Case Summary

Beginning in 2004 the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) has engaged in an ambitious effort to utilize a wide-variety of Web 2.0 technologies including twitter, a blog, a real-time alert service, a Flickr photo site, Jott and RSS Feeds. Public information officers Brian Humphrey and Ron Myers have been particularly vigilant in syndicating LAFD's online content, ensuring that critical emergency information reaches a constellation of nearly 20,000 websites and blogs.

LAFD's utilization of Twitter has been particularly successful, allowing citizens to retain situational awareness during the California wildfires of Fall 2007. According to the LAFD, the key conclusion gained so far from their Web 2.0 initiatives is that increased citizen engagement and feedback has been the most valuable benefit from this process.

Business Challenge

In May 2004 veteran firefighter and public information officer Brian Humphrey single-handedly launched the Los Angeles Fire Department's (LAPD) first Web 2.0 application, the modest blog LAFD News & Information. His goal was to offer timely and accurate information that would improve the lives of city residents in the face of a city government apparatus he perceived to be filled with countless bureaucratic impediments.¹ To this end, Humphrey championed this first implementation of collaborative technology by stating that LAFD 'can no longer afford to work at the speed of government."²

A more ambitious roll out of Web 2.0 technology came the following year in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As Humphrey describes it, the citizens of New Orleans were 'Super -doomed...but they weren't dying from hunger or thirst, they were dying a little at a time from lack of information.'³ LAFD's vow to not to repeat these errors in emergency preparedness and response sparked this push to effectively harness new technological tools of situational awareness.

Approach Taken

In expanding their capacity to disseminate information, LAFD has employed a wide variety of Web 2.0 technologies. The blog (mentioned above) which is operated by Humphrey and fellow public information officer Ron Myers, allows the Fire Department to publish details about fire outbreaks and other related emergency news. Additionally, Flickr and Really Simple Syndication feeds have been utilized to post photographs of fires that are then linked to this site. Equally as important as updating the blog itself, Humphrey and Myers work tirelessly to syndicate the content to a core group of between 300 and 400 sites, who then share the content to as many as 20,000 others.⁴

The most popular Web 2.0 application used by LAFD is Twitter, a micro blogging site allowing users to publish short notes of 140 characters or less. This application has allowed the Department to post critical information about fires, reading like a dispatch log of the emergency calls received. Also, citizens have the option to receive these twitter messages on their cell phones.⁵ A similar technology adopted by the Fire Department is Jott, which aids the LAFD in converting voice messages to text so that they can be delivered to citizen subscribers. Finally, the Department also uses a number of Google powered services including YouTube for providing training videos and public-service announcements, and Google Translation, which interprets emergency information into other languages such as Korean and Spanish.⁶

Results Achieved

Much greater than page views or any other quantifiable metric, LAPD assesses the success of their Web 2.0 initiatives along the following criteria: desirable, beneficial, justifiable and sustainable. Using this set of measurements, the Department's Twitter account has already yielded impressive dividends, particularly during the San Diego wild fires of 2007, when this application was used to provide citizens with critical firefighting updates.⁷ LAFD efforts have even drawn the attention of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently praised the Department for its in providing situation awareness for citizens in the community.⁸

Blog founder Humphrey notes another critical return-on-investment for this collaborative technology when he observes that while most firefighters initially had a lukewarm reaction to Web 2.0 initiatives, recent successful deployments of mashups and RSS feeds along with increased syndication capacities have ushered in a new organizational enthusiasm for these collaborative tools.⁹

Lessons Learned

According to public information officers Humphrey and Myers, the key conclusion to be drawn from LAFD's nascent Web 2.0 initiatives is that increased citizen engagement and input is the most valuable output gained from the process. Humphrey underscores this point in a recent interview when he observes that 'When you are on top of the Web 2.0 hill, its not about talking louder, the chief benefit is the feedback you receive, both positive and negative. Meaningful feedback for free is priceless for a public service.'¹⁰ Also quite importantly, LAFD have learned that effective implementation of Web 2.0 technologies aids in communicating directly with citizens, thus reducing the organization's dependence on the media to convey vital information during an emergencies.