Analysis of the Failure of Fire Control

Introduction

Over the past years, as a consequence of the impact on society created by the recent huge corporate collapses and, more recently, the ongoing economical crisis, the concept of Corporate Governance has become central in the economical, academical and institutional debate.

At the core of this debate the attempt of rethinking and shaping the Corporate system and mechanisms in a way that “instill in companies the essential vision, processes and structures to make decisions that ensure longer-term sustainability”. (Vice President, Business Advisory Services, IFC).

This mandate is valid not only for the business actors but also for the Public Sector whose role, it is to create Public Value, through developing resonable policies while meeting various stakeholders needs and responding to the increasing demand of accountability, fairness and trasparency.

This paper focuses on analysing the governance failures of one of the most innovative and promising UK Government Information Techology project: FiReControl.

Started in 2004, FiReControl was meant to be the future of Fire and Rescue Service. Instead after 7 years it was cancelled and branded as "one of the worst cases of project failures " in UK Government's history.

It is argued that the failure of the project have been of two types (1) Uneffective engagement of the primary stakeholders and (2) Lack of Leadership and management skills. The idea is that a lack of engagement of the primary stakeholders, in the FiReControl specific context, impacted negatively on the overall performances of the project and worsened a leadership model that was already weak. Questions have been raised also from a stakeholder theory perspective.

The information used to examine the cas...

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...pecialistic training system and equipment to quickly respond to big emergencies, (3)FireLink, a radio system to permit a better communication between the Fire and Rescue Service England, Scotland and Wales.

Our members are frontline public service workers – covering the roles of firefighter to area manager, including emergency fire control staff and firefighters working the retained duty system. The FBU is the only recognised trade union negotiating nationally with fire and rescue service employers on behalf of firefighters and emergency fire control staff on the National Joint Council (NJC)". Source, FBU website, section Who we are: http://www.fbu.org.uk

The FBU also pointed out that FireControl was conceived by Burocrats with different skills from Fire Service and that this could led to understimation of the complexity of coordinating emergency incidents.