Liaisons

The Mississippi Recovery Authority knew it needed to do a better job of coordinating with FEMA. FEMA is taking the lead with long term recovery planning, but really, the MRA should be an active partner. After all, they are the arm of the state that is supposed to be calling the shots. So, they assigned a national guard person from each county as a liaison to FEMA. The liaisons are great. Good, committed people, they go to all the meetings and are a pleasure to work with.

The only problem is a missing link in the liaison relationship. They never report back up the chain. They have no contact at the MRA mothership. This is a fundamental fact of liaisoning: there has to be two parties to liaisonize. The defintion of the word is, "An instance or a means of communication between different groups or units of an organization." Notice how groups is plural. That is avery important point.

Our local guy, Tom, said he used to email questions to his contact, but he never got responses so he stopped. It has been a month that poor Tom has been out in the field all by himself, trying his darndest to liason but never being able to connect with the second group. In fact, he started asking me if I was concerned about a looming deadline. Well, weeks ago, the MRA had pushed the back but no one told him.

All hope is not lost. Tom says a new guy is Colonel is coming on that all the liasons will report to and maybe, just maybe, the Colonel will be able to get through to the mothership.