SRLA at ICMA: The Power of AI in Local Government
At the ICMA - International City/County Management Association Summit in Hasselt, Flanders, Thomas Prorok, Member of the SRLA Board, had the honor of speaking about the profound impact of Artificial Intelligence on the organization and staff of local government. Here are the key highlights:
👥 **Impact on Staff**: It’s vital to focus on how AI affects our staff. We must encourage responsible and vigilant use of AI, empowering employees while ensuring ethical standards are upheld.
🔍 **Evolution of Digital Services**: We’ve seen a rapid transformation from online services to e-government, and now to full-scale digitalization with AI. However, it’s crucial to note that many foundational steps remain unfulfilled.
🌟 **Inspiring Practices**: There is an urgent need for more insights and comprehensive overviews of best practices to truly harness AI’s potential.
⚠️ **Risk Preparedness**: As we embrace AI, it’s essential to prepare for associated risks, ensuring that local governments are equipped to handle these challenges effectively. We invite to join the new initiative of „Strategic Risk Leadership Association“ which brings together experts and knowledge from Europe and US to foster Risk Management in Public Sector (SRLA).
We are looking forward to continuing this dialogue and collaborating with experts to advance human-centered AI and technological innovations with a specific focus on the risks in local governance.
SRLA meets ANSEK
On Friday, the 24th of May, Prof. Simon Grima, on behalf of SRLA, met with the executive committee of the National Association for Local Council and Regional Executive Secretaries - MALTA (ANSEK). A registered non-governmental organisation set up to safeguard the interests of the Executive Secretaries of the Local Authorities of Malta. This organisation aims to ensure a high level of professionalism by its members, assists in strengthening Local Councils' operations in general, assists the Department for Local Government in matters related to Council operations and promotes and assists in all aspects of local governance in particular on ways how to improve the level of service to the public.
During this meeting, Prof Grima explained the setup of SRLA, its objectives, and its role. We discussed how SRLA can benefit local councils and the importance of education in risk management. We discussed the importance of continuous professional development (CPD) and training on soft skills, continuity management, tendering for projects and European funding, procurement, dealing with complaints, the risk register, complaints register etc. and how these fit in Risk Management.
Above all, we discussed that there should be a policy that enforces ANSEK members to have a minimum CPD hours per year approved by ANSEK, and how SRLA can help in doing this. We also spoke about the SRLA's memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the University of Malta and how this MOU can benefit both ANSEK and SRLA.
Dr Grima concluded by thanking Mr. Paul Gatt – President, for the cordial invitation to meet the ANSEK Executive Committee of Local and regional councils.
SRLA Bookshelf
The SRLA Bookshelf is a monthly feature of the Newsletter and highlights new and notable publications of books, reports, and other research on strategic risk leadership, including—but not limited to—the work of SRLA Members. This month we feature a recent article written by Torben Juul Andersen and Peter C. Young entitled Enhancing Public Sector Enterprise Risk Management Through Interactive Information Processing.
Much has been written about technological tools to advance ERM practices. This is understandable. In the US, for example, federal agencies are increasingly expected to adopt ERM. However, public sector adoption of ERM has typically focused on the economic efficiency of tax-financed activities based on control-based practices. This reflects an emphasis on quantifiable concerns that invariably directs attention to risk, that (by definition) relates to identifiable and measurable events, thereby downplaying uncertain and unknown aspects of public exposures. In this article it is noted that this is a potentially serious shortcoming as government entities often act as society's risk managers of last resort. When extreme events happen what were previously considered private matters can quickly turn into public obligations. Hence, there is a need for proactive assessments of the evolving public risk landscape to discern unpredictable-even unknowable-developments.
The article may be accessed at:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frma.2023.1239447/full
Just a note on last month’s newsletter, where the SRLA Resource Center was announced as ‘coming soon.’ Indeed, it will be coming soon, and readers should expect to see it emerging on our website over the next few months!
