Public Alerts Best Practices

There are many reasons why you might want to send a notification to your residents. This article is to assist with best practices to help determine the best way for your community to receive information based on the severity of the event.

Considerations

It is difficult, if not impossible, to encourage your residents and businesses to subscribe to receive alerts and notifications from your agency.

Providing options like a public sign-up URL, text-to-join features, a mobile app, and general public outreach is imperative. Promote reasons why your residents should provide information to get specific alert types. CivicPlus has a flyer template to assist with your public outreach campaign.

Capturing information is step 1. Being responsible about the types of alerts sent and how they are delivered is step 2, and the most important. The last thing you want is for your public to get alert fatigue and unsubscribe because your agency is not using best practices with public communication.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Guidance as it relates to phone calls to landlines and cell phones can have legal liability for agencies that do not follow these rules. Read the entire FCC Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Omnibus Declaratory Ruling and Order for complete information about these liabilities. The FCC's Government and Government Contractor Calls Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 webpage contains information for agencies that send phone calls, confirming that entities can be sued for not following the rules when it comes to emergency vs. non-emergency communication.

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Public Alert and Warning Essentials

Information on creating policies and procedures that work for your agency. This is a list of suggestions for creating standards for your agency when it comes to public communication.

Identify Hazards

Identify your jurisdictions' hazards and vulnerabilities. This process will help your agency determine the types of events that would qualify at each level of public communication.

Document

Document the needs for each hazard. Who needs to know, when do they need to know, and how do they need to know?

Authorization

Clearly identify who is authorized to originate and manage the alerts being sent and to which delivery methods.

Engage Partners

Seek advice and counsel from warning partners (National Weather Service, broadcasters, neighboring counties/agencies) and vendors, such as CivicPlus, for help with policies.

Develop Policies

Develop clear and repeatable warning policies, guidelines and procedures, training, test, and exercise plans.

Update Plans

Review and frequently update public warning plans and policies in close coordination with all partners.

Educate

Educate the public on the importance of being informed, the use of warning sources, and what to expect.

Test

All administrators should feel comfortable using the system. Send test alerts internally and run exercises frequently.

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Alert Fatigue

Alert fatigue, also called alarm fatigue, is an instance where an overwhelming number of alerts causes an individual to become desensitized to them. Alert fatigue can lead to a person ignoring or failing to respond to safety alerts.

If your agency is sending phone calls for non-emergency events, your public will begin to ignore these calls. The result of this is non-responsiveness for actual emergency events that require action, or simply unsubscribing from alerts altogether.

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