Auteur: Jack P. Kruf

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The European Research Council (ERC) has granted prof. Barbara Vis from Utrecht University School of Governance (USG) a Consolidator Grant for the research project entitled ‘Politicians under Radical Uncertainty: How Uncertain Phenomena Influence Political Elites’ Behaviour’. How do political elites respond to both radically and resolvably uncertain phenomena? Thanks to the ECR grant of 2 million euro the RadiUnce research team led by Vis will address the lack of attention to radical uncertainty in theories and empirical analyses of political behaviour. Read more

nl• De European Research Council (ERC) heeft prof. dr. Barbara Vis van het departement Bestuurs- en Organisatiewetenschap (USBO) een Consolidator Grant toegekend voor het onderzoeksproject ‘Politicians under Radical Uncertainty: How Uncertain Phenomena Influence Political Elites’ Behaviour’. Hoe reageren politieke elites op zowel radicale als oplosbare, onzekere fenomenen? Dankzij de ECR-subsidie van 2 miljoen euro zal het RADIUNCE-onderzoeksteam onder leiding van Vis het gebrek aan aandacht voor radicale onzekerheid in theorieën en empirische analyses van politiek gedrag rechtzetten. Lees meer

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UDiTE the European Federation of Local Government Chief Executives joined forces again today (01/06/22) with VEOLIA to host an EU Green Week 2022 to discuss how we can make the Green Deal a success locally. Under the expert moderation of Tamsin Rose, we debated the the concept of a functioning territorial ecosystem.

After a short video introduction from Stéphane Pintre, UDiTE President, on the role of the Chief Executive in local government in changing times, speakers spoke about how to inspire stakeholders, businesses and citizens that are essential to such game changing projects. From an EU perspective, delivering outcomes for the 2021/27 programmes & achieving 2030 goals depends upon it.

Our panellists, shared their experiences that included a Key note from Stéphane Perrin, Vice President of the Brittany Region, on the Breton regional ecosystem “Breizh Cop” that is accelerating an integrated green transition in Brittany.  Stéphane delivered a number of direct messages to the European Union about the need to be consistent between the long term vision and the detailed eligibility criteria for the EU Structural and Investments Funds 2021-27 on issues such as Green H2 buses being excluded from funding, important to local and regional authorities, for them to reduce carbon emissions.

Tu Doan-Quynh Bui from Renaissance Ecologique, certainly showed how a picture speaks a 1000 wordsthrough her fresco approach to help citizens visualise our journey together on the green transition.

Louis Duffy, Director for Environment at Cork County Council, ‘hot foot from a presentation to the Irish Parliament yesterday on climate change, showed how their shared services agenda in Ireland is contributing to coordinated and specialised actions in 4 regions that are now regrouping the 31 Irish local authorities in the call to action by 2030 and 2050.

Xavier Boivert focused on the importance of the local dimension having  the essential building blocks of the territorial ecosystem and underlined the role that municipal managers play in bring the different interests together across the community in support of concerted actions.

Guillaume Meynet from Veolia, spoke about Veolia’s latest game changing projects for ecological transformation including a pioneering waste water to fresh water treatment system in an increasing number of drought impacted regions in France.

Finally, Mario Grubišić from the secretariat of the ENVE commission in the EU Committee of the Regions talked about the Committee’s latest initiative Green Deal, Going Local that includes a call for local authorities to pledge to plant 3 billion trees by 2030, to showcase innovative climate action and commitments and to gather feedback on how the Green Deal is being perceived in the regions.

The video stream, slides and individual videos will be uploaded here in the next few days. Bookmark this page for the time being and we will reach out to you via Eventbrite to confirm when the materials will be ready. A big thank you to all of our speakers and especially for the hard work of our interpreters Laurent and Isabelle. Thank you.

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Putting a risk management process into place is relatively easy. Making sure that process operates to deliver the real benefits of good risk management is a much more difficult task.

This advanced course is designed to explore a number of the key factors that must be considered and addressed in order for risk management to operate effectively and add real value to the organisation. Read more

 

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Peter Young | February 2007, Public Risk Forum

Are there differences between risk management in the public and private sectors? As a professor who has spent time in both public administration and business administration programs, I have had several opportunities to think about both sides of the debate. 

On one side, we have those who argue that management is management and that differences in the public and private sectors are modest (“if only government were run like a business”). Opponents of the “management is management” point of view argue that the public sector is so different from the private sector that it is a distinctly separate thing and, thus, requires different knowledge and management skills.

For a very long time, I tended to believe that “management was management.” Politics exist in private and public organisations, and both have multiple stakeholders. Some large private organisations have dispersed authority, while some public institutions have fairly focused authority. Some private organisations are very process-oriented and some public entities emphasize outputs. Further, it is difficult to draw demarcation lines between public and private sectors. What would we call, for instance, an arrangement where a private transportation company is contracted to a nonprofit care facility for disabled individuals, which in turn is under contract with a local authority?

“Indeed, we might say that if a risk is able to be managed privately, there is a reasonable chance it is not – by definition – a public risk” 

In recent years, however, I have begun to change my views on public vs. private risk management, and I now believe that while there are important similarities, the “public” aspect of public management does present some important distinctions. I would like to address those distinctions in this essay.

Public sector risk management differs from its private sector counterpart because:

• Governmental entities, as social institutions, present an exposure to risk that is substantively different from a private entity. 
• The characteristics of public risks present a set of risk management issues not fully present in the private sector, including:
• Inability of government to avoid responsibility for risks within its purview.
• Frequent absence of markets as a risk management tool.
• Complexity of relationships between risks.
• The interaction of risks with governmental purposes.
• The breadth of the government’s exposure to risk.

Being in the public sector does present public risk managers with a set of distinct challenges. Notably, this means that government involvement in public affairs commonly arises when private behaviors (and markets) are somehow unable to deliver the good or service efficiently, if at all, or to manage a risk. Although we know there are degrees of government intervention, risks, goods, and services that meet the test of government intervention have done so because of characteristics that are not “market manageable.” 

They exhibit characteristics of high complexity and high uncertainty (often), they are market-failure inducing, and their effects on the public are diffuse. Also, the effects of these risks may call into question matters of fairness and social adequacy and thus may be impervious to tests of economic efficiency. 

So, one distinction between private and public risk management is that the risks are substantially different. Indeed, we might say that if a risk is able to managed privately, there is a reasonable chance it is not – by definition – a public risk. Additionally, the nature of government and its authority and responsibility is different. Whereas government might privatize garbage collection, or a health care delivery, or prisons, government’s responsibility and authority for those activity areas remains. Operating in the public sector makes the risks different, and it makes exposure different too. 

“…we need to be reminded that public organisations may have responsibility for organisational and social risks, and that traditional risk management skims the surface and fails to attack risk comprehensively”

I think the preceding discussion suggests some other relevant lessons for risk management. The typical risk manager has responsibilities for a set or risks that can be characterized generally as falling within the “organisational risk” domain — property loss exposures, legal liability-based risks, workers’ compensation exposures, and so on. While all these areas are important, we need to be reminded that public organisations may have responsibility for organisational and social risks, and that traditional risk management skims the surface and fails to attack risk comprehensively. A broader framework for thinking about risk management is necessary. We call this broader framework enterprise risk management (ERM). 

Second, by raising the possibility that the management of social risks is part of public risk management, we extend the accumulated knowledge of the risk management field into the public policy arena, where it has been woefully absent. For example, the systematic and critical analysis that risk managers apply to complex property and liability risks would be a breath of fresh air in the debate over public investment in alternative energy development. It is sad to say that today’s risk managers are rarely involved in public policy planning and execution, but this must change and there is evidence, if fact, that it is. 

Recommended

https://www.primo-institute.com/reconsidering-the-public-private-sectorrisk-management-divide/

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