to that, that AAR, what are the next steps of emergency managers need to take, especially if they're wearing multiple hats?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (13m 35s):
Yeah. Great question and point. Just to build off of that, I really think COVID and the events of the past year and a half or so now have exacerbated the trend or the area we've identified here. That is that already limited resources and expertise in the field, especially at the local and state level, they've been exhausted. There is atrition, there's fatigue, and you can completely appreciate why that is. Many people have been fully engaged in response for that entire period, you know, 12 plus hour days, many cases every day of the week. That does have a long-term tale to it, even if COVID were to resolve tomorrow, I think within the industry of emergency managers or within the practice emergency managers, you know, we're going to feel the effects for some time to come. I think it's also changed, the underlying assumptions of the populations that we serve and that is that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on communities from coast to coast. There were trends that were already in place, such as an aging population, the recent census showed that the population that's 55 and older grew 20 times of that 55 and younger. You know, our populations are aging. That's sort of a universal trend, but COVID has really highlighted things like it's made substance abuse problems worse. Housing and homelessness has been exacerbated by some of the underlying conditions that, that have been complicated by COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc.
Now, more recently we're seeing exacerbated supply chain issues, cost of living increases. All of these things are changing the underlying population that we're supporting and evolving sort of the profession, the way it looks. There are sort of things that are occurring that we can take pride in, or I think look at sort of shining light on my amidst, the chaos, if you will, for instance. The national preparedness survey came out this year, showed a 6% increase in preparedness. I think some of that is individuals recognizing that conditions are a little unstable, that some of the assumptions I had from my friends, family, colleagues, they may not always be true. So I need to take a second look at getting prepared and ready for uncertainty. So I do think that there are from a preparedness perspective, some sort of glimmers of hope, and in all of this is that it has sort of elevated that idea of personal preparedness to the forefront of discussion, but we've got a long way to go. I think the most recent statistic I saw was only 4 in 10 Americans have a thousand dollars in savings. So this idea of socioeconomic resilience is absolutely vital as we look at again, the impact of COVID and what has changed from let's say two years ago to now. In terms of some of those immediate learnings, you know, they're extensive.
I think that one of the biggest trends we see right now, currently with our clients nationwide is, is a goal to institutionalize what has just occurred. In other words, we've spent years, in some cases, you know, 15 plus years building capability and COVID-19, and all of the COVID response that occurred with it. So we're talking about floods, fires, hurricanes, basically nationwide and it's been a very intense season since 2017, really. So all of that packaged together has allowed us to test the system from one side to the other. There's a lot we can talk about in terms of what sort of bubbling to the top. But I think, the macro trend right now is even though we're still in response, there is this desire to try to take a snapshot of, hey, what has happened? What have we learned? What can we build upon and institutionalize as to continue to build capability in the future?
Host: John Scardena (17m 47s):
Yeah. I mean, again, you're talking about mike drop moments here of, of good, bad and ugly, right? And the good is that the outcome of COVID-19 in terms of the emergency management perspective and understanding how culture plays in the mindset I'm talking about the US mindset really, of preparedness. You have to have something unfortunately happen for people to kind of wake up. That's been true of so many incidents on the last, you know, a hundred years. I think it was really well-documented in American disaster that book, but, but what we're talking about is building again, this whole idea of disaster, tough communities that say, hey, I just went through a year and a half, two years of COVID, I don't want to have to deal with that. Or I'm in COVID and there was a five day power outage, and we have a supply chain issue. And, oh my gosh, I don't have like really basic things. I also think that, you know, Brock Long, you're definitely a student of Brock Long, or our cohort with Brock Long, because he talks a lot about financial resiliency and the ability to bounce back economically. That is the number one thing we talk about with people is get on that list to call your insurance, if you're going to be impacted by a disaster. Right? And so when you're dealing with a first come first serve, and you're dealing with an environment that is highly stressful, that it's moving, it's hard for people to say, hey I'm watching my house burn down. I need to call my insurance right now. They want to watch the house burn for a few days in process, but we got to get people to start thinking, hey, what's your next step? How do you use emergency preparedness to make your life easier and not doom stay preppy? I'm very against doomsday preppy, but I'm all about making your life easier and preparedness and done the right allows that to happen. So great call-out on that perspective, in terms of capabilities, a lot of lessons learned, you said we had a long way to go. I totally agree. How do you raise the level of preparedness in this country in general?
One way that we've been trying to attack it is say, hey, let's look inward here for a second and say, are we doing the best we can do to position ourselves to be that person in the room that says, hey, you should pay attention to what I'm saying, versus just like trying to blast the community all the time with like, hey, buy your go-bag get better savings, get the right insurance. So our messaging might need to be updated there a little bit, but that's kind of my perspective. In terms of your 14 years of working in preparedness, or let's see, 12 years working in preparedness, I had to do the quick math there for a second. What is that looking like for you in terms of, hey, how can we be better as a community and preparing other people?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (20m 50s):
Sure and just to clarify, John, before I started with consulting, I did have a series of roles at the local level. So it's provided me a lot of perspective that I've taken to this current position, to really understand the nuances of implementation and the limitations of resources. So I'm a huge advocate of that because of that experience early in my career. You know, I think that what I would say is sort of a fundamental understanding coming out of COVID is that our focus as emergency managers needs to be more on resilient structures instead of functions. What I mean by that is that COVID is a non-linear disaster. It has really highlighted, I think the nuance of the coming era, which is that we're dealing with a period of time where there are going to be compounding crises. There is a physical environment, which we can talk about trends and climate adaptation and sort of all that funnels into that physical environment. There is the technology and human environment, which is becoming more complex, interconnected and I think a number of real-world events that have occurred in the past 12 months have shown how vulnerable it is. You sort of take those two components together and overlay them with the demographics, which we touched on earlier. What we see is that we really need to begin to think of emergency management and institutionalize emergency management across functions. So we're not looking at this anymore as sort of isolated response to a single incident. But rather, you know, the entire apparatus of a corporation or of government is incorporating these concepts and looking at resilience, redundancy, et cetera. I think this idea of sort of focusing on preparedness response, recovery, and mitigation, it's much more cyclical, and you may stack many incidents on top of each other that have competing timelines and different demands for resources.
I really think that what what's happening and what's likely to happen as we continue to move forward, as we just move more and more to this sort of holistic mindset where we're looking across the entire function of government and identifying ways in which they're contributing to resilience, community resilience. We're looking beyond sort of traditional emergency management functions, sort of the lights and sirens, incident management type of emergency management, and thinking about emergency management more as a resource adjudicator as an entity that is uniquely suited to address both strategic and tactical implementation, and really has that ability to bring a surge of resources when it's required to me some sort of degradation of service. That can be caused by any number of things, whether it be supply constraints, a physical disaster, a hack or cyber incident. I just think we need to create a more dynamic and sort of structural approach to preparedness and to emergency management.
Host: John Scardena (23m 59s):
Yeah, that's a great call-out and I liked the idea of looking at structure versus systems and understanding that they are different. My perspective, most disasters are not definitely linear social vulnerability. I said this at the NATO conference, I mentioned on a previous episode, I had a huge opportunity to be able to talk to our military counterparts and talk about that portion where you don't really create new social vulnerability issues, you highlight and exacerbate the issues that are already there. To the point of preparedness of addressing those issues, there's a really great book for people to read called social vulnerability. They looked at disasters happening all over the globe, and they did a ton of research, a ton of data to look at it. It's kind of dense, but it's like a really good resource of understanding how any issue that's highlighted in disaster was already there. It was simmering either on the surface or on the surface, and it just exploded in the disaster. So if your finances, for example, we talked about finances, if they're not in order, you're not really aware of them before the disaster, and you don't have redundancy built in then in a disaster, it's going to highlight that if you have a lot of redundancy built in and you have multiple streams of income, or you have a great savings, you have good insurance, you understand those processes, then that will also be highlighted you’ll recover faster. So that's a really great call-out.
Guest: Kyle McPhee (25m 38s):
John, just to build off of that, I think the same is true, sort of looking at emergency management at a macro level. That is a concept such as mutual aid. Well, it's built upon this assumption that there is liquidity in the system, that there are more resources at a national level or interjurisdictional level that are required for the disaster response. But I think this current environment has shown both the constraints of public budgets, reducing the number of available resources, as well as competing demands across a number of jurisdictions simultaneously, it's created a gap of a breakdown of that assumption. So, as we look forward to what preparedness and emergency management becomes, it's going to become increasingly reliant on those resilient structures, organizations, communities, first of all, taking responsibility for what's required to meet the needs of the population of their services, but also looking to nontraditional resources to meet those needs. I think that, you know, concepts such as public private partnerships or utilizing companies such as Hagerty or other public service firms to meet surge requirements are becoming the standard as opposed to the exception.
Host: John Scardena (26m 53s):
Yeah. It's funny that, you know, the pushback that coming from a government perspective, you said you worked at local level, which is awesome. Coming from a government perspective and now in the private sector myself, it's really funny the concept of consulting, which is kind of like a dirty word in our company. Not because we're emergency managers first, but inherently consulting or providing support or providing staffing or whatever. All those concepts are really pushed back against people with no experience, because they'll say like if I need this budget, then I will just hire somebody. well, hire somebody doesn't equal a team. I'm like, yeah, sure, you could do your EOP. It'll take you three years, you could do it with us for six months. Hagerty's the exact same way you guys are really big with staffing. You're able to bolster those requirements and now there's a ton of funding to be able to do that. Anybody with experienced knows that you bring in outside resources to be able to work on that. This is not a pitch for Hagerty cause I'm not with Hagerty, but noting Hagerty is very strong with New York and California and that’s part of the reason why they're so capable is because they're able to bring in additional staffing resources and be able to help out. It's the same thing, whether we're helping out with a training exercise or we're dealing with that on our side of the house as well. I think as the emergency managers around the country are listening to this podcast, be aware that one, the money's already there and you could probably speak to that and two, have a value added by a team coming in and not just an individual that you hope can get it done and before something hits. Right? So in terms of what I just asked there, can you provide some resources, some either grants or funding that's available for emergency managers to access that kind of help?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (28m 53s):
Well we have experts that, you know, whether it be ARPA, IRAP, there are a number of different programs out from FEMA right now, more traditional funding streams, such as PA and IA. You know, all of those can be leveraged in different ways to bring in external support, whether it be a consultancy or other provider. What I would just really focus on is what we discussed earlier is if there is hesitation to go down that road, just really looking at our earlier conversation about questioning some of the assumptions that we've had historically, and looking at the limitations of available resources, using those historical assumptions. I mean, as we go forward, I don't see that limitation being one-off. Yes, it was particularly highlighted by the limitations and simultaneous impact of COVID across the entire nation. But I think as we look towards a more vulnerable future with increasing disasters, increasing disaster costs, the need for the private sector to be engaged in your jurisdictional activity is going to continue to be paramount. It's not unique to technical assistance or a consultancy like Hagerty. When you look at COVID-19 medical supplies, vaccine surge support to operate vaccines sites, all of these were private entities in large part, you know, supplemented or supported government services. So there really is a significant need for and footprint of private sector resources in that broader response.
I think, again, as your traditional assumptions on mutual aid are called into question, this is sort of an alternative strategy to make sure that those services are provided the community and the needs are met. You throw on top of that, that 85% of the critical infrastructure in the nation is owned by the private sector owner and or operated by the private sector. There's really no alternative to having a very robust engagement process and thinking through how those partners are going to be engaged in the overall response and that's best done pre incident. That's really where you're able to avoid and navigate, you know, some of the challenges that potentially have dissuaded the use of contractors in the past.
Host: John Scardena (31m 3s):
Yeah. It's just the reality of the process moving forward, especially as governments have different allocations for how they look at a, an employee versus a contractor and the complexities of disasters moving forward, as you just highlighted yourself, it's going to get more complex. You know, when the dominoes start falling there’s a long-term process that you have to look at that and emergency managers are best suited to understand, those cascading impacts. To your point about critical infrastructure, for sure, critical infrastructure, we are a capitalist society. I love the fact that we're a capitalist society, for sure. However, we also have to be under an understanding that like there's counterparts and they have their own priorities, capabilities, gaps, you know, as successes and what they're willing to do as a, as a government guy. There's a lot of government people listen to the show. You can't always use like the Stafford Act, you can't always use like, oh, I'm the big dog coming in in here. You have to understand how to work with them and working on relationships, working on building that pre disaster, again, taking that preparedness perspective of interoperability. We are the stakeholders letting them come to the table so much better to say, hey Kyle, how are you doing? I could really use your help versus, hey, who are you? Right? Like, what do you provide? I don't have time, I'm in a response. So I think you're highlighting really good things here in terms of maybe touch points here. I'm thinking of all these areas of preparedness, thinking of interoperability, thinking of using public private partnerships. Again, in that preparedness perspective, what would you be telling to the 20,000 or so emergency managers who are listening to the podcast right now?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (32m 59s):
Well, I think that a question we're getting a lot right now is sort of, how do I get back to programs? Everyone is still very much engaged in response and has been for months in many cases, but there is this sense or feeling that we can start to think about what's next in a post COVID or when COVID, isn't all consuming in terms of resources. So we are starting to see that I would say nationwide. In that, I think there's a real opportunity for sort of rediscovery or incorporating what we've learned over the past year and a half, making sure that we don't lose those lessons learned and actively incorporating them into where we go. In addition, I think that there are some very unique funding streams that present opportunities sort of point in time, where we are today, to shape the built environment in particular. These are revolving around, you know, investments in green infrastructure, climate adaptation, future infrastructure spending. We know we're making progress in these areas, but I think that what we want to continue to encourage is that emergency managers to find a role in that conversation, we think they're very uniquely suited to positively contribute to how those funding streams are deployed into communities to have maximum effect and to reduce risk in the future. So we've been working actively, for instance, in the mitigation arena around brick funding, HMGP, to try to make sure that we're translating sort of that historical preparedness work, understanding risks, capturing it in a THIRA, state preparedness report, tracking progression over time. That all of that information is fed into the decision process as this funding becomes available. So we believe that as we look forward, let's say into 22, that's an area where we really need to kind of be looking for opportunities to engage in those conversations at the state and local level.
The other thing that I do want to mention is that sort of this a bubbling trend is this idea of the use of technology in government services period. I think that what we've seen over the past 18 months or so is just sort of that trend accelerated exponentially. That's also opened up a tremendous number of vulnerabilities as it relates to cybersecurity and disruption. You know, we've seen a number of ransomware specific attacks and so one of the interesting trends as we sort of look into 2022 and beyond is really carving out and better defining the role of emergency management in the context of cyber disruption. As it is right now, a study in 2019 showed the two thirds of all ransomware attacks occurred within the state and local governments. This is a trend that's continuing it's increasing in its its frequency and its impact. A number of states have been impacted recently as has had direct Connecticut effects on their ability to provide essential services. And we've seen massive compromise of data, solar winds being a very recent example that occurred during COVID. So we feel like this topic of cyber disruption planning, incorporating that into your continuity of operations efforts is key. It's easy to sort of link, this sort of emerging cyber disruption activity with the continuity of operations, or business continuity activity that we've been validating or testing over the past 18 months continued to do so in most environments and some of the supply chain disruptions that are ongoing and presenting challenges on a number of fronts. So we think that sort of relationship is key as governments start to think beyond COVID and about what comes next.
Host: John Scardena (36m 50s):
One of my favorite moments was in hurricane Harvey, I got an email from, I think it was NATO. It was from somebody at headquarters forwarded on from NATO, Russia contacted them, contacted us, said, hey, we have a bunch of satellite images over Houston, do you want them? It was just them, their way of telling us that they were aware and you know, really funny situation. But yeah, cyber is definitely an issue it's going to come up and it's gonna come up. I have a feeling later this month as well and hint, but my one caveat is in emergency management, we have very limited use of technologies and what technology can provide using artificial intelligence to tell us, hey, all these shapes equal damage versus drive-bys for example, in speeding up that process. So there's a lot of different areas where technology can help. I think that that trend will continue, especially as those moving into emergency management, have an expectation in a use of technology. So if you're an emergency management, you've been doing it for a while and you're like, uh oh, technology. Now I have to like, shut down the whole thing and now we're going. I don't think that's what you're saying. I think what you're saying is the use of technologies is exponential and we also need to be aware of the pros and cons of technologies. I will say that, oh my gosh, there's so much that technology can help you out with your job, but be smart in how you're using that. I think there also needs to be a situational awareness increase for emergency managers of don't open every email, check out different things, understand that you are being attacked, understand that people have tech critical infrastructure. Now you have to work with private industry who may or may not want to share that they have been attacked. Right? So there's a lot of vulnerabilities that opens up for sure and I think that's a great way to talk about the next steps that emergency management, especially, I mean, forward-facing right. So a really good call out. I'm going to leave it to you, Kyle, for any final thoughts before I close it out on like next steps. Anything else you'd like to tell the community?
Guest: Kyle McPhee (39m 0s):
No, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and this has been a great conversation and always happy to continue these dialogues offline. Anyone's feel free to reach out to me. You can do so via LinkedIn or on Hagerty consulting's website, all my contact information is there.
Host: John Scardena (39m 16s):
Perfect. Yeah. And we'll actually put that in the show notes as well, just to throw you a bone. But I actually enjoyed the conversation. I think it was really great. I think we covered a lot of different areas of preparedness talking about the community, talking about the community of emergency managers and the community of, of civilian populations, public, private partnerships, critical infrastructure. We covered a lot of different areas here.
If you got something out of this episode, which you should have, because we did cover so many different areas. We wanted to give it that shameless five-star rating. You got to give us a five-star rating and subscribe. You can reach out to Kyle directly, we'll put his information in our show notes. You can also, if you have a general question about preparedness the field, whatever, make sure you tag Hagerty for sure, but you can even tag Kyle, tag our show. Asks the question on social media lead the community of emergency managers answer those questions. You can also reach out to government, a lot of people like to quietly reach out to government through info@dobermanemg.com. We appreciate that. We'll be happy to forward on to Kyle, for sure, but have the gravitas to ask the questions to the community because a lot of us are thinking about this. If you're thinking about it, if you have questions, make sure you keep tuning into this podcast because we're going to be talking about it in the future and we'll see an next week.