Resilience Revealed: 4 Areas Worth Considering

Government resilience anticipates the unknown. From the federal layer down, agencies face nearly limitless obstacles. Internally, the shocks can range from power outages to abrupt leadership changes. Externally, everything from flooding to violent crime can jolt agencies out of functioning smoothly. With most of the public sector online, the hiccups are no longer merely physical. Nowadays, cybersecurity mishaps can cause as much upheaval at agencies as traditional stumbling blocks. But anticipating the unknown is not the only quality resilient agencies have. Resilient agencies also have people, processes and technology that strengthen their overall durability. Agility and flexibility link these three categories. Agencies with nimbler employees, tools and workflows are more capable of adapting to unforeseen circumstances. For instance, resilient employees feel empowered to swiftly address any fiasco, even if it means switching gears on their daily duties. Furthermore, these workers are prepared for the circumstances facing them, having brainstormed and practiced the response and recovery steps they take. Crucially, these people do not believe they are weighed down by leadership, technology or workflows when encountering setbacks.

Subsequently, government resilience hinges on imagination and

responsiveness. For starters, agencies that cannot envision stunning moments cannot be ready for them; agencies that cannot react rapidly to speedbumps, meanwhile, need more time to resume operations after a stumble. Below are four areas of resilience worth considering, with four recent developments from each one containing information agencies should know about this topic.