Analysis on the Communication Process in the Prime Minister's Office during the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

The following article was written as an assignment for the Business of Media class.

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Introduction

Investigation report

What people can do after a huge disaster is limited. One of the most important things left to do for them is to record what happened, analyze it, learn what they could have done before the crisis happened, and find out what they can do before the next big disaster occurs. In the same way, people can also learn much from the experience of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. Japan's government faced a desperate situation and went through an extremely difficult time to deal with the crisis. A year after the disaster, an investigation report (Fukushima) was released by the Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, which was established by a private think-tank, Rebuilt Japan Initiative Foundation (It also released the summary of the last chapter of the report (Funabashi and Kitazawa) in English). In this report, the Commission members interviewed more than 300 people who were involved in the crisis including the top government officials such as Prime Minister at the time Naoto Kan (The top executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) declined their request to be interviewed). In here, what had actually happened at the Prime Minister's Office in the first week of the crisis is described in detail. Through examining the communication process inside the Office at the early stage of the crisis from structural and personal-characteristic perspectives, I would like to propose a desirable system for crisis management that will surely correspond to a crisis and work functionally in a huge disaster in the future.

Members in the Prime Minister's Office
Before analyzing communication process during the crisis, I would like to provide background information in minimum about the important members in the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo. There were 7-8 core members of top officials and experts. Basically, they made all the important decisions during the first seven days of the crisis. They were Prime Minister Kan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Banri Kaieda, three assistants to the prime minister, TEPCO's fellow Ichiro Takekuro, and Chairperson of the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) Haruki Madarame.

Structural analysis on communication process

Prime Minister's Office

First, I would like to analyze the communication process among groups from a structural point of view. The final report points out that the most important point to discuss in the crisis management by the government in this crisis is the communication gaps between the government and nuclear industry (Funabashi and Kitazawa 1). There was several communication channels established during the crisis including the ones between the Prime Minister's Office and TEPCO, the Office and the nuclear experts, the Office and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the NSC, the Office and the TEPCO's on-site office at the nuclear plants in Fukushima, and the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo and its on-site office. In many cases, most of these channels did not function well to convey information rapidly from the on-site workers to the top government officials, and pass down the orders other way round. The information was not supposed to be transmitted in these ways. According to a crisis manual prepared by the government and TEPCO for a nuclear accident long before the actual accident happened, there should have been nuclear emergency response headquarters, so-called the “off-site centers,” immediately being established near the Fukushima plants when a nuclear accident happened. They were supposed to serve as frontline headquarters. However, the center had never been set up because tsunami hit the planned location on March 11th. Instead of this two-hierarchical model between the off-cite centers in Fukushima and the headquarter in Tokyo, the actual information process at the early stage of the disaster had at least four levels to convey the information from the bottom to the top: From the Fukushima plants to the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo, from there to the NISA, and then from the NISA to the Prime Minister's Office (Fukushima 104). This multilevel structure of the communication channels actually prevented the Office members from having the smooth flow of the information and making quick decisions. In many cases, the information was blocked and not conveyed to the Office immediately. This situation became one of the causes that TEPCO and NISA lose the Office members' trust at the early stage.

Even in the government, there was an information divide between the Crisis Management Center on the mid-second floor and the Prime Minister's Office on the fifth floor in the same building. For example, prediction data projected by the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) was delivered to the Crisis Management Center, but had never passed on to the Office at first (Fukushima 105). These information blockages caused the Office members to intervene more with micro management at the on-site center in Fukushima. Finally on 15th, Kan decided to set up a joint response headquarter at TEPCO and assigned one of his assistants Goshi Hosono as the chief of the center and ordered him to station there. This new headquarter enabled the Office members to gather information much more quickly than before. At the same time, they were also able to pass on the orders from Kan to TEPCO and the on-site office in Fukushima immediately (Fukushima 106).

The final report concludes that the two biggest problems regarding the crisis management system are the malfunction of the off-cite centers and bureaucrats' poor management ability to deal with a sudden crisis (Fukushima 394). This is just what Arjen Boin says in “The New World of Crises and Crisis Management: Implications for Policymaking and Research” (2009). Here Boin refers to the political-administrative challenges of preparing government agencies to deal with sudden adversity as one of the three types of challenges that the government faces in a crisis (Boin 370). According to Boin, what is required in the crisis management is flexibility, improvisation, redundancy, and the occasional breaking of rules (Boin 373). These points are still remained as the structural problems of Japanese government's crisis management system.

Personal analysis on communication process
Next, I would like to analyze the communicating process between individuals in the Prime Minister's Office from a personal-characteristic point of view. The point can be summarized in Kan's poor crisis management ability and risk-communication skills. His characteristics can be summed up in the following four points:

1. Poor risk-communication skills. Many members in the Office told the Commission members that he often shouted to others, which made many officials and advisers shrink under his direction. NSC Chairperson Madarame said that he could not fully tell what he should have told Kan then because of Kan's harsh attitude toward him (Fukushima 110).

2. Deep involvement into the micromanagement. At the night on March 11th (the first day of the crisis), Kan tried to arrange power-supply cars at the Fukushima plants by himself. He even asked the staff about the size, weight, and length of the batteries they needed over his cell phone. The report concludes that his conducts such as asking about minor technical details only further complicated the process (Funabashi and Kitazawa 10).

3. Personal advisers outside the government. He no longer believed what the experts and advisors from TEPCO and NISA said any more at the early stage (Madarame lost his trust because he told Kan on the 11th that there would be no hydrogen explosion, which actually had occurred on the following days). He often called experts and advisors that he knew. He called them and asked their advices even in the middle of the crisis. One of the Office members said that the ‘experts' and ‘advisors’ who had no responsibility and authority should not have involved in the decision-making process in such a way (Fukushima 112).

4. Top-down management style. He tended to play a leading role in decision making on various issues in detail. In the report, the Commission evaluates some of his behaviors that actually led the situation getting better. One of them is the fact that he refused TEPCO's request to pull all its workers from the Fukushima plants. Kan and other officials immediately rushed into the TEPCO's headquarter in Tokyo and made a speech in front of 200 TEPCO's employees saying that there was no way TEPCO could accept defeat and they should put their lives on the line to salvage the situation (Fuhabashi and Kitazawa 8).

Prime Minister then Kan

By Kan's action and statement mentioned above along with the decision to establish the joint crisis-management center there, the report says that the government bore the ultimate responsibility for bringing a nuclear accident under control (Fuhabashi and Kitazawa 8). On the other hand, it also points out that Kan's management style to get involved in detail also made unnecessary confusion and stress around him. (Fukushima 98). As Boin points out, usually it is not clear who has a responsibility of the crisis and who must deal with it (Boin 368). However, even if it is hard to collect, analyze, and comprehend the necessary information to develop a so-called “common operational picture,” to develop a capacity for fast-paced information processing under stressful conditions is necessary for high reliability organizations such as a government (Boin 372). In this sense, Kan's decision to establish the joint operation center at TEPCO turned out to be a better solution at the time even if his heroic statement and action at TEPCO are assessed as inappropriate in crisis management.

Desirable communication system in crisis

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Based on the facts and analysis examined above, I would like to illustrate a desirable crisis-management system briefly. One of the big problems is that the top officials did not know the right procedure for the crisis. As mentioned earlier, there was a manual for a nuclear crisis, but it was not used at all as it was supposed to. One of the Office member Tetsuro Fukuyama said that he did not even know such a manual existed and bureaucrats did not tell him about it, either (Fukushima 101). They did not even know how much and how far they had to get involved. This is one of the main causes of the risk-management failure in this crisis. As the report suggests (Fukushima 389), a totally new organization specified only for crises such as FEMA in the U.S. should be designed so that the government staffs can define their roles precisely by law and would not get confused during the crisis.

A worst-case scenario

Damaged reactors after explosions

The other fundamental problem is how to correspond to the changing situation accordingly. This is especially important when the situation is not clear at its first stage. On March 22nd, as the situation was getting worse, the Office members decided to make what they called “a worst-case scenario.” It was supposed to be made by Madarame, but since Kan did not trust him at all, Chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Shunsuke Kondo was secretly assigned to draw it up. According to the scenario, in the worst case, 30 million residents in Tokyo would need to evacuate. It had not been revealed until Kan stepped down from the Prime Minister and referred to it six months later (Fukushima 93). The report concludes that the scenario was made in the middle of the crisis so that the Office members could see the whole picture of the crisis from a wider perspective. On the other hand, it also points out that the tendency of the government unwilling to disclose information triggered the public distrust toward the government as a result (Fukushima 394-395). As Boin points out, a crisis tends to undermine the legitimacy base of governing structures and processes (Boin 369). To stop this situation, they must offer a convincing rationale that generates public and political support for their crisis management efforts (Boin 373). That is what Japan's government failed to acquire in the crisis management during this crisis. I think one of the main reasons that caused the public distrust is its public announcement policy that it only announces facts. According to then Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano, It does not say anything that includes speculation. This is why they did not admit meltdown in the plants at the early stage. This government attitude surely created distrust among the public and made them believe that the government hid inconvenient truth. By transferring the authority to a specialized, independent organization, it may keep its credibility to a certain extent.

Conclusion
As the final report described, the biggest problem with the crisis management by the Office members in the crisis was “the amateurish level of its crisis communications” (Funabashi and Kitazawa 10). All the examples and analysis argued above indicate that the Office members had a very hard time at the early stage to set up an efficient information system that can transform itself according to the on-going situation. Bureaucratic sectionalism was also a big problem for putting the transformation forward. As the report suggests, what is needed on emergency is not a rigid, well-structured plan, but a system that can flexibly made new plans (Fukushima 396). In other words, the system should be designed as a flexible organization that can offer interim and optimum solutions at each phase of the changing situation accordingly during the crisis. As Boin suggests, a crisis can be a good opportunity for policy reform, institutional overhaul, and even leadership revival (Boin 374). This may be the best chance for Japan's government and public to think about the way they did during the crisis and find out what they can best do for the next generation.