A Study on Bridging Disaster Prevention, Relief, and Performance
Management: The Inspiration of Citizen Expectation Management
Chun-yuan Wang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Police Administration,Central Police University
Abstract
Disaster management has been a critical subject in contemporary public governance
for several decades; however, measuring the effectiveness of disaster management has
not been adequately discussed in previous studies. Performance management reflects
the “goal and result” relationship. As long as the result is consistent with the initial
goal, the organization will be seen as making achievements, which can thus increase
customers’ satisfaction. Yet in the performance management of disaster prevention
and relief, a paradox emerges: Even if the government effectively decreases the
number of injured or the amount of economic loss, it will be criticized as long as the
disaster involves injuries or deaths. The main objective of the current study is to
investigate how to properly measure the performance of disaster prevention and relief
and how to associate the performance of disaster prevention with citizens’
satisfaction.
This study focuses on understanding the current problems and difficulties of
performance management in disaster prevention and relief. In order to minimize the
cognitive gap between the government and citizens, this analysis will be based on the
perspectives of citizens’ expectations of management. Following the literature review,
the main method is discussed, which includes in-depth interviews and focus groups. It
is anticipated that a reasonable structure of performance management of disaster
prevention and relief can be sketched in this study.
Keywords: disaster prevention and relief, performance management, citizen
expectation management, performance indicators
Introduction
In the last few years, due to the high degree of social and economic development,
humans have found it easier to interact due to interdependence in the world.
Meanwhile, as a result of climate change and other factors, a variety of large-scale
natural disasters have emerged. According to the World Bank, 25 million square
kilometers of the Earth's surface are home to a population of 34 million (more than
half the planet’s population), creating a relatively high degree of exposure to at least
one natural disaster (Dilley et al., 2005:2). Just in the first few years of the 21st
century, several epidemics have occurred, including Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) in the international community, the H1N1, and the New Delhi
metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1). In addition, the Typhoon Morakot, mountain events
of National Highway No. 3, 919 Fanapi typhoons, and other disasters or accidents
have happened in Taiwan in recent years as well. Such events and developments have
generated nervous tension at all levels of government and have even caused many
officials to step down from their responsibilities as disaster management has become
important issues for contemporary governance.
Since
the
development
of
new
public
management
in
the
1980s,
government-performance issues in the field of public administration have also
gradually become commonplace. For example, the United States enacted the
Government Performance Results Act in 1993, which requires each government
organization to submit regular annual performance planning and reporting, linking
government departments’ budget and performance. After President George W. Bush
took office in 2001, he actively promoted the President's Management Agenda (PMA)
to measure the performance of organs in the top five policy issues. In 2004, the
United States government adopted the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to
1
determine whether federal government plans are worth continuing. Meanwhile, the
United Kingdom enacted Local Government Act in 1997, requiring the local
government to implement a system of best-in-class performance in departments
annually requiring specialized institutions and personnel as well as fixed programs for
performance assessment. During this period, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries also started to promote
performance management measures In 1997, the OECD compared the practical
experience of performance management of the governments of 10 OECD member
states—specifically, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands,
New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and found that
the governments’ performance management focus includes process, efficiency,
performance, service delivery, and financial performance.
Just like enterprises, it is important for governments to pay attention to their
performance, as it is closely related to customer satisfaction. The quality of
government performance often affects the level of public satisfaction. However, the
paradox is how to measure the performance of the government’s disaster management
discussion? The relevant literature is limited. For example, in the private sector, if a
company reached its intended target (e.g., net profit of 100 million) in one year and in
the next year surpassed the target by a net profit of two million, it can be described as
twice the growth of the enterprise’s performance. Such results can also be satisfied
with the management of the company or shareholders. Although performance
management is sometimes difficult when utilizing quantitative indicators to measure
government departments, if the policy objectives and results meet the majority
requirements, it can improve people’s satisfaction. However, from the government’s
viewpoint of disaster management, if a strong typhoon in one year causes two
2
hundred casualties and the number of casualties from a similarly sized typhoon the
next year is reduced to one hundred people, can the government announce that its
disaster management has made great progress? However, regardless of the size of
disasters, as long as casualties are involved, the media or the opposition will always
require the officials responsible to step down, regardless if the government’s effective
disaster management has increased dramatically. Specifically, the main problems for
the first year of this study is (1) how to involve the concept of citizen participation in
the performance management of the government’s disaster prevention and response
and (2) which dimensions of the government’s disaster prevention and response
performance management should be measured from the perspective of citizens’
expectation.
Literature Review
With the development of industrialization and technological, the relationship
between the contemporary human environment and the natural environment has
become increasingly detailed and fragile. The urbanization trends caused by a high
concentration of population and excessive development increase the impact of
disasters on human society. Such changes, which include fluidity and ambiguity,
make it more difficult to control the normal functioning of society (Tang, Huang, and
Tsai, 2002:139). Therefore, the first director of FEMA, Louis Giuffrida, announced
that the crisis management policy in general should not be based on a single hazard
program orientation; rather, the administrative system should take advantage of the
limited human resources to comprehensively consider various possible crises in the
administrative area and default crisis management policy oriented toward
multi-hazard objectives (Jan, 1990:3-4). Alexander (2000) further explored the
relationship among disasters, risk, vulnerability, and disaster. In an extreme
3
geophysical event, the event is enough to cause disasters. The threshold of a disaster
can be defined according to the disaster itself, people, and social and environmental
vulnerability. Risk can be defined through more formal probability; for example, if a
series of elements is regarded as the result of a certain degree, the impact of disasters
can be known as the degree of loss special.
The hazard elements include the population, community, man-made and natural
environments, economic activities and services in a region that has suffered the threat
of a disaster at any time. In fact, based on the experiences of the United Nations
Disaster Rescue Organization (UNDRO), current disasters involve a combination of
"human activity" and the "nature" of the human and physical phenomena; thus, a
complex disaster describes disaster scenarios (Aptekar, 1994: 22). The United Nations
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) defines disaster as purely natural
disasters (e.g., storms, droughts, volcanic eruptions); it does not necessarily include
disasters that produce heavy rains in the middle of the ocean, which might not result
in any direct damage. However, if heavy rains fall on vulnerable communities, the
disastrous consequences can be unimaginable (ISDR, visited on 4/10/2006 ).
Based on the discussion thus far, in the contemporary governance issues, the
disaster prevention and rescue has indeed become the focus of government. Based on
the establishment of disaster prevention and response systems, the United States
established the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in early 1979, the
Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act was adopted in Japan in 1961, and Germany
expanded its disaster Prevention and Response Act (Gesetz über die Erweiterung des
Katastrophenschutzes) in 1968. In Taiwan, after the 921 earthquake in 1999, the
government adopted the Disaster Prevention and Response Act on July 19, 2000,
highlighting the great importance of disaster prevention and response.
4
In recent years, performance management has generally received the attention of
governments in different countries, and scholars have analyzed the different
development of performance management theory (Rhodes et al., 2012). As Heinrich
(2002) pointed out, the results-based performance management at all levels of
government continues to increase the performance evaluation of activities, but in
terms of the management of public sector performance, Heinrich questioned whether
the system design and management issues increased the policy of the government’s
accountability tools. Unlike performance management in the private sector, since the
1980s, the public sector has had some impact on the effectiveness of public sector
management reform. In order to highlight the consequences of the performance
appraisal system, it should be included in the special nature of public sector
considerations. The controversial nature of performance standards stems from the
variety of indicators, policy implementation (tangible and intangible) of different
orientations, and the reaction of all stakeholders’ (politicians, managers, funders,
providers, procurement, and consumers) interests (Van Thiel and Leeuw, 2002). In
other words, the organization’s management of performance to ensure returns on
management (ROM) represents the ratio between the output value of the
organization's efforts and investment management (Simons and Davila, 1998).
Yet Monaghan and Ball (1993) pointed out that the performance evaluation
refers to tools utilized to track organizational performance, especially the
organizations in the achievement of a task, how to make such achievements, and
whether the process achieved the major performance evaluation of the object
organization rather than individuals. When an organization has a complex and
multi-tasking performance management, it is very difficult to describe. As we have
seen, performance management requires the accomplishment of various activities,
5
ranging from measuring to addressing management needs, power, and leaders’
performance. Performance management is a critical trend that prompts governments
to reform, updating past worn-out ideas and systems. In the transfer of this concept
from the public interest, the value focuses on cost-efficiency related to quality and
value; it emphasizes value, including the function, authorization, task structure,
service, customer, and results. In other words, this migration also needs to pay more
attention to the systematic study (Sanger, 2008).
In summary, as Juang (2008) pointed out, performance management includes
four significant meanings. First, the management’s purpose is to enhance the
performance of the organization; if the organization cannot attach importance to the
performance, there is no need for management. Second, organizations need to
establish an assessment of the use of resources and items of the performance
standards (or indicators), addressing the need for a standard set of convenience to
identify the organization’s performance standards. Third, if something cannot be
measured, it will not become part of the organization’s performance measurement of
tangible outcomes (e.g., organizational culture, the spirit of cooperation, the image of
the organization, customer brand awareness) as it is rarely difficult to include items
specifically reflected in the report on performance. Finally, measured results will
affect ineffectively implemented management strategies or improper performance
measure results; it might mislead the role of the administrator and, in severe cases,
lead to bad decisions.
The performance evaluation of disaster management has been studied abroad.
Cardona (2006) pointed out that most of the disaster risk focuses on the micro-social
level, whereas from the macroscopic level, discussion about disaster risk remains
utterly silent. However, a big difference exists at every level of decision making or
6
information needs, which means that appropriate assessment tools are necessary not
only to quickly understand the crux of the problem, but also provide decision-making
guidelines. Cardona (2006) identified different periods of a risk assessment indicator
system for North America to provide a systematic quantitative assessment as well as
comparison against the state. Carreño et al. (2007) found that many studies assess the
indicators of vulnerability and disaster risk; thus, the current study focuses on the
assessment of the performance and risk management. In terms of risk management
assessment, if it is a natural phenomenon (disaster), it will encounter problems
identified by previous research and development indicators; these indicators must be
transparent, stable and representative, as well as easily understood by all levels of
decision makers. Therefore, indicators of risk management must be processed to
allow for risk management to perform transnational or transregional comparison. In
addition, the indicators of risk management must be applied to different points in time
in order to diagnose the development of risk management. Carreno utilized the
analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to build the Risk Management Index (RMI).
The foregoing discussion reflects the public sector in recent years based on “new
public management” to further emphasize results-oriented management, stressing that
the performance of the public sector should be more than results or performance. The
process is a measure of indicators. Thanks to citizen participation in recent years,
performance management has gradually attracted more attention (Dragon, 2007). The
commentators further pointed out that, when we basically accept this principle at the
same time, it should involve determining how to define the results. More specifically,
defining the results desired by the people (Su Albert, 2009) is one of the major
challenges of the current government policy.
In the economic era, the service provider must be in order to attract more
7
customers so as to provide customers high-quality service and achieve higher
satisfaction for the customer’s experience. Service providers must consider the key to
the management of customer expectations (Hsieh, Yuan, and Kuo, 2011). Although it
is essential for service providers to achieve what the customer wants, in many ways, it
is still difficult to achieve the customers’ desires (i.e., group needs). Thus, the gap
between the service provider and the customer still exists in practice, making
determining how to provide good service to customers to meet their expectations a
key issue for the service provider (Hsieh and Yuan, 2010).
For this reason, the gap between the output of the government’s disaster
prevention and response causes citizens to look to the government's disaster
prevention and response performance. Regardless of how hard the government works,
without citizenry participation, effective disaster prevention and rescue will be
impossible to achieve. Therefore, the government should strengthen citizens’
participation and measure the effectiveness of the implementation of efforts to address
citizens’ needs in terms of whether or not to help the government’s performance
management in disaster prevention and rescue.
Heikkila and Isett (2007) highlighted performance management and citizen
participation in local government to improve the government’s accountability and
responsiveness. They found that assessing a level of government not previously
discussed provides important insights for citizen participation and links between
performance management and public institutions. In addition to the civic knowledge
related to operations and performance, providing a response to focus groups also
improves the performance of civic participation and communication when submitting
ideas. First, public participation requires the region to pay more attention, and it needs
more opportunities for two-way communication between regional and civil efforts. A
8
citizens advisory committee unanimously recommended by selected participants as
community representatives and the more consistent use of the views of these groups
in the decision-making process are more effective for participating in all focus groups.
Focus group members have relevant personal experience; however, with citizens’
parliamentary, the decision making occurs before considering the viewpoints of
citizens.
A close relationship exists between citizens’ expectations and satisfaction. From
the view point of business behavior, there are usually two ways to arrange customers’
expectations. One is to meet the anticipated ideas shaping these expectations as much
as possible. In classical marketing, expectations are considered to be a very important
factor in customer behavior. Based on the existing literature, between any two
perceived chance events, expectations in general will be represented in three forms:
improvement of products or services; products or services that need special areas and
positioning; and comprehensive quality management, which improves quality and
customer satisfaction. Although the three forms are useful for meeting the method,
they have their costs or limitations. In summary, in the new public management
perspective, the citizens of the public management process are external customers.
Determining how to transfer the customers’ expectation management in enterprises
into citizens’ expectations management and apply it to the public sectors is worth
exploring. On the other hand, due to the strong influence of customer expectations on
satisfaction, as they help improve customer satisfaction with the services of the
organization, and how customer expectations theory affects the performance
management system for disaster prevention rescue, customers’ vague or unrealistic
expectations of the performance of the government disaster prevention and response
bias needs to be avoided.
9
Methodology
The main research method of this study in a qualitative method—namely,
in-depth interviews. Participants were selected using the snowball method. Interviews
were conducted with five professional scholars related to disaster prevention and
rescue or government performance management fields. Table 1 summarizes the
information on the five interviewees before the interim report of the research.
Table 1 Interviewees in this study
Code
Date
Organization
Interviewee
A
2012/
04/23
Deputy Director
OOO
B
2012/
04/27
National Fire Agency,
Ministry of the Interior
Department of Public Administration
and Policy, National Taipei
University
National Fire Agency,
Ministry of the Interior
Central Police University
Professor OOO
National Fire Agency,
Ministry of the Interior
Former Director
2012/
05/07
2012/
D
05/08
2012/
E
05/14
Source: Author
C
Professor OOO
Section Chief
OOO
Analysis and Discussion
Current status and difficulties of the disaster prevention and response performance
management
Given the development of society and technology, a variety of risk factors have
continued to emerge, and the resulting disasters have frequently occurred with
increasing complexity. In terms of the performance management for the current
disaster prevention and response efforts, “it is mostly in figures to explore, such as
what occurred in the number of personnel casualties circumstances to do the
10
comparison, especially natural disasters, because we have no way to prevent disasters.
However, in the same disasters, [we must] review the negligence” (Interviewee C).
The data from the interviews indicated that the current government disaster
prevention and response performance management emphasizes more the surface of
the data, the performance measurement, and limits caused by the major difficulties of
the assessment or impact assessment. In addition, “if the feelings of the people are
gradually to be taken seriously, this is a relatively large challenge; often
self-assessment scores or performance reports presenting performance results with the
personal feelings of the people is not a small gap” (Interviewee B). To enhance the
government’s disaster resilience, it is more important to educate the public about
having the right attitude to face the disaster because how citizens face disaster is often
closely linked with the number of casualties. “Finally, the practice of performance
management operating a paradox is that performance measurable results well within
the coming year, so should the budget be increased or decreased? Theoretically it
should be increased, but in fact of course not. Because things are handled well, the
budget does not need additional funds” (Interviewee B). In other words, performance
results and the feedback system (i.e., linking the performance result to reward and
punishment mechanisms) is part of the current system and can be further enhanced.
Performance and accountability of composite disaster management
Taiwan’s current disaster prevention and response system focuses primarily on
individual disasters; it lacks lateral surface integration, when faced with a complex
disaster, due to less cross-sectorial integration within the various local governments.
Thus, it should be tested to determine how to deal with the division of powers and
responsibilities of the compound disasters. “Taiwan’s disaster response is the early
11
information to master. With a place in the post-disaster support for scheduling, it can
reach a certain level; however, in the Morakot disaster, it began to find which belongs
to the composite nature of the disaster and, more than the experience of the past, when
the Xiaolin Village was to be destroyed, the place will be found to consider what kind
of messages in circulation before they can let us know what happened in the end.
Therefore, not only in Response Center, but also the central waiting place makes
difficulties” (Interviewee D). “On the other hand, at this stage of disaster prevention
law, which did not make the specifications for composite disasters for individual
disaster types, but composite disasters, from the Japan 311 earthquake, a tsunami
caused the nuclear disaster. It is not too complex of a disaster caused only by an
earthquake; the responsibility of dealing with the earthquake with tsunami falls to the
Ministry of the Interior. However, it depends on the situation whether the tsunami
would cause a nuclear disaster or not; if it leads to a nuclear disaster, it falls under the
definition of a composite type” (Interviewee C). In sum, the composite disaster
prevention and rescue are often related to inter-ministerial communication and
coordination, including the central and local powers and responsibilities. There will
be ambiguities in different cases, in addition to the increase in the degree of difficulty
of the accountability, which will challenge the performance management of disaster
prevention and response.
Complexity of performance management of disaster prevention and response of the
citizens to participate
The policy of government should to engage the people and obtain their support
in a variety of ways. In recent years, the literature has increasingly discussed citizens’
participation in the performance management knowledge-related issues. The practical
12
experience presents “that it is difficult to drop some perception, and the power of
citizens over the government is limited” (Interviewee A). The challenge is getting
citizens to participate in the performance management. “As the proposed steps of the
strategic objectives of the disaster prevention and response program, some of the
more important conditions, such as who should be involved, are not necessary for the
views of the citizens, and the necessary and important thing may not be representative
of the people directly involved. It is similar to how we present the democratic
mechanism to respond to a relatively complex fiasco” (Interviewee B). Using the
media and a small network of organizations to market and promote the disaster
prevention and rescue plan will, for example, enable the public to have a correct
perception of and expectations for disaster prevention and response. “The media is
also important in the community, as many media networks are immediately spread. If
the government lets the people immediately know what they need to know, it can
immediately provide information and disaster messages. We will also utilize the
internal message available to the general public, of course, so the perception is not
that the disaster occurred while the government did nothing” (Interviewee A).
Changes and performance requirements of the government's role in disaster
management
It is important to have a clear measure of the performance management; both
qualitative and quantitative indicators have recently garnered more attention among
academics. However, in the practice of disaster prevention and response, “there are
fire statistics from the Fire Services Department about what occurred last year, and
they set a goal to reduce them this year. This does not work, but they still want to do it.
Later, the annual fire statements from the city and county over the same period were
13
compared, the [Executive Yuan] OOO personally checked weekly, but it only requires
about 3 or 4 months, and later not push. Because of the extensive digital fraud, in the
policy, under the measures, it fails to reach an effect that is completely nullified”
(Interviewee E). In other words, determining how to set reasonable performance
targets and measurable indicators is still a significant challenge. Yet some
interviewees remained optimistic that the current disaster prevention and response
should not only be the responsibility of the government. “They [Japanese] people in
the first line will buffet themselves, so there must be some primary knowledge of
disaster prevention and rescue, and villages need mutual aid; it basically involves two
responsibilities that need to come back to the government to help the public. The
performance evaluation cannot be reused for moral persuasion” (Interviewee D). In
other words, the private sector and citizens should be held accountable to take the
steps to ensure disaster prevention and rescue. “The citizens we are talking about
participate in public affairs, so they must have such habits and ideas” (Interviewee D).
To understand the role and function of each department, it is necessary to look further
into the performance management of disaster prevention and rescue.
Conclusion
Performance in disaster management has provoked some concerns in previous
decades. The literature has highlighted important risk or crisis performance indicators
for performance management; however, a cognitive gap might exist in terms of
performance in disaster management between the government and citizens. Therefore,
in order to pursue more effective and satisfactory disaster management, this article
has argued that feedback on citizen participation in performance management in
disaster prevention and relief is a critical element. At the same time, citizens’
14
expectations should be managed within the framework of performance management
of disaster issues.
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