2023-2024 NET Program Changes
This is a "read ahead" page for NET volunteers and others reviewing proposed changes to the Portland NET program. A feedback survey link will be posted to this page after the presentation on November 8, 2023.
Why make changes?
The NET program has a few long standing creaky problems that should be addressed, and changes are happening (at both the PBEM bureau level and the City government level) that open opportunities and create change factors we should move on. To wit:
1.) ISSUE: Not all 2,100 volunteers listed as "active" are actually active; we estimate only around 800 volunteers are active. This creates a problem because it inflates our planned response capacity, demoralizes Team Leaders who wonder why nobody is showing up to meetings, and skews any program planning directly related or adjacent to Portland NET.
2.) ISSUE: NETs need clearer guidance and templates on Operations Planning. PBEM began requiring NETs to assemble Ops Plans in 2013, but a lack of clarity has led to products that are inconsistent in what they address and leave teams asking questions about their missions that PBEM has not sufficiently responded to.
Related problem: Service area boundaries make no sense. For years now, a NET's service area boundaries conform to neighborhood association boundaries. However, those boundaries do not fit with the post-earthquake response capacity available to most teams of NETs.
3.) ISSUE: NETs have only ever been deployed through PBEM-managed centralized deployments, ops plans have never been used. Since NET started in 1994, there has never been an emergency for which NETs self-deployed and activated a team ops plan. And in fact, every deployment has been PBEM directing NETs on where to go and what to do (even if that response was on a small neighborhood scale, such as putting up a perimeter around a down power line). And in fact, the only kind of disaster imaginable that would prompt NETs to self deploy and use an ops plan is a catastrophic city-scale disaster that also brought down routine communications...in other words, an earthquake.
4.) ISSUE: NET meeting attendance is consistently low. There are probably many reasons for this. But what seems readily apparent is that people have busy lives, and that teams have a lack of direction because there is a lack of direction around operations plans.
5.) ISSUE: NETs want neighborhood scale response planning, but also want to preserve the community/social aspects and training aspects of Portland NET.
What are the proposed solutions?
In order, we propose:
- In the NET Guidelines, simplify and toss out the distinctions between "PBEM Initiated Deployments", "Self Deployments", and "Standing Orders". Replace with rules governing "Centralized Deployments" and "Earthquake Deployment".
- Dispense with the term "Operations Plans" and call them "Earthquake Plans" to reflect what the plan is actually for and to help put NETs in the mindset of forming a plan around earthquake response.
- Using GIS, allow Teams to decide on service area boundaries that reflect the response area they want to/feel comfortable responding inside of after an earthquake.
- Give NET volunteers the option of participating in earthquake planning in their neighborhoods if they choose to; active NETs do not have to, and all NETs can still participate in centralized deployments.
- Earthquake planning teams can meet in person (preferred) or through online meetings.
- Earthquake teams can bring in non-NETs (ATVs)
- There will be a series of planning milestones for earthquake teams, for example:
- Decide on (and get approval for) service area boundaries and have them published to the NET map
- Decide on radio frequencies
- Capacity assessment
- Capacity planning (which VSFs and how many)
- Neighborhood outreach
- Assembling a roster
- Two types of teams: an earthquake planning team (which includes non-NETs in the service area) and broader scale teams that meet for socializing/community outreach/training events.
Emphasize development of most important VSFs: 02, 06, 08, 09, and 15. They conform with what we train in Basic, best suited to volunteers, already doing a lot of that stuff anyway.
