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Other federal agencies also face a wide range of risks. Some are external, others are internal. Some are financial (such as having to deal with managing under Sequester or the market impact on external investments in pension funds, which could affect federal pension guarantees). Some are operational, such as those faced by FERC, or cybersecurity threats, or even insider threats. And some are reputational, such as the recent accusations of Patent Office telework abuse, or the General Services Administration’s lavish conferences scandal.

One former federal leader, Todd Grams, observes that agencies that ignore risk are actually creating risk. Not surprisingly, there has been increasing interest in agencies in recent years in developing a risk management function. So what does it look like? The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) in the Department of Education undertook efforts a decade ago to create a risk management function, which may serve as inspiration for other agencies considering the same.

Risk experts Doug Webster and Tom Stanton think not. Writing in a new report for the IBM Center for The Business of Government, they observe: “The front pages of national newspapers constantly report on actions by private companies, federal leaders, or agencies that do not appear to have considered the risks associated with various decisions and actions.

A 2015 survey of federal employees reports that 39 percent fear reprisals if they report violations of rules or laws. This potentially has serious implications for their willingness to identify and report serious programmatic risks in their day-to-day jobs, and the tendency is to avoid or ignore risks.