"One of the most important things that you overlook in other stories discussing the response and recovery, is the human element in terms of the knowledge base that was available during the recovery effort. . . People just forget that the institutional knowledge and the knowledge of city operations was critical."

Competence and experience in all organizations played crucial roles. In several instances, the main difference between an organization's routine operations and crisis operations was only in the scale of the effort. In these cases, necessary processes and competencies were in place and readily deployable. However, for other organizations innovation was needed. In these places long-term, experienced staff used their knowledge of programs, processes, partners, and institutional history as the basis for fast and flexible action. Interviewees often explained that in the early days of the crisis there was no time to refer to procedures or manuals or to develop action plans. Experienced people acted on their core professional knowledge and long-standing relationships within and across organizations as well as across sectors. For the future, one City official described an effort now underway to create a "reserve corps" of expert data analysts who are well-trained and ready to be reassigned from their regular agency jobs to emergency operations whenever needed.

Given the essential role of experienced staff, the quality and stability of the future public workforce was a concern expressed by several respondents. One person told us, "You need veteran people who are flexible and have wide enough experience that they can adapt what they know to unexpected situations. . . I think this incident probably drove a lot of people to want to do public service. . . I hope government takes advantage of that [but] more important is keeping good people." However, interviewees worried that the burgeoning trends toward outsourcing and privatization had two negative effects. These activities turn content experts into contract managers or they push experienced, high-performing people entirely out of government. Both consequences remove knowledge and experience from the public service in ways that weaken the underlying capabilities of public agencies. In addition, the wave of retirements now beginning as the Baby Boom generation starts to leave the workforce presents important additional challenges for attracting and retaining younger people in public service.