Many of the recurring issues that we are seeing at the strategic, multi-agency/multi-jurisdictional level are not lessons and are not likely to ever be “learned”. Many are “wicked problems” and are unlikely to ever be solved. Issues such as multi-agency interoperability, communication, coordination and warnings, in times of crisis, will remain challenging and during a catastrophe will never be perfect, particularly in hindsight.

One of the key challenges is to change the perceptions and expectations that all issues identified from operations and exercises are lessons and can be or even should be, learned. Identifying problems is easy. Learning lessons is much more difficult. We need to change the way we think about and deal with learning from experience.

Whilst there are some lessons that can be identified and learned these are mostly at the tactical and operational level. There is a need to continue to focus on the recurring issues at the strategic level but with a view of mitigating the associated risks rather than finalising a perfect solution. For some issues the best that may be achieved is to continue to strive for incremental improvements to what is often already equal to world’s best practice.

Effective management and mobilisation of knowledge are essential to share lessons and support learning. A key challenge identified in this area is the capture and retention of operational knowledge.

Significant effort has been invested in recent years to develop lessons management capability and improve learning from experience but there is an ongoing need to maintain the focus on and momentum of lessons management at all levels of government.