Step 2 · Run a Technology Needs Assessment

Talk to the people doing the work, map the current workflow, identify what is missed, duplicated, expired, lost, delayed or unnecessarily manual, and document the effect on time, money, readiness and risk.

Full guide planned · 18 min read

Step 2 · Run a Technology Needs Assessment

The short version

A needs assessment is mostly listening. Sit with the crews, the logistics staff, the quartermaster and the supervisors who touch the process, and follow the work as it is actually done rather than as the policy describes it. Hold onto one distinction throughout: needs describe the operation, requirements describe what a solution must do. Confusing the two is how a department ends up with a system that meets the specification and does not fit the job.

See it applied

Worked example — built from published USFA sources, not from a department's reported results

Worked Case Study: The NERIS Transition Through the Technology Adoption Roadmap

Every fire department reporting incident data had to move from NFIRS to NERIS on a national timetable. The destination was fixed; almost everything else was still a local decision. This works the twelve steps through that transition, using published U.S. Fire Administration material for the facts and clearly labelled examples for everything a department would do locally.

Read it

Start here

If you read one thing on this subject, read this.

ResearchNIST

Voices of First Responders — Applying Human Factors and Ergonomics Knowledge to Improve Usability

Findings from nationwide interviews with responders about the technology they are issued.

Why it matters

Adoption turns on trustworthiness, usability and whether responders had a say — not on whether the technology technically works.

Go deeper

ResearchNIST

Voices of First Responders — Examining Public Safety Communication Problems and Requested Functionality

What responders across disciplines said was actually wrong, and what they asked for instead.

Why it matters

A needs assessment is easier to defend when it starts from documented national findings rather than one department's frustration.

Industry article

Tech Talk Tuesday

Hub guideNext in Fire Tech 101

Turn Needs Into Requirements

Step 3 of the roadmap.

Questions to ask your vendor

Who actually performs this work?
What does the process look like today?
Where are the workarounds?
Where is information entered more than once?
What gets missed?
What gets delayed?
What creates frustration?
What creates operational risk?
How much staff time does the current process consume?

This is a reading list, not a guide

Everything above was published by someone else, and is here because it is the clearest treatment of the subject we could find and verify. The Hub’s own guide to this topic is still being written. If you know a better source than the ones listed, that is worth telling us before it is.

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