Presentation from Ms A. Coghlan, Australian Civil-Military Centre at the 10th International Lessons Learned Centre (10ILLC) dated 18 May 17.
Working in an Interagency Environment Responses to complex crises, from catastrophic disasters to intra-state conflict and humanitarian emergencies, require a coordinated interagency approach. Governments need to be able to draw on broad-ranging crossdepartmental civilian, military and police expertise in close cooperation with civil society, the humanitarian and development communities, and sometimes the private sector. Lessons from major offshore interventions consistently highlight that cross-agency collaboration and partnerships improve as organisations become more familiar with working together in a particular environment – we always get there in the end. However, it is easy to stop investing in civil-military-police cooperation when the intervention is over, and to see the requirement as a one-off and not business as usual. Rather than start from the beginning to rebuild effective crisis partnerships when a new crisis occurs we need to reinforce experience and maintain high-levels of cooperation, trust, respect, understanding and collaborative working practices. We also need to build an open culture of self-assessment, to learn from experience and invest in continuously improving and strengthening our capacity to respond. Drawing on cross-agency lessons from Australian responses to a range of contingencies, including Afghanistan, Timor Leste and the Pacific, this session will highlight key lessons and insights on delivering effective interagency response.
