Presentation by Jack Radisch, Senior Project Manager of the OECD High Level Risk Forum, at the 6th Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management in Geneva on 12-13 June 2017. The event was organised by the OECD and the Swiss Federal Chancellery, bringing together government crisis managers and practitioners from international organisations, industry and leading think-tanks to share strategic insights and cutting-edge policy responses. For further information please see http://www.oecd.org/governance/6th-workshop-strategic-crisis-management.htm

1. CONCLUDING
REFLECTIONS
6th Meeting of the OECD Network of Strategic Crisis
Managers
JACK RADISCH,
OECD PUBLIC GOVERNANCE DIRECTORATE

2. Who is on the island in a critical
infrastructure crisis?
• Society?
• Government?
• Both?

3. The roles of government in critical
infrastructure crises are:
• Information sharing (classified and
unclassified, sharing best practices, and
forum for exchange of expertise).
• Capacity building (giving tools to CI
operators).
• Incident response (governments “should”
want to make sure they are ready to help
society to recover quickly and help citizens
re-establish normality).

4. There is a strong connection between
planning and crisis management:
– Prepare a checklist of strategic decisions that a leader
has to make in a crisis: Do we shut down the internet?
Do we send in the military? Do we evacuate?
– Horizon scanning is an important tool for getting
ahead of the crisis.
– How can governments better plan to reduce the
number of ‘Black Swan’ events? Examine big changes
in markets and corporate structures to identify new or
emerging vulnerabilities, develop relationships with
the relevant actors through government.
– Example: building appropriate infrastructure to
transport highly explosive fuel rather than relying on
existing railway systems.

5. Good data= good decisions, bad data =
bad decisions
• How well do governments understand the
interconnections between CI sectors? e.g. between
electricity and gas? -In New York, truck racks were
the final fulcrum… but it was learned after the fact….
• Storm surge maps do not represent in granular detail
the reality of the storm surge: Example-
– South side power station was shut down due to concern of
storm sure. This protected it from malfunction.
– However, not shutting down the east side station meant
7 000 more people went without power for a week.
• Governments need to improve the quality of
communication between forecasting services and CI
operators. Where are they getting their information?

6. Final messages (1)
• Governments need to plan for a wider variety
of events. They need to push the envelope
and look at those scenarios that are just
beyond the possible.
– It requires a deeper relationship between the
players. Is this a role OECD can support
governments with to fulfil Sendai commitments?
• Trust cannot be built during an incident. It
needs to be established with the partners
over the years and used during the incident.

7. Final messages (2)
• Governments need to develop a robust
understanding of CI systems.
– Support research that examines how they could
fail to plan what to do, if they do fail.
• Run exercises on disruptions to CI systems.
– What do disruptions look like in scenario form?
– It provokes thinking about how to tell the
difference between a bad event and a very bad
event, what actions are needed when, and what
interests can be affected by decisions.

8. Final messages (3)
• Identify the signs of failing infrastructure
systems.
– To get ahead of a crisis and issue the earliest
credible warnings possible to authorities who
can take or put in motion countermeasures.
– Determine what messages resonate with the
public and infrastructure operators and who is
trusted to deliver it.

9. Next steps
• Toolkit (Invite contributions) Blog, or thematic.
• Risk governance support SCM chapter by Jine
30th.
• Thank our Swiss hosts and partners.
• We look forward to carrying this forward.
• If there is an interest on the part of a country to
host a meeting of this network from 2017-2019,
please contact us.