Government and crisis handling... (Kurtis's Blog)

At the Swedish Internet conference 'Internetdagarna', I last year spoke of the importance for the Government to provide information to the public in terms of crisis also on the Internet and that the government validated the function of the various agencies web-sites and internal connectivity. This was in November last year...

Yesterday the Swedish Emergency Management Agency, KBM led an exercise in central Stockholm simulating two simultaneous terrorist attacks in Stockholm. However, according to several news reports, the exercise was hampered due to the fact that the participants couldn't get to the web-site where they instructions and phonenumbers where kept....

Last year when I made my presentation, outlining how really poor the Swedish government agencies where handling their Internet access and information distribution, I was met by several agencies saying they had decided that Internet was not a critical resource. If we for a while agree that that might be true (while I don't believe that), the problem is still that not all of them can do this. So, KBM had stepped up to this task - only to crash during their own exercise. I will also note that the agency responsible for the information in times of crisis does not have a signed web-site. So I have no idea what I am looking at...not that I am convinced that a end-user wouldn't click "OK" on the certificate warning...

Anyway, the offer some of us gave the government last year to help them develop a working information and crisis management system still stands. But we still won't do it or free our with our own money as have been proposed in the past. Last time I heard they wanted to do another survey and a report. Perhaps now is the time to realise that they don't need more reports, they need action...