Out from under the rock: improving FDNY information sharing

Abstract

As highlighted in the 9/11 Commission Report, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Fire Department City of New York (FDNY) have suffered from a lack of inter-agency communication for many years, which is of particular detriment to the safety of front-line members of the FDNY. This thesis sought to find new solutions to the problem by analyzing the processes and policies driving communications to and within the FDNY and the degree to which they have changed since McKinsey & Company's analysis of the department in 2002. A study of organizational change theories, including Leavitt's Diamond, was used to analyze organizational change issues within the FDNY. Synthesizing these theories with the department's successful and failed change attempts produced a set of tasks to create and implement a new technology in the form of a mobile application called FDNY Mobile. This thesis concluded that improving information sharing between the FDNY and the NYPD is nearly impossible without first analyzing the information-sharing practices of an individual organization. Information sharing between these organizations must be reciprocal. This thesis found that without creating a sense of urgency and managerial support, FDNY Mobile will end in failure. Moreover, the FDNY needs to strengthen its own information-sharing practices before a more detailed focus is made on inter-agency information sharing with the NYPD.