‍SRLA MONTHLY NEWSLETTER August 2024

‍From the President’s Desk

Dear Reader! Welcome to our August newsletter, which I hope will be another thought-provoking read for you. Summer is often such a time when we rethink the work we have done, loosen our minds to crystallize lessons learned, and to dream about bright new ideas to provoke further thinking or to initiate when we all are back to hard work again. As just one suggestion, let me invite our readers to consider joining SRLA in its ambitious project of shaping Resilient City^CAF Framework. It is envisaged as an addition to the existing Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for better Quality and Governance in Public Administration (https://www.kdz.eu/en/services/caf-centre) with the focus on shaping resilience of public sector organizations in Europe.

We are inviting European municipalities and local authorities to join our consortium of leading organizations (including our partners UDiTE[1] and NALAS[2]) in the field to shape the ResilientCity^CAF Framework and to be the first to pilot it. Please, if interested, contact directly me at magda.stepanyan@srla.eu or Thomas Prorok, SRLA Board Member and Managing Director at KDZ-Centre for Public Administration Research at thomas.prorok@srla.eu We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Magda Stepanyan
SRLA President

‍SRLA in the news

SRLA is shaping a flagship initiative towards producing industry-driven policy solutions. In the most recent 20-30 years we have witnessed a proliferation of various standards related to management processes—be those of an informal “guiding” nature or those requiring certification. As the management field develops and acquires new expectations to address ever-evolving complex reality around us, the attempts to shape yet another standard in a highly complex context might trigger, rather, resistance. At SRLA we think that the solution lies in creating a ‘mechanism’ and a ‘process’ to produce timely and tailored industry-driven solutions—thereby influencing policy making in such a way to allow enabling policy-solutions recognizing the time limitations of each solution, hence, policy sunset.

Of course, the importance of shaping benchmarks through standards remains critical. However, the parallel processes of industry-driven policy solutions should allow for customization. Indeed, this was a subject of a recent discussion between the SRLA President, Magda Stepanyan and the Chair of the ISO Risk Management Committee, Russell Price. During this rich exchange of ideas, the idea was coined by SRLA to explore how to give credibility to industry-driven policy solutions through standardizing the ‘mechanisms’ and ‘processes’ rather than their outcomes. As Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety suggests “only variety absorbs variety”. At SRLA we think this vision would allow industries to produce their own recommendations for policy solutions and shaping the normative environment most conducive for their performance, rather than imposing outcomes on organizations.

SRLA Bookshelf

Strengthening public-consultation mechanisms for prompt reaction to changing circumstances

Rebecca Emily Dalli Gonzi is an architect, project coordinator and lecturer, tutoring risk management as a resident academic at the University of Malta.  She has founded The DALI Model for organisational risk assessment used particularly when departments undergo rapid change. This model has been presented as an empirically tested proactive model in a specific environment for managing operational risk. 

The success of public participation in a decision-making era of fast reaction response to some critical global shifts is crucial as providing services with increasing financial loads, social upheaval and administrative inefficiency is now the norm. Public service organisations have faced more demands to deliver than ever before, as environmental disturbances like climate change, severe weather conditions, pandemic outbreaks and war, have affected decision-making structures in situations where a stable service supply in areas such as health, transport, water, food security and IT, amongst others is key to survival.

Government effectiveness depends on meeting citizen requirements especially in fields that could be impacted by significant budget cutbacks or an external fast change events. In response, strategies using accelerated public consultation procedures to match strategic decision-making can be effective only if they deliver the service promised at the time it was needed. Thus, public involvement is feasible only within a shorter feedback time if better results are to be collated during times of transition. Nevertheless, what is the position of large industrial collaborators in terms of their contribution given that any mistake made at policy level greatly affects their position, making the recovery rather expensive? The main goal of enhancing public-consultation mechanisms is covered by its scope: Structural preparedness for expedient decision-making and reduced reaction times. If the time required for change to be executed does not match fast change at front-line, how successful is public consultation or regimental government authority when large industry is at stake?

Combining components of business continuity management, emergency response, and data sharing procedures forms part of a bigger response including parts fit for requirements in public sector organisational methods. One of the results is a tool for enhancing public consultation approaches to handle strategic management choices, bridging the gap between strategic decisions and speedier responsiveness to industrial needs at large. Outcomes show that this approach to public consultation offers: (i) direct engagement with a faster feedback input; (ii) citizen contribution fed directly to strategic level and, (iii) generating a rapid cycle for response to address changing industry needs.

According to public sector research, strong governance systems are needed to meet demanding conditions and this implies having to come up with innovative ideas in unpredictable circumstances, which, is very hard especially in departments heavily affected by top-down control and bureaucratic procedures. A shift in approach is now in high demand if front-line operations and industrial partners are to effectively implement their response plans, feeding policy-makers the right method to government and not vice-versa. In addition, organisational management is a complex environment, so a poor reaction to change may seriously compromise the continuity of any governmental service. As an ambassador to SRLA, research has made possible an opportunity to strengthen the public management educational sector by establishing enhanced public-consultation mechanisms in adapting to an increase in complexity of needs and shorter timescales, which is now an everyday course of action.

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Meet a SRLA Board Member Xavier Boivert

As far back as I can remember, my career has always revolved around risk management in public administration. Initially, as a management controller, I was trained (Master’s degree) and then I taught (military professional training), and most importantly, I served as a management controller and audited other management controllers. This was my primary role as an army administration officer from 1999 to 2010.

Then, I felt the need to move to a more strategic level in my management career, and I began a new phase as a leader in local government (cities, to be more specific). There, I retained my expertise in risk management and applied it with varying degrees of success in managing public services.

What I take away from these 25 years of diverse experiences is the importance of a minimum common understanding of risk among everyone, especially at the strategic level, and the difficulty of truly incorporating anticipation into situation assessments. While it is easy to highlight the necessity of risk management in certain contexts (high-intensity crises, health issues, process certification, etc.), the concept of risk often goes unheard and is easy to bypass for leaders who do not want to be burdened by realities and constraints. This is why I believe in the need to improve our shared culture and our level of risk management, particularly among leaders and experts, and this is why I strongly support the SRLA project.

Experts' Corner from SRLA Member

Risk at the Coal Face: Part III

Risk Causation: dichotomy, duality or both? Towards a simpler system of risk classification.

By John Schembri, MSc. SRM (L’cstr.); PgC, OHS (P’mth); SIRM; CBCI.

An ex-Serviceman of eighteen years’ experience in operations and command, John has held a Master of Science degree in security risk management from the world-renowned Scarman Centre, University of Leicester, UK, since 2001. He has extensive experience in critical infrastructure, specializing in resilience, digitalization of risk management and operations in challenging environments.

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