Boersma et al. Organizing Emergent Safety Organizations. Organizing Emergent Safety Organizations The travelling of the concept ‘Netcentric Work’ in the Dutch Safety sector Kees Boersma Faculty of Social Sciences VU University Amsterdam Fk.boersma@fsw.vu.nl Jeroen Wolbers Faculty of Social Sciences VU University Amsterdam J.Wolbers@fsw.vu.nl Pieter Wagenaar Faculty of Social Sciences VU University Amsterdam FP.Wagenaar@fsw.vu.nl In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management ISCRAM. Seattle, April 2010. S. French, B. Tomaszewski and C. Zobel (eds.): 1-6. INTRODUCTION ‘The social networking site Twitter again stole a march on traditional media when it was the first outlet to publish dramatic pictures of the Turkish Airline crash. Moments after the plane crashed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Wednesday morning the news was appearing on Twitter… This proves that social networking sites can be a real asset in covering breaking news and gathering eyewitness accounts but the web should always be treated with extreme caution.’ (CNN, 2009). Moments before the crash, at 10:31 in the morning, one of the Schiphol air traffic controllers contacted the Emergency Response Room (ERR) of Kennemerland (the safety region which Schiphol is part of) in Haarlem (a city close to Amsterdam) because the plane was missing on the radar. It was, however, the social networking sites that delivered the most adequate news to the public. Civilian journalism – that is citizens spreading the news - had put its stamp on the discussion about emergency management. Shortly after the first call emergency response teams were leaving the fire stations, hospitals and police stations. Notwithstanding the relatively quick response almost immediately discussions arose about the (quality of) information available for the first responders, the responsible commanders and – most important – the policy-makers (of the region). The above event has caused many (political) discussion in the Netherlands. This discussion is part of a longstanding debate about the organization of the civil safety sector (see also: Boersma et al., 2009). The most recent development in the field, and central to this article, is the introduction of ‘netcentric’ work. It has been introduced in the field of emergency and crisis management to improve the exchange of information between heterogeneous actors involved in crisis and emergency management. Netcentric work is meant to overcome the difficulties in information sharing practices. Besides, netcentric work can be seen as an attempt to close the gap between ‘(…) social demands for control and security, and the capacity for systems of rational management and administration to satisfy these demands’ (Power et al., 2009). The idea is that netcentric work can break through