Resilience – a case study

by | Feb 10, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence

60 Minutes had the first interview with the crew of the US Airways flight that crash landed in the Hudson over the weekend, including accounts of the crash from the pilot and from the entire crew.

Amanda Ripley has some good commentary over on her blog, noting how much of Sully’s account echoes themes set out in her book The Unthinkable, which was a book of the year for most of us at Global Dashboard.

As she observes, Sully’s first reaction was disbelief – “‘I can’t believe this is happening. This doesn’t happen to me.’… I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I wouldn’t crash an airplane.” – a classic reaction to disaster, and much more common than panic or hysteria. Ripley also quotes Sully’s description of the crew’s reaction to his announcement that the plane would be going down:

I made the brace for impact announcement in the cabin, and immediately, through the hardened cockpit door, I heard the flight attendants begin shouting their commands in response to my command to brace: heads down, stay down, I could hear them clearly and they were chanting it in unison over and over again to warn them, to instruct them, and I felt very comforted by that. I knew immediately that they were on the same page. That if I could land the airplane, that they could get them out safely.

That these commands were shouted was crucial to overcome the passengers’ own disbelief – as two of the cabin crew note, some of the passengers were looking out of the window rather than bracing, while others were making calls on their cellphones.

The whole thing’s worth watching – including 60 Minutes’ footage of the reunion between the crew and the passengers if you want to get all misted up.

An American DFID?

by | Feb 9, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, North America

One debate that will run and run in the coming months is on the whether, why and how of reforming US foreign assistance – a theme that Barack Obama riffed on frequently during the course of the Presidential campaign.

Over at the Center for Global Development, Sheila Herrling has just posted a Q&A on reforming the antiquated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, which created USAID in the first place. As Herrling observes, the Act has only been overhauled fully on one occasion – and that was back in 1985. So what should reform achieve?  According to Herrling, a new act should:

– clearly outline the objectives and priorities of U.S. foreign assistance programs;

– consolidate decision making and implementation functions into a single independent institutional entity;

– specify the roles and responsibilities of other government agencies where appropriate;

– clarify the coordination of oversight responsibilities and functions; adjust regulatory requirements to fit the reality of implementing assistance programs; and

– discourage to the highest degree possible political and bureaucratic constraints (such as earmarks and presidential initiatives).

However, the really big question lurking in the background is whether USAID should be hived off and made into a separate department, a la DFID in the UK: expect plenty of speculation and debate about this over the course of the spring.  Me, I’m not holding my breath – for two formidable obstacles stand between here and USDFID.

One: the fact that Obama can’t just create a new department with a stroke of the pen.  In the US, machinery of government changes of that magnitude need Congressional approval (many would argue that the only reason the Department for Homeland Security came into being was the determined campaign run by the 9/11 families for just this outcome).

Two: the even more challenging hurdle of one Ms Hillary Clinton.  Hillary made plenty clear as soon as she arrived at State that she sees development as one of the core pillars of foreign policy.  It’s very unlikely that she’d see such a significant part of her empire slip through her fingers…