Talk:Incident Command System

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Archive 1

[edit] Condolidation of ICS into NIMS Page

Posted in National Incident Management System talkpage: Consideration to consolidate the Incident Command System (ICS) page into this one since ICS is in actuality replaced by the NIMS. What do you think? Paradiver (talk) 22:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC) Paradiver (talk) 22:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

NIMS mandates the use of the ICS, it is not a replacement for it. NIMS and the ICS are very different things.--Bg10117 (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overhaul

• First, archived the talk page.
• Second, made notes on current talk page.
• Third, completely overhauled the Incident Command System page. It still needs some work, but is far better. Removed some factual inaccuracies, some POV, and reorganized. Ultimately, I used a lot of the original text and did major copyedit.
  • References are total rather than inline. The article is from the reseources under the "References" heading. This is different from the usual article. Admittedly, I did a good deal from memory.

VigilancePrime 21:22, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Role playing

This piece of text seems to have been deleted from the article:

The Incident Command System (ICS) is a management system used to organize emergency response. ICS offers a scalable response to an emergency (incident) of any magnitude, and provides a common framework within which people can work together. These people (resources) may be drawn from multiple agencies that do not routinely work together. The system is designed to grow and shrink along with the incident, allowing more resources to be smoothly added into the system when needed and released when no longer needed. This is achieved because, in essence, ICS is a special case of role-playing. Authorities and responsibilities are inherent in roles (positions); individuals are assigned more or less temporarily to those roles, and can be reassigned, replaced, or released as needed. This key aspect of ICS helps to reduce or eliminate the "who's in charge" problem.

This text does not quite say what I think is intended, but something like it needs to be put back in the article. The key point is that during an incident people are assigned to roles temporarily, more or less regardless of their normal roles. At least, in some user communities it works this way, and it is very flexible and effective. In other user communities, the roles may be quite fixed from one incident to the next. This too can be effective, but it is not flexible. --Una Smith 03:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

While I understand, I think, what you're getting at, I think that referring to ICS in any way as role-playing is a terrible way to put it. The layperson won't understand what is meant and associate it to something like Dungeons & Dragons (I know that may sound ridiculous, but you'd be surprised!) or the silly training that nobody takes seriously in a retail sales environment.

The way I see it, the article does get into the points about how positions in ICS are assigned (or should be) to the most qualified regardless of day-to-day "rank", although in reality this is not always the case (my favorite FEMA ICS video has a police sergeant roll up and say "based on what you've told me, I'm taking over as incident commander" and then puts his little green bubble-light on his toasty-warm car. It's awful)!

This article does need a lot more work and nobody seems to have visibility on it at all. Since overhauling it a while back, there have been virtually no significant edits to it. Even as I read through it I see a lot more work is needed. I would appreciate any help so long as we keep to the NIMS-compliant ICS series training. The theory is more important in an article like this, I believe. I'd like to know yours (and others') thoughts on the matter.

VigilancePrime 04:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, it might help to strike "Personnel" and use instead "Jobs" or "Roles" (without reference to role-playing). Jobs are filled from a pool of available persons who are qualified to fill that job. Note that above you wrote "positions in ICS are assigned (or should be) to the most qualified". Do you see the problem? It is backward. ICS assigns persons to positions, not positions to persons. Positions to persons encourages the idea that the person then somehow owns the position. Also, re NIMS-compliant, please remember that this is not "USA Wikipedia". The article needs clear writing, explaining ICS accurately yet from a lay-person's perspective; if the goal is to copy NIMS ICS, let's just point to the source. By the way, I really dislike the current reference style; I want to know which of N references contains the relevant information. --Una Smith 04:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Best of all, a layperson should be able to understand NIMS-compliant discussion because it is NIMS-compliant, i.e. clear text. Isn't that awesome! Anyway, how about "positions in ICS are filled (or should be) by the most qualified ... person when the Incident Commander deems necessary to activate a position or organizational segment..." or similar. Does that make any sense? Overall, the entire article needs far more overhaul than I was able to initially complete. (As for referencing, it's all throughout the four ICS modules as well as on FEMA's Emergency Management Institute's website and courses, available for anyone to take, read, learn, and become certified, also in hard-copy materials and courses.) VigilancePrime 05:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"positions in ICS are filled (or should be) by the most qualified" sounds like the result of a dog fight among the persons who consider themselves qualified. People are assigned to positions as needed by positions higher in the organizational structure. I think this article would be of most use to the world if it did less rehashing of NIMS ICS and more comparing and contrasting its use in different communities (geographic, functional). --Una Smith 05:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)