risk

Last week, The IBM Center for The Business of Government released our most recent “Call for Research Proposals” – a guide to what key challenges faced by government will benefit from Center-sponsored reports in the next several years.  The Center solicits proposals that result in reports that have sound research, insightful findings, and actionable recommendations for government leaders and public managers in the following areas of interest – challenges that we consider to be six driver

The Center’s new report is the result of multiple interviews with government leaders, an assessment of research and reports on challenges and opportunities from the Center and many other sources; and a roundtable involving key government, academic, and industry officials last May.  

Given budget austerity and increasingly complex challenges facing government executives, managing risk in the public sector has increasingly taken on new significance. Risks take on many forms, including national security risks via cyber­attacks, economic risks from natural disasters, budget and program risks, or privacy risk. However, government leaders lack an accepted culture and framework in which to properly understand, manage, and communicate risk.

As the world becomes more digitized and interconnected, the door to emerging threats and proprietary data leaks has opened wider. The number of security breaches affecting enterprises across numerous industries continues to grow, seemingly day-by-day. Once a topic restricted to the IT organization, it is now unquestionably a C-suite priority. A strong plan for risk management throughout the organization has become essential.

Engaging leaders in protecting an organizations’ cyber, IT, and information assets is a critical starting point to effective security. A next logical step for any government or commercial organization is to leverage risk management and analytics to implement a mission-based security program. As organizations move forward, guidance from NIST and evolving capabilities in industry are merging to paint a path forward for agencies to follow.

In meeting varied missions, government executives confront significant challenges. Responding properly to them must be guided and informed by the harsh fiscal and budgetary realities of the day. It can no longer be simply a wishful platitude that government do more with less. Leaders need to change the way government does business to make smarter use of increasingly limited resources—leveraging technology and innovation to be more efficient, effective, anticipatory, adaptive, and evidence-based in delivering missions and securing the public trust.

From the OMB “Cloud First” strategy, to GSA’s Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the government is following commercial best practices to leverage the cloud.

Cloud capabilities can be provided over the public Internet or through connections over private networks -- and government does both. Some agencies establish private clouds due to perceived risks of making data available over public channels. At the same time, they are moving toward greater use of the open Internet, including public clouds.

We are pleased to announce our latest round of awards for new reports on key public sector challenges, which respond to priorities identified in the Center's long-term research agenda, see businessofgovernment.org/content/research-stipends.

We expect the following reports to be published in early 2015.  Details of each report are included in the below short summaries.

Creating Organizational Self-Defense