Implementation of the National Incident Management System in New Jersey

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2010-03

Department

University of Baltimore. Yale Gordon College of Public Affairs

Program

University of Baltimore. Doctor of Public Administration

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by the University of Baltimore for non-commercial research and educational purposes.

Abstract

The implementation of the National Incident Management poses some unique challenges to the emergency management community. This research project seeks to examine "What theories of implementation inform the assessment of the implementation of the National Incident Management System by municipalities in New Jersey." This project based its theoretical grounding in the "Top-Down" influences of Mazmanian & Sabatier and the "Third Generation of Implementation Research" identified by Goggin, O'Toole, Lester & Bowman. This project used data from one Federal Fiscal Year, 2008. Leveraging the strengths of a mixed method research model, based upon concurrent quantitative and qualitative examinations, this project drew its data from a previously vetted federal survey tool, NIMSCAST and relevant data from a variety of state sources. This project sought to determine the individual and combined effects of the number of involved agencies, funding, location, and disaster history as implementation outputs. In addition, this project examined operational outcomes associated with after-action reports and the implementation of this system. The results of this research challenged many of the accepted theories and revealed the need for additional research into the system, its outputs and outcomes.