Local governments are coming to the realization that the world has changed in many ways. Tere are a multitude of risks and challenges that the public sector needs to adapt to and prepare for. From cyber threats to natural disasters, to employee retention, local leaders must understand a changing landscape and make risk management a priority.
In this article, you’ll get a holistic view of the issues your community needs to consider a risk, as well as informative insights into the most critical government risk mitigation techniques to implement in your municipality or county.
Government risk management is the process of a public sector entity considering potential dangers that pose the risk of having an adverse effect on your community and constituents. Typically, once hazardous risks are identified, mitigation techniques are put in place to reduce the potential negative impact.
An all encompassing local government risk management strategy considers natural disasters, cyber attacks, quality of physical and digital infrastructure, dangers to public safety and health, and local economic performance.
For elected officials, additional risks to consider and avoid include losing reelection, receiving negative press, losing government employees, failing to retain government employees, and being unpopular amongst constituents.
While government risk management is the process of considering the risks at hand, government risk mitigation is the actual implementation of techniques to reduce the negative impact of an emergency situation.
Common mitigation techniques include updating antiquated physical and digital infrastructure, encouraging local economic development and job growth, and making an effort to keep government roles filled and processes moving as quickly as possible.
Every local government has its own unique challenges and risks to consider. Geographic location, population size, budgeting, and a myriad of other factors impact which risks to consider and the ability to implement public sector mitigation techniques.
That being said, let’s take a look at the types of questions local government officials need to be asking when considering public sector risk management:
Every local government needs to consider the risk of natural disasters. Obviously, the big difference between regions is which natural disasters to anticipate.
Depending on your geographic location, you should be considering having a risk management strategy for these types of natural disasters:
To mitigate the impact of a natural disaster in your community, your main priorities should include updating infrastructure to withstand a harsh storm and training constituents on natural disaster preparedness.
The most critical key to mitigating the impact of a disaster on local physical infrastructure is to use recommended materials when building new construction or updating antiquated infrastructure. FEMA offers helpful resources about the best types of materials for withstanding each storm category, and even a simple Google search along the lines of “tornado construction standards” will provide helpful insights for planning and budgeting future public construction processes.
As for training constituents, your local government should consider starting a certified emergency response team (if you haven’t already.) A key part of a CERT’s responsibilities includes regular training of constituents on the best techniques for responding to an emergency disaster situation.
The Surfside condo collapse in 2021 left 98 people dead wand was a horrific reminder of the risk that aging infrastructure poses. Slow-moving bureaucratic processes have allowed what was once state-of-the-art infrastructure across the United States like public buildings, roads, bridges, commercial, and residential buildings to age drastically. As we discussed above, much of this infrastructure is not suited to withstand a natural disaster.
To prevent the risk of death in your community as a result of aging infrastructure, your government risk management strategy needs to consider which buildings, roads, and bridges in your community need updating and improve inspection workflows to ensure dangerous hazards don’t go unnoticed in local infrastructure.
Luckily, federal and state governments are aware of the importance of bringing American infrastructure nationally up to a modern standard.
At the current moment, applying for Federal American Rescue Plan Act and Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act grants for infrastructure projects is the best way to take action on mitigating the risks of aging infrastructure. Consider what infrastructure in your community needs a facelift, and present your case to the federal government for the opportunity to make positive change in the structures in your community.
Embracing modern inspection software to be used by your local government and private-sector inspection partners is your best bet for making sure all local infrastructure is safe and secure. A simple mobile application allows inspectors to access properties quickly and smoothly. Once an inspection is complete, the mobile inspection data is automatically uploaded to the cloud and accessible to all local government officials and partners. That means better efficiency performing inspections, time savings for everyone involved, and automatic storage of pertinent inspection data.
Government data breaches are becoming far too common; costing millions in taxpayer dollars and the loss of important and private governments and constituents data. To prevent cyber attacks in your community and ensure the back-up of critical government data, a public sector risk mitigation strategy should include ensuring that your government IT department has the necessary resources and staffing needs and moving away from antiquated physical computer systems towards more secure cloud services with automatic data backup.
As geopolitical competitors like Russia, China, and Iran (and even domestic hackers) continue to strike international government entities and private businesses with ransomware cyber attacks, municipal and county governments need to move swiftly to prevent getting breached. If you’re not proactive, hackers can identify holes in antiquated computer systems and strike.
Your government should recruit information technology experts and use ticketing software to keep government tech issues organized. Great IT workflows paired with expert information technology employees will ensure that your government technology is up to speed, computer systems remain functional across departments, and your cyber secure.
To prevent government data loss, encourage all departments to switch to cloud-based government infrastructure. The cloud is substantially more secure and difficult for hackers to break into, and automatically backs up government data on a frequent basis.
Your local government should have a finalized Local Government Cybersecurity Management Plan like the one deployed in New York to help your municipality stay on top of cybersecurity measures in your locality.
Encouraging local economic development is a crucial responsibility of a municipal or county government. Unfortunately, national and international variables can impact how the economy is performing in your own backyard.
That said, you can manage the impact of an economic downturn by encouraging local business registration and leveraging commercial and residential construction projects to create more jobs, encourage people to move in, and increase the amount of dollars being spent in your community.
Even if the national economy tanks, doubling down on the local economic opportunities in your area will ensure constituents are able to continue to work and make a living in a time of hardship.
Here are a few ways to locally mitigate the risk of an economic downturn:
Employee retention is a major challenge for the private sector as a whole. With more competitive salaries and benefits in private sector roles, convincing qualified talent to go with the public sector is easier said than done.
Having open job roles and being unable to find good talent pose major risks for the continuity of local government. That means, in order to maintain bureaucratic workflows to the best of your local government’s abilities, your risk management strategy will need to consider employee recruiting and retention.
To mitigate the risk of open job roles hindering government processes, you’ll need to double down on keeping government workers happy and motivated.
To do so, here are a few recommendations to recruit and maintain employees:
Managing local covid-19 protocol was a major responsibility of local governments in recent years. Unfortunately, disorganization and a lack of preparedness for adjusting to remote work resulted in many local governments falling flat on their duties.
As for public safety, preparing for work-case scenarios like terrorist attacks or mass shootings also fall on the local government.
A government risk management strategy needs to consider any emergency situation that puts the health and safety of your constituents at risk and take action to mitigate the impact.
There are many ways you can improve on the health of your constituents, including:
To encourage consistent public safety, mitigation techniques include:
As a leader in local government, you have risks to consider as a public facing individual in your community. Here are a few of the risks you need to keep in mind for maintaining a positive image and getting re-elected.
Here are a few types of issues to consider in your own personal government official risk management strategy:
Your local government clearly has a lot to think about. Be it a natural disaster, a cyber attack, a Covid outbreak, or an economic downturn, major risks loom in the future that need to be addressed before it’s too late.
The key takeaway here: be proactive instead of reactive. Leverage federal grants to update your antiquated infrastructure, hire and retain great government employees, and embrace government software to improve government workflows that will lead to more productivity towards mitigating major risks in your community and boost the local economy.
To learn more about how government software can help, schedule a consultation.
Government risk management (also referred to as enterprise risk management) is the process of considering which threats pose the largest risk to your community. Government risk mitigation is the actual process of taking action to reduce the overall impact of a potential thread.
Government software wields the power to mitigate risks across the board. Cloud-based storage allows for online filing of paperwork and automatically backs up data. Technology known as robotic process automation reduces time spent on mindless administrative tasks across departments, improving efficiency and letting government workers focus on more important and meaningful work. All of these improved workflows make it easier for businesses to register, constituents to request documents, new (natural disaster proof) construction to get completed, and for the local economy to thrive.
Above are just a few of the ways that municipal tech can mitigate risks like ransomware attacks, aging infrastructure, natural disasters, and high employee turnover.
For more local government resources, read on:
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