Data gathering

This section explains the way in which the data was gathered in order to answer the main research question.

3.5.1 Interviews

The data was primarily gathered by conducting interviews with civil servants working for the Safety Bureau of the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland and were selected via purposive sampling and snowball sampling. It was chosen to select the members working for the Safety Bureau since they are concerned with the daily activities of the Safety Region and work on the handling of an accident investigation report. They have a greater insight in how the accident investigation reports were received and what considerations led to not implementing some of the recommendations. Moreover, interviewing board members, who are the mayors of the participating municipalities and have busy schedules, was not considered feasible given the limited time period in which this research took place. The Inspectorate, who established contact with its liaison for the Safety Region Amsterdam- Amstelland, provided access to the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland. From there on, the snowball sampling technique allowed for reaching more potential respondents. Eventually, two employees of the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland were willing to participate in this research, of which one is a crisis management coordinator and the other one an operations specialist at the emergency control room. After conducting these interviews, two other employees of the Safety Bureau were approached. However, they stated that their stories completely align with the stories provided by their colleagues and were therefore unfortunately not willing to engage in an interview. Although the number of interviewees is thus relatively small, it is not considered problematic. Given the reaction of the other approached employees, conducting more interviews would presumably only result in gathering more of the same data. This is to some extent logical, as it would be peculiar if a multitude of (contrasting) reasons exist for not implementing the recommendations within the same organization. Hence, one could argue that saturation occurred, which justifies this amount of respondents of the Safety Region. Additionally, it was possible to interview a coordinating specialist researcher of the Inspectorate of Justice and Security. She led both accident investigations into the power outages in 2015 and 2017. Moreover, the Inspectorate is currently working on a follow-up study into several Dutch emergency control rooms, including the emergency control room of the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland, thereby specifically focusing on what and why previous recommendations were or were not acted upon. As the follow-up investigation is still in its data gathering phase, the interviewee was not able to give definitive answers. However, based on the so far gathered data and her own experience, she could provide an interesting insight in the Inspectorate’s perspective on the accident investigation reports into the power outages and their recommendations.

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It must be noted that the answers provided by the respondents of the Safety Region are considered more valuable in relation to answering the research question, as only they are able to speak on behalf of the Safety Region itself and were involved in the decision making process regarding whether or not to adopt and implement the recommendations.

Thus, the total sample of respondents is three, including two employees of the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland and one employee of the Inspectorate of Justice and Security. Therefore, multiple expert views and opinions on why some of the previous made recommendations were not implemented were gathered, thus avoiding a one-sided picture or overrepresentation.

It was chosen to conduct semi-structured interviews, as this type of interview gives room for the interviewees to explain the situation and elaborate on the factors that played a role in the decision- making process with regards to implementing the recommendations from the previous investigation reports. It also allows the interviewer to ask follow-up questions to stimulate the interviewee in providing sufficient information, keeping the theoretical framework in mind. In this way, a better understanding is gained as to why the recommendations were not implemented, which is something that cannot be achieved by looking merely at the investigation report itself or other publicly available documents.

The interviews were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed in order to conduct a content analysis on the results. One must keep in mind that it is possible that interviewees give socially desirable answers, which is a pitfall of this specific data gathering method. Especially in this case, interviewees might answer in a way that makes the Safety Region look better and to defend why the recommendations suggested by the Inspectorate have not been implemented. It is important to be aware of this. In an attempt to reduce these type of answers, the interviewees were offered the opportunity to review their statements afterwards, so that unwanted or faulty content can be removed. None of the interviewees withdrew or altered significant information afterwards. Additionally, the possibility was given to treat the answers and data with confidentiality, meaning that the interviewees would not be mentioned by name in the thesis and their answers cannot be linked or traced back to them as individuals. All interviewees made use of this confidentiality.

3.5.2 Documents

Fortunately, one of the respondents was able to provide several internal documents of the Safety Region Amsterdam-Amstelland, of which two were considered relevant to this study. The Safety Region conducted their own investigation into the power outage of 2017 on the basis of their own evaluation systematics that obligates them to evaluate large-scale incidents. The final report of this evaluation, called ‘Stroomstoring 17 januari 2017: Evaluatierapport’, is used for analysis in this

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research, as it is able to shed light on what the Safety Region itself observed, found and thought was needed to recommend.

The second document is called ‘Matrix Aanbevelingen Stroomstoringen 17 januari 2017’, which compiles and addresses all the recommendations made in response to the power outage in 2017. It thus contains the recommendations made by the Safety Region itself as well as the recommendations made by the Inspectorate. The document reflects upon them and explains the plan of action. This is especially of interest, since it also reflects on the recommendations of the Inspectorate and what will or can be done about it. Even though the report focuses on the power outage in 2017, the recommendations that were already made in 2015 are of course incorporated since they were recommended again in 2017, which justifies the document’s relevance to this research.

The documents were used to illustrate and backup the results from the interviewees and are therefore regarded as supporting documents. Their content was analyzed by means of the same coding scheme used for coding and analyzing the transcripts of the interviews. This coding scheme can be found in Appendix II.