I. Overview of crisis and public crisis management
Crisis is an event that can threaten the basic values and code of conduct of a social system, and it needs to make key decisions under the circumstances of great time pressure and uncertainty. Crisis has the characteristics of bad structure, suddenness, urgency and uncertainty, which makes it impossible for people to determine the evolution trend of crisis events in a short time. Crisis can not only play the role of a positive social safety valve, but also has a destructive and negative side. From the social reality, crises are often extremely destructive to the economy and society. From the occurrence to the extinction of a crisis, it generally goes through four periods: incubation period, outbreak period, duration period and settlement period. Therefore, the first priority of crisis management is to establish a crisis early warning mechanism to find and contain the crisis in time during the incubation period.
Corresponding to the four stages of crisis, crisis management also includes four aspects: pre-crisis prevention, pre-crisis preparation, response when the crisis breaks out and recovery when the crisis ends. These four stages are usually called PPRR, which means prevention, preparation, response and recovery. Although crisis management is a comprehensive and diversified complex project, it should still follow some universal and regular principles, including the first time principle, the integrity principle, the initiative principle, the scientific and legal principle, and the prevention-oriented principle.
Government crisis management is the government's management of sudden crisis events. Its purpose is to respond to the crisis in time and effectively, restore social stability and order, and restore public confidence in the government by improving the government's ability to foresee the crisis and its autonomy when the crisis occurs. Government crisis management is a concept corresponding to enterprise crisis management, but it is different from enterprise crisis management in management subject, and the interest relationship and crisis influence scope faced by government crisis management are wider.
Second, the problems existing in the crisis management of our government
China has accumulated some experience in the practice of crisis management for decades, and initially established a crisis management system, which has played a great role in preventing crises and reducing crisis losses. However, at present, China's crisis management system is not perfect, and there is no substantial progress in coordinating the construction of a multi-level and multi-type comprehensive crisis management system for social security, including public health.
1. The crisis management of China government lacks a complete legal guarantee system. In terms of legislation, China lacks some laws and regulations related to government crisis management, which leads to the fact that most emergency countermeasures adopted in China generally have no legal basis. China has promulgated martial law, disaster prevention and mitigation law, infectious disease prevention law and flood control law. However, these separate laws can only be applied to states of emergency with a single coverage. There are still cases where law enforcement is not in place, and administration according to law needs to be strengthened. In addition, in the process of the government's response to the crisis, the law enforcement supervision to prevent the infringement of citizens' rights is still blank in our legal system.
2. The crisis management of our government lacks an effective coordination mechanism. Crisis management is a cross-regional and cross-time comprehensive system management project, which is usually not effectively completed by a government department. In many cases, crisis management requires the concerted efforts and active cooperation of all social sectors. Although our country has set up professional crisis detection and early warning institutions in some fields, all social departments can't combine organically in the face of crisis, unite and cooperate, and lack effective internal review and coordination mechanism for large-scale websites to collect and coordinate. The functional departments of the government are compartmentalized and the powers and responsibilities are unclear, which leads to the inefficiency of crisis response.
3. Lack of information notification and disclosure mechanism in government crisis management. Due to the influence of traditional historical reasons and bureaucratic style, our government has great shortcomings in information disclosure. After the crisis, some government officials took measures such as blocking news for various reasons, which made it more difficult for the government to deal with the crisis.
Third, the construction of our government crisis management system
Crisis cannot be absolutely avoided, but it can be managed, controlled and resolved, so as to minimize the occurrence of crisis and reduce crisis losses. Western developed countries attach great importance to the research and practice of government crisis management. China must base itself on its own national conditions, learn from and absorb the mature experience of foreign government crisis management, and effectively improve the level of crisis management of China government.
1. Establish and improve the national crisis management laws and regulations system. First of all, a unified emergency law should be formulated. China's constitution stipulates the system of emergency in principle, but the law does not clearly stipulate under what circumstances and how to exercise the right of emergency. As a programmatic legal document and institutional framework of crisis management in China, it is of great significance to formulate emergency law as soon as possible to improve the level of crisis management in our government. Secondly, on the basis of the emergency law, formulate and improve special crisis management laws and regulations to ensure the legitimate exercise of government crisis management power and avoid arbitrary infringement of public rights. Thirdly, it is necessary to strengthen law enforcement and establish a crisis management law enforcement supervision system. The evaluation of crisis management law enforcement should be under the unified leadership of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) and people's governments at all levels, with the participation of supervision departments, auditing departments and news organizations. The evaluation results should be timely feedback and announced to the public. If the evaluation is low, it shall be ordered to make rectification within a time limit until the corresponding legal responsibility is investigated.
2. Establish and improve the government crisis management system. In order to deal with the crisis quickly and efficiently, China must establish a crisis management system with clear functions, clear powers and responsibilities, sound organization, flexible operation, unity and high efficiency, and clarify the responsibilities of various government departments by means of legalization, so as to realize the efficient and coordinated operation of these departments in dealing with the crisis. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a reasonable and complete crisis management system, that is, the command and decision-making body, functional organization system, information consultation organization system, comprehensive coordination department and auxiliary department of crisis management. These different organizations play different roles in crisis response. Reflecting on the current situation in China, it is urgent to establish a high-level crisis management center to ensure the efficient coordination of various functional departments in a crisis state. In practice, it is necessary to establish a permanent crisis management leadership, command and coordination mechanism in the central government. The agency should be an expert think tank in the field of possible crisis events, and should regularly conduct early warning analysis and risk assessment of possible crises in a certain field in the current year or longer, and formulate strategies, policies and plans for crisis management accordingly; When a crisis occurs, it should be transformed into a specific command and coordination organization in the State Council to handle emergency affairs, authoritatively allocate various national resources for the sudden crisis events that have occurred, and play a core role in coordinating relevant departments in the aspects of crisis information release, disaster prevention and assessment, and reconstruction of large-scale website collections.
3. Reform the information communication mechanism and improve the crisis information management system. A good information communication mechanism can ensure the accurate and timely transmission of information and enable the government to quickly formulate policies and decisions to deal with the crisis. At present, to establish and improve China's crisis information management system, we must do the following: First, the government should increase transparency and smooth channels. We should attach importance to and give full play to the positive role of the media in crisis management. The government should communicate, coordinate and cooperate with the media in depth when dealing with the crisis, so that the media can fully participate in the crisis under the correct guidance of the government. Secondly, we should improve the linkage mechanism of crisis information management. In crisis management, information is often the decisive factor, which is indispensable for disaster collection, disaster research and command for help. Once a crisis occurs, government departments should quickly take the lead in announcing the process of the incident to prevent confusion. It is necessary to create a fair media intervention order, maintain moderate freedom of the press, and let the public know the truth of the incident. It is necessary to use information network technology to realize the timely communication of information of various departments and the coordinated operation of resources of the whole society.
4. Strengthen the quality education of crisis management and improve the public's ability to cope with the crisis. The crisis awareness, knowledge and ability of government officials and the public to deal with the crisis are an indispensable part of the government crisis management system. First of all, it is necessary to carry out crisis early warning propaganda so that citizens can establish a correct sense of crisis; Secondly, the general public should be trained in crisis management knowledge and skills, so as to enhance citizens' ability of self-help and mutual rescue and form a relatively strong ability to cope with the overall social crisis; Finally, organize crisis response exercises to improve the overall crisis prevention and control capabilities.