Fundamentals of Risk Management

Risk assurance
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Some governments are beginning to realize the complexity of national security and have 
invented new language, like ‘the comprehensive approach’, in the hope that this will solve 
the problem. But mostly, in so far as the ‘comprehensive approach’ exists at all, it does so in 
theory but is pretty well absent in practice on the ground where it matters.
Meanwhile, government structures and cultures remain resolutely stuck in the past. 
Ministers are judged on how well they defend the territorial integrity of their department, 
preserve its budget and defend its payroll. Senior civil servants have a similar attitude. 
Networking with other departments is regarded as a threat, not an opportunity. Vertical 
hierarchies and stove-piped minds know that they ought to be networking, but find it 
impossible to do so. What is needed is a wholesale restructuring of government along more 
modern lines.
Government structures
accident, cyber-attack and animal disease. If the government were to use this struc-
ture, it would appear that the government is cautious about major industrial accidents, 
attacks on infrastructure and severe weather. The government is concerned about 
coastal flooding and attacks on crowded places. Finally, the risk attitude analysis 
appears to suggest that the government is identifying the critical issue facing national 
security as pandemic human disease.
Looking back 100 years and more, the protection of national security was fairly 
straightforward. Government would focus its attention on national defence using 
armed forces, with the particular expertise in land and sea defence. Nowadays,
however, protection of national security is much more complicated. The box below 
questions the ability of traditional government structures to tackle this complexity.

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