New Zealanders were let down by a "piecemeal" disaster response in last year's storms. Photo: RNZ / Finn Blackwell
A life-saving disaster information system that would have been crucial during last year's devastating storms is still nowhere to be seen, despite being fast tracked six years ago.
Reviews of last year's lethal storms show people were let down by a "piecemeal" disaster response that did not tell them about the looming dangers in time.
Documents show authorities have known for 20 years that the lack of a common operating platform-and-picture (COP) - even among Civil Defence and frontline responders such as firefighters - posed a big safety risk.
"The public do not always have the information they need to make timely, good decisions that protect people and their property," a 2018 government report said.
But while the government put a COP on the "fast track", and technology for it was tested in 2019, it had been dumped by 2020 amid a Budget scramble over Covid.
The 2018 report had warned: "If we do not take this opportunity to address these issues this time, we risk that a future review will make the same recommendations, and worse, that our people, economy, and environment will be more adversely affected than might otherwise be the case."
The Auckland Anniversary Day floods and Cyclone Gabrielle killed 15 people and devastated thousands of families and whole communities.
The main review of the response to the storms - released last month - made the same recommendation as six years before:
"Legislate for and invest in a single common operating platform and picture for emergency management to be adopted by every council and NEMA," said the Mateparae report.
"For too long this matter has sat in the 'too hard-basket' - it needs addressing urgently."
But work on this has not yet begun.
"We have not been actively working on this project," the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told RNZ.
NEMA still lacked "situational awareness", it has told the government at least twice in recent months.
There was a "significant gap", a Far North local council Civil Defence briefing stated in March.
"Areas that still require investment include a fit-for-purpose common operating picture," stated NEMA's notes ahead of its leaders appearing at a parliamentary select committee in February.
Decades of need
The need to "develop a Common Operating Picture and situational awareness" had been a theme of disaster reviews since 2004, the NEMA notes said.
A landmark 2017 report on disaster responses referred to a COP 20 times.
"In recent emergencies the Group Controller has experienced frustrations when requesting information from other agencies. Very little has been forthcoming," said the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) report.
"Authority must be backed by joined-up intelligence to support decision-making, with systems that allow agencies to work to a common operating picture."
NEMA's own self-review into the 2023 storms, out this month, described similar problems.
Across the Tasman, Victoria has had a COP across 150 agencies since 2016. Australia's federal COP was used extensively to brief its government in major 2022 floods.
Both the 2017 TAG report, and the government response to it in 2018, said a COP was already being worked on here.
"We agree with the TAG that we need to improve how we synthesise vital information into a common picture for decision makers," the government said in 2018.
"There is lots of activity already underway in local and central government and by other parties.
"We have supported work to pull this together into a coherent approach... It will provide immediate benefits for the sector by making the data everyone needs available for them to use and by creating an early common operating picture."
Then Civil Defence Minister Kris Faafoi asked Cabinet for $400,000, "needed to fast track some of this work and develop a Common Operating Picture business case".
That business case, carried out in 2019, runs to 51 pages, and shows four lots of technology were looked at or tested.
Building it would have a "high impact" and be hard to do, but did not need legislative change, it said.
Twenty-one agencies were consulted and were "generally" in support.
The work dovetailed with government Budget wellbeing priorities and "the need to put the safety and wellbeing of people at the heart of the emergency response system and that effective communication with the public is essential," the business case said.
No progress in business case
NEMA initially told RNZ the business case was a draft and not finalised, and that it held no "record setting out why it was not adopted".
It then said "a Budget Bid in 2020... was not approved, as such it was not progressed".
The agency said the business case was concerned only with setting up a team, not technology, but the business case showed otherwise.
"This is more than just an IT solution," said Faafoi at the time.
"As the business case was not progressed, the team was never established, and consequently, the technology solutions needed to utilise that data have not yet been developed," NEMA said in a statement to RNZ.
The country has had six Civil Defence/Emergency Management Ministers since 2017. NEMA was set up in December 2019 to try to address problems with its predecessors.
Peeni Henare, the minister in 2019, did not respond to questions from RNZ.
Current Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell did not commit to a COP.
"A Common Operating Picture is something that will be looked at as we develop the government's response to the government inquiry," he said in a statement on Monday.
"My understanding is that the scope of what is needed for a fit for purpose Common Operating Picture has likely evolved in recent years so it's not as simple as resurrecting the old business case."
The 2019 business case was led by the Civil Defence National Controller David Coetzee and veteran director of Civil Defence Emergency Management Sarah Stuart-Black.
Both of them said it would be inappropriate to comment. Coetzee retired from NEMA in December, but remains the "alternate" national controller.
The 2019 business case said if a COP was not built, there was a "high risk" of "reduced trust and support by the public, ministers" in Civil Defence.
NEMA told incoming Minister Mark Mitchell in November a way to share information "critical" to good decisions was "not widespread or consistent".
The Mateparae inquiry said the impacts of not having a COP had included local emergency managers during Gabrielle being "swamped" by requests from NEMA for the latest information for Ministers.
"Many aspects lacked coordination and situational awareness was poor"; "communications before and during the event were poor"; "submitters also felt that community safety was not sufficiently prioritised", it said.