Coordination tools : examples of effective actions aiming at improving safety

In-depth interviews provided information about the practical aspect of coordinating actions aiming at ensuring safety. Actions aiming at preventing local dangers are harmonised in Polish districts in many different ways, yet coordinating functions are not always fulfilled by the safety and order committees or by the district programmes. The research material was used in order to reconstruct three types of the most common coordination tools that are used by the districts. The first type includes these institutions that explicitly assumed responsibility for harmonising actions aiming at ensuring (broadly defined) safety within a given area. This group includes, but is not limited to, Police, municipal police, social welfare centres, as well as the mayor's safety commissioner, which function as coordinating entities. The second coordination type consists in harmonising actions aiming at ensuring safety by non-governmental organisations operating within the districts. Local governments are eager to cooperate with foundations and associations and they consider such cooperation to be of particular importance; a tendency to shape coordination in such a way seems to be one of the most significant ones. The last type of coordination tools include safety programmes other than the programme referred to in the Act on the local government at the district level, which are of strategic significance for harmonising actions taken by individual institutions tasked with preventing dangers. These types of coordination tools are an example of certain tendencies that can be found in many Polish districts, irrespective of their size or location. This typology is not an exhaustive one and its elements do not function within a social vacuum, as the described instruments for harmonising actions aiming at ensuring safety are not disjunctive. They may be used together with other solutions that complement a given form of coordination. The diversity of solutions proves that it is not possible to refer to only one, appropriate procedure in the context of local actions aiming at ensuring safety. Each of the suggested coordination tools may be extremely effective and novel, as well as allow for an immediate reaction to current problems. It is very important that these instruments be appropriately prepared, i.e. it is necessary to determine its operating rules, identify objectives and priorities, set a timetable for implementing individual actions and provide for appropriate financing sources. The described examples of individual types of coordination tools shall be considered good practices. Not only do they increase overall effectiveness of actions, but they also promote the engagement of local communities in activities aiming at improving safety and make citizens, representatives of local authorities, services, inspections, guards and other institutions tasked with fighting dangers think that local safety is their common concern and that it can really be influenced by them.