The biggest problem with NIMS is the learning curve... Unlike the learning curve in public safety agencies (fire and PD) or the wildland fire community where you start out at the simplest level, working your way up from the bottom to the smallest scale incident managment working up to the big, bad Type I incidents. While NIMS allows national resources (outside of the wildland community) to work their way up the Type I incident management structure to Incident Commander.

This system builds people who understands the "overhead" and administration of the incident management system it also builds a system that is totally out of touch with the "field". This is the failure or weakness of NIMS, allowing unqualified(inexperienced) people in positions, specifically in the planning and operations sections (and therefore in the Incident Commander position as well).

The example I use from the wildland side is this; you can't be an Engine Boss without working on an engine for a while, you can't be a strike team/task force leader without being an experienced Engine Boss, you can't be a Division Supervisor with our being a successful Taskforce Leader, you can't be a Operations Section Chief without being a successful Division Supervisor, and you can’t be an Incident Commander without being a successful Section Chief.

The planning and operations sections should be filled with guys and gals who do this thing EVERYDAY, this would fix some of the issues with NIMS.

A LOT of the issues from Katrina/Rita have been fixed with NIMS, this issue has not.