Decision making is fundamental

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Introduction

Decision making is fundamental in order to have successful public administration. However, there could be an uphill task to choose the most suitable model for policy choices. Decision making is important and one must be ready to face consequences of decision made

Root decision making has following advantage and disadvantages. Advantage is that there is increased accuracy and efficiency of decision making because of comphrensive analysis of decision and considers also appropriateness of decision. Disadvantages include ignorance of inability to take action as result of comphrensive analysis. It does not also favor community participation hence has centralized bias. Root decision making is not also adapted to sufficiency of information and costliness analysis.

Branch decision making has the following advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include it encourages democratic politics and also avoids colossal mistake which happen due to inappropriate decision making. Interest of both parties involved is catered for due to comprehensive analysis. It is elastic and can accommodate changes before implementation. Disadvantages include lack of innovativeness in finding suitable decision to problems. It may also underestimate policies which have not been proposed by successive chain policies.

There are major differences between root and branch decision making. Firstly, in root decision making, there is clarification of objectives prior to marginal evaluation and empirical analysis. The end refers to goals and objectives to be pursued and not a particular outcome.it is rational and aims at maximizing value of decision makers while branch decision making there is close intertwining of marginal evaluation and empirical analysis rather than being distinct as it is in root decision making (Henry, 45).Secondly, in root decision making, there is thorough analyzing comprehensively policies with relevant factor taken into account. While branch decision making depicts limited analysis(Stillman, 78).Branch decision making tends to ignore alternative possible and significant potential outcomes.Thirdly,Root decision making uses mean end analysis that entails isolation which is opposite to branch decision making where there is no isolation.

Hurricane Katarina disaster case was one of the most tragic encounter in USA history. Failure of government in managing disasters and poor response from Katarina led to this tragic occurrence. This was as result of poor decision making.

There were basic coordination problem. This caused disagreements on what is to be done at specific time and who is to do it. This led to delay in disaster management, recovery bodies and attending to those affected. For example FEMA tried to push for government to take control but the officials and locals were overwhelmed and disagreed accusing FEMA of slowness to act accordingly.(House report,2006:75).Although management literature suggest that large disaster are difficult to manage, the government should have been able to take full control of situation.

Unresponsiveness to early warnings. The disaster that happened cannot be classified as a surprise as scientists had already warned about that yet no action was taken. The consequences of major Hurricane had been long anticipated especially in New Orleans and there were fears of collapse of coastal city because it was built below sea level. But concerns about such danger were not met with required way of curbing them. It took 5 years for FEMA to file report of Hurricane hitting New Orleans which is extremely long time. Scientists warned people adequately consequentially convincing Governors of Mississippi and Louisiana to issue states of emergency three days before disaster. However some decided to stay because of previous false alarm and others due to lack of transport. Lack of urgency from federal government eventually led to disaster happening.

Failure of Government to understand system nature of risk led to delay. There unprecedented demand for services e.g medical attention, search for survivors, evacuation and setting temporary shelter proved impossible to cover fully. Reduction of response and communication due to scope of disaster made transportation of food difficult due to flooded roads. Many rescue and police vehicles were flooded and rendered unusable. Wireless phones were also affected and emergency calls were difficult

Problem of dealing with dispersed responsibilities. There was lack of clearly authority to guide through disaster in major organs of state. Federal responders waited for so long for certain Aid from the government. Lack of clear directing authority led to freelance hence coordination problem.

Organizational capacity. The size of disaster was so huge for ant network to control. However failure in deployment of personnel, not taking sufficient measures to deploy communication gadgets, not prestaging enough commodities and failure to unite and form joint office led to management of disaster so hard.FEMA for example had been run by political appointee with limited experience in natural disaster management.Furthmore under President bush administration FEMA had lost key functions political influence and resources. All this factors contributed to failure of Katrina

Conclusion

Natural Disasters can cause a lot of harm and we cannot be able to control them fully, however we can take anticipatory measures in order to curb with this menace. Many Lessons emerge from Katrina we must covert the failures into successes of the future. Taking responsibility, assigning roles, faster responsiveness of emergence lines are example ways to stir forward.REFERENCES

Stillman, R. J. (2005). Public administration: Concepts and cases. Boston [u.a.: Houghton Mifflin.

Henry, Nicholas. Public Administration and Public Affairs. New York: Pearson Education Canada, 2009.

Milakovich, Michael and George Gordon. Public Administration in America. New York: Cengage Learning, 2012.

Stillman, Richard. Public Administration: Concepts and Cases. New York: Cengage Learning, 2009.