Een beschouwing vanuit waarde- én risicoperspectief
Jack Kruf | juni 2016
In dit essay beschouw ik het vluchtelingenvraagstuk vanuit waarde- en risicoperspectief. Ik kom tot een aantal overdenkingen. Het voorliggende vraagstuk gaat in mijn ogen over onze gezamenlijke bereidheid en capaciteit om vluchtelingen te willen en te kunnen opvangen en in te passen in onze samenleving. Het vraagstuk beroert ons zeer.
Jack Kruf
De dynamiek is groot. Ons democratisch stelsel piept en kraakt. De samenleving spreekt zich uit over de letterlijke en figuurlijke grenzen. Dat is ook een politiek-bestuurlijk vraagstuk. De publieke waarde ‘balans en cohesie in de samenleving’ komt onder druk met de grote instroom. Politici en bestuurders spreken over publieke risico’s en hoe we het anders moeten doen.
Waarden en risico’s
Mark Moore definieert publieke waarde als ‘de waarde die de overheid creëert door zijn burgers en die burgers waarderen’. Deze soort waarden zijn niet alleen verankerd in de Nederlandse grondwet, maar bijvoorbeeld ook in de Geneefse conventies, de Rechten van de Mens en de Four Freedoms van Roosevelt.
Op basis van een serie interviews met bestuurders en managers in het publieke domein, hebben wij de volgende ‘eenvoudige’ formule ontwikkeld om ex ante de kans op Resultaat van besturing te kunnen bepalen. De formule is ontwikkeld binnen het publieke domein van de gemeente, vanuit de unieke positie die wij mochten hebben als gemeentesecretaris. De formule:
SK x OK x IV = R
Er is bij toepassing ervan, bij de start, te allen tijde een voorliggende kwestie nodig die concreet op tafel ligt en die opgelost dient te worden. Immers, anders valt er niets te besturen. De formule komt dáár tot zijn recht, omdat er dan de meeste winst te behalen valt in de kwaliteit van de besturing of het management. De koppen in het dagelijkse nieuws, de verkiezingsprogramma’s en collegeakkoorden maken duidelijk dat het arsenaal van kwesties rijkelijk aanwezig is. Genoeg keuze dus.
Er zijn in de formule, die met uiterste zorg is ontwikkeld, drie determinanten die zich in de vorm van een vermenigvuldiging voordoen en die bepalend zijn voor het uiteindelijke resultaat.
Geneva, Switzerland – Press Release “The Earth’s climate is more out of balance than at any time in observed history, as greenhouse gas concentrations drive continued warming of the atmosphere and ocean and melting of ice, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These rapid and large-scale changes have occurred within a few decades but will have harmful repercussions for hundreds – and potentially thousands – of years.
World Meteorological Organization
Key messages:
WMO State of Climate report confirms 2015-2025 hottest 11 years on record
Earth’s energy imbalance is highest in sixty five-year record
The ocean has been absorbing about eighteen times the annual human energy use each year for the past two decades
Extreme weather impacts millions and costs billions
World Meteorological Day: observing today to protect tomorrow
WMO’s State of the Global Climate report 2025 confirms that 2015-2025 are the hottest 11-years on record, and that 2025 was the second or third hottest year on record, at about 1.43 °C above the 1850-1900 average. Extreme events around the world, including intense heat, heavy rainfall, and tropical cyclones, caused disruption and devastation, highlighting the vulnerability of our interconnected economies and societies.
[Quote]: “The need to cope with future challenges posed by major transformations such as digitalization and sustainable development has led to several approaches to establish new concepts and methods of science and research.
Scientific studies are supposed to provide background knowledge, to facilitate the desired transformations towards a sustainable future and to help resolving complex problems that accompany societies in transition. Concepts such as transformative, transdisciplinary or co-creative approaches elucidate the direction in which scientific research strives for its new role(s).
During the Local Government Risk Conference on 17 January 2018 at the Provincial Government Building in Utrecht, a group of experts discussed the key aspects of governance and control as they relate to municipal organisations.
Jack P. Kruf during his keynote speech at the Provincial Government Building in Utrecht. (2018), Risk & Compliance Platform Europe
In his keynote, Jack Kruf advocated for a much stronger link between policy content and policy direction. Given the multitude of interests and stakeholders, the segmentation of expertise and levels of government, as well as the fragmentation of knowledge surrounding issues, he believes that local authorities would be wise to take more time for an ex ante governance clause.
What council would not want its programme to be implemented optimally and effectively? According to him, this does, however, require genuine dialogue and engagement with all stakeholders at the outset. So not just more programme adoptions that focus purely on content, but also explicitly highlight their governance.
Governance in itself – in programmes and agreements by councils and executive bodies – therefore demands our full attention. The quality of public governance has become part of the quality of the public sphere and, consequently, of the public debate. We can no longer avoid explicitly addressing and embedding governanceex ante.
According to Kruf, this governance section is much more than the current ‘risk management and resilience’ section. The latter merely lifts a corner of the veil, and even then only in financial terms. Not unimportant, but resilience is no longer exclusive; it is often purely financially focused, written from a defensive and safeguarding perspective, and does not really address other relevant governance variables, relationships, and connections that play a role in the genuine administration and management of the city, its innovation, and development.
Resilience is good, but not inspiring enough and, moreover, technically wholly inadequate to enable us to discover and dare to explore new paths and set out on them. He quotes a councillor and a mayor from the network:
“Resilience is a theoretical exercise that paints a false picture of reality. I’ve never understood it. More than once, it has served as a smokescreen under which a project was sold.” – Councillor.
“Resilience serves to enable the council to account for its actions in broad terms, rather than to steer them. In practice, other forces – including political ones – determine whether a project is or should be feasible.” – Mayor.
According to Kruf, the new, much broader governance section should describe and (administratively) set out how the council’s programme itself can be steered and managed, and what specific roles the council, the executive committee, and the civil service organisation play in this, alongside social actors and institutions. The section should highlight all elements of governance necessary for performance, results and success. According to him, there are five elements that must be present simultaneously for this to be effective. These are:
Sound financial design and compliance, going hand in hand and, above all, realistic.
A focus by the administration and senior management on the target group (the citizen, the neighbourhood, the young person), on the objective and on the actual delivery of products and services.
Public leadership and stewardship that connects and stands up for its cause.
Tools and organisational capacity to bring plans to fruition.
Focus on the environment: horizontally towards fellow local authorities, market parties and relevant interest groups; vertically towards higher-level authorities, towards sections of society and towards the natural environment and its carrying capacity.
When launching a new programme, a municipal executive could ask its municipal secretary and group controller to draw up a proposal for this governance section. As leading experts in command and control, they are ideally placed to advise the executive on this matter. Indeed, they may be better suited to do so, as they understand the entire landscape. In this section, the five points mentioned above are linked to the executive’s programme.
It goes without saying that governance itself also requires investment. The world is changing, as are the players, and so too must governance. Sometimes this involves the appropriate structuring of a project, process or programme, but it may also concern the development of new roles, thinking in terms of new scenarios, the reorganisation of organisational units, entering into different forms of collaboration or contractual arrangements, or communicating differently with citizens and businesses. Governance itself must then also be budgeted for, regarded as a critical success factor, and embedded. Quality governance costs money, but it also delivers greater returns and can no longer be regarded as merely an afterthought to the substance.
The governance section is, in anticipation of the council’s own in-control statement to be issued in the near future, actually a logical concept. Governance itself thus becomes a fully-fledged factor within the political and administrative sphere. Something that was sorely needed, however contradictory this may sound. Governance too often appears to be a stepchild, resulting in significant public risks.
Kruf cites several examples in his argument. He also quotes from the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2018, published on the same day. The governance section could broaden the basis for lawful action, both administratively and within the civil service. After all, every euro of taxpayers’ money must be handled with care. And good governance helps with that, he is convinced.
In Kruf’s view, a council programme with a sound and widely supported governance section serves as an inspiration for the success not only of the municipality as an organisation, its executive or council, but also of the municipality as a community of citizens, businesses and institutions, as well as the municipality as a geographical area. In his view, ‘control’ will take on a much more proactive role than it currently does. The reactive role is ‘out’, the proactive role is ‘in’. Control should be able and allowed to play that role. In the coming years, the field of control could evolve into that of governance architecture.
This calls for a new mindset among managers, namely the willingness to bring this knowledge to the forefront of the process. That is not the case at present. Utilising the knowledge, insights, expertise, and skills of (group) controllers and managing directors may well be essential for developing the necessary management capacity. The link between substance and integrated business management, in other words. More, therefore, than just finance and compliance. This is not only challenging but, in fact, calls for a broad reassessment of the expertise of both command and control.
The world has entered a new dynamic. And we know – as Herman Gorter opened his 1889 book ‘Mei’: “A new spring and a new sound…”. In this new spring, substance and governance must be much better linked. The integrated governance section can help with this.
Kruf, J. (2018). PRIMO bepleit Besturingsparagraaf: Van weerstandsparagraaf naar corporate sturing. In J.P. Kruf & E.J. Frank. Publiek Risico: Essays, Stichting Civitas Naturalis, 2020,pp. 708–713.
AI’s intersection with strategic foresight offers both opportunities and challenges.
World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, the OECD Government Foresight Community, and the Dubai Future Foundation | November 2025
“Innovations in AI have opened the door to possible future scenarios that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The technology affects decision-makers around the world, and perhaps none more than practitioners of strategic foresight – the field where experts explore multiple plausible futures and develop strategies to help organizations, governments, and others prepare for events to come. To evaluate AI’s impact on strategic foresight, this white paper presents the results of a survey of 167 foresight experts from 55 countries, drawn from the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, the OECD Government Foresight Community, and the Dubai Future Foundation.
The results show that a majority of foresight practitioners now use AI in their work. Practitioners report that the technology is useful for essential elements of foresight such as trend analysis, future scenario development and identification of emerging themes and issues. Experts primarily value AI for saving time, saying it streamlines their work by handling repetitive and labour-intensive tasks. Respondents also appreciate AI’s ability to process and analyse large datasets, uncovering trends and insights that would be difficult or time-consuming to identify manually.
“As Europe stands at the nexus of intensifying global uncertainties, this flagship report on Current and Emerging Risks in Europe marks a critical step in shaping a more prepared and resilient Union. It offers an integrated scientific analysis of 47 diverse risks-from climate-driven disasters and pandemics to cyber threats and geopolitical instability-highlighting the urgent need for cross-sectoral, whole-of-society action.
Our Member States rightly expect the European Union to anticipate risks and threats and protect them from cascading crises through a coordinated and proactive approach to addressing the evolving risk landscape.
PRIMO Res Publica 