Incident Reporting Systems – The Hidden Story

Incident reporting systems are often seen by the general public and governments as an absolute necessity to ensure safety. However, there is more to incident reporting systems than what one would surmise from the name. While these systems are designed to record incidents, aiming to ultimately inform the system to not make the same or similar mistake again, there is a lot behind the scenes. A very high level depiction of an incident reporting system can be described as being comprised of three phases: data collection, data analysis, and subsequent learning. These three phases are discussed, including some of their many complexities in typical incident reporting systems. Other issues are raised, including some misleading assumptions of icebergs and triangles, and storytelling or informality as an alternate to traditional incident reporting systems. Overall, while the goal of making a system safer is indeed a worthy one, there is much to consider in establishing an incident reporting system as one of the tools in achieving safety.