Damage Survey

Damage Survey
This story requires some background.
Back when I was in purgatory, waiting for my security clearance, I talked to one the staffers at the brain trust or central office, the group of people, in theory, who provide the master plan about what we are supposed to be doing. I explained that I was interested in helping with outreach to displaced residents. This was greeted with enthusiasm. No one was taking the lead with that type of outreach and any initiative I showed would be appreciated. I was given the name of some consultants that were supposed to be involved. There were plans to conduct a survey, I was told, but not much else.

I called the consultant working on the survey and we had a great conversation. She sent me version five of the survey, with the warning that it was still rough. Indeed, it was bad. Many of the questions were leading or unclear. I will try to add some examples here in a few days. A bunch of different people wanted different things out of the survey. The feds, the states, consultants, all had different goals, and it showed. Worse than that, it not even get at the most important information for rebuilding – who is coming back.

There was only one question to that end, “Are you planning on returning to your home.” For many people, it was not a yes or no answer. They wanted to come back, but would only do so with better flood protection. They wanted to come back to Mississippi, but not to their county. For it to be meaningful, we had to know how likely they thought it was that they would return and if so to what county.

I worked with the consultant extensively. We had a bunch of phone conversations and lots of email. The goals of the survey stayed the same, but we rewrote a bunch of questions so they would make sense to someone in Mississippi. (After a while I brought in an outreach person who joined me for a bunch of the meetings.)

The consultant kept the brain trust in the loop with regular emails, but I guess they were too busy to read their emails. As we began to narrow in on a version that the outreach person and I thought would fly, we decided to call around and make sure everyone was on board.

Well, the brain trust went ballistic. What were we doing working with the consultant? How did we get his number? Who were we to change the focus of the survey? We tried to mend fences, but the brain trust was not satisfied. The consultant got a call asking the same questions. She explained the same things that we had, but this time it got through. The brain trust was satisfied and piece returned to the world.
We are field testing the survey now.