As expectations on Local Governments increase, management of the risks involved in providing public services becomes a major priority. In its drive to provide better and safer service to the community, the City of Salisbury has developed a risk management model that is applicable across the many diverse functions of the organisation.
Management of the City’s risks protects its employees, assets, liabilities and the community against potential losses, minimises uncertainty in achieving its goals and objectives and maximises the opportunities to achieve its vision.
City of Salisbury Business Analyst, Lachlan Miller, said risk management was not a new concept within the organisation.
“The challenge was embedding a risk management culture into the City’s planning and operations,” he said. “The culture then needed to be supported by a robust model that could be applied across the many functions of Council.”
Key requirements of the prospective model included the following.
- Consistency with the Risk Management Standard (AS:4360).
- Strong links to the City’s planning processes.
- An assessment system to support the comparability and ranking of risks across the organisation.
- Evaluation criteria consistent with the City’s level of risk tolerance.
- A risk registration and reporting regime that promoted risk ownership and clear responsibility for mitigation.
A review of the products available on the market revealed an inability to meet all of the key requirements and as a result, the City’s Risk and Audit Steering Committee decided to develop an inhouse solution.A model was designed with graduated City specific consequence ratings across the areas of impact, including political/social/environmental; economic/financial; legal/regulatory; organisational management/human factors; and customer service/business continuity.
The aim was to reduce the level of subjectivity inherent in more generic models, while increasing the comparability of risk severity across diverse areas of impact.
Supporting the model is a web based Risk Register, which enables risk owners, management and other staff to view and generate reports on key risks and mitigation strategies.
The model was implemented as part of the City’s 2002 Business Planning and Budgeting Process. In keeping with the City’s philosophy of continual improvement, the model will be evaluated at the completion of the process to identify and incorporate improvements.
For further information contact Lachlan Miller, telephone (08) 8406 8242.
