Analysis of the integrity of district crisis management plans in Poland
This paper discusses the integrity of Crisis Management Plans (CMP) in Poland. Integrity is understood as the unified way of developing the CMP by different public administration entities. On one hand, quantifying the scale of CMPs discrepancies is essential for estimating public administration readiness to assess threat risk on a national scale. On the other, recognizing the nature of the discrepancy may allow one to identify corrective actions to raise the level of CMPs effectiveness. However, there are no quantitative measurements of discrepancies of CMP elements in Poland. This study fills the gap in the body of knowledge and quantify integrity and the scale of CMPs discrepancies and analyzes the scope of collected data and the form of their presentation in different CMP components. The study includes an analysis of CMPs developed at the district level in 2013–2015. To quantify integrity, an evaluation template is developed based on the formal and legal conditions in force. This is used it to quantify the integrity in terms of the data presentation form and the completeness of the data set. The National Crisis Management Plan from the same period was used as a reference.
The study revealed a problem with the availability of CMP to the public. In the study sample of 40 CMP, only 11 were available on the local government website. In addition, 6 CMP were accessed as a result of a request for public information. Considering that CMP should be open documents available to all, the result should be considered insufficient. Furthermore, the analysis of CMP areas to be assessed showed that the formal requirements for CMP do not include elements related to prevention focusing on aspects related to emergency preparedness and response, which confirms previous research. The results obtained, however, do not constitute a basis for extending the conclusions of their analysis to the entire population. Nevertheless, in the author's opinion, the survey results constitute a premise for conducting analyses of the CMP at all administrative levels of the country.