Critical Infrastructure Protection
Question 1
Protecting critical infrastructure in Australia has become vital and a high priority to both the state and federal governments in Australia. Since most of the critical infrastructure in Australia is privately operated or owned it has become very important to build a partnership between government and business and ensure that critical infrastructure is effectively protected from terrorism and all hazards such as floods, tsunami, and fire among many other hazards. The Australian government defines critical infrastructure as supply chains, physical facilities, communication networks, and technologies that when they are destroyed they have a significant impact on the economic and social well-being of the nation as well as affecting the ability of Australia to ensure national security (Partnerships, 2011). The Federal government considers emergency services as important government services that make up the critical infrastructure in Australia. The state government and federal government through the police, emergency services, fire, and professional organizations both work together in protecting critical infrastructure.
Both the state and federal governments are entitled to take a comprehensive approach to risk management. The state government and federal government-run emergency services that help cover the major threats to the infrastructure despite the source of these threats. As such threats could be natural disasters, vandalism, and attacks. More so, the state government engages in coordinated efforts through various ranges of actors such as private and public actors to ensure that critical infrastructure is protected (Yusta, Correa & Lacal-Arántegui, 2011). The National Counter-Terrorism Committee provides comprehensive guidelines for protecting critical infrastructure from terrorism. These guidelines are to be adopted by both the state and the federal government. State and territory governments should be responsible for distributing the guidelines as they have made the identification of which infrastructure is critical within their territories or jurisdiction. More so, state and federal governments are mandated with prevention and response to incidents that threatened the security of the infrastructure.
To coordinate the protection of critical infrastructure, the Federal Government set up the Critical Infrastructure Advisory Council to tackle both the security threats including both natural and manmade disasters. Critical Infrastructure Advisory Council platform for the integration of better efforts for enhanced resilience and protection of the critical infrastructure
Question 2
Sutcliffe & Wieck argue that High-Reliability Organizations are preoccupied with failure in that they strive to detect small and emerging failures since they may help point to bigger failures in the organization (Christianson at al., 2011). These organizations also anticipated failures and ensure that risks are mitigated. As such high-reliability organizations succeed in avoiding any catastrophes in the environment where normal accidents and dangerous events are expected due to complexity and risk factors. These organizations are seen as models for others. Essentially, high-reliability organizations are built on five traits that include sensitivity to operations, reluctance to oversimplify, deference to expertise, preoccupation with failure, and resilience. Examples of high-reliability organizations include airlines that can detect small failures and devise critical response as well as developing resilience. Such organizations are often preoccupied with failure rather than success which helps them stand in the time of adversity and challenges.
However, high-reliability organizations are not very immune to failures. Many organizations that are labeled as being high reliability can fail catastrophically. Such organizations could face a major accident each day and still fail to stand out as a high-reliability organization. Warning signs, for instance, maybe obvious in retrospect and it may become impossible to discern the significance of early signs beforehand. Even though there were several warnings before the disaster at Three Mile Island Nuclear power station in 1979 it was impossible to distinguish the noise from the signal beforehand. Signals, therefore, can only be viewed as background noise until their meanings are disclosed through an accident (Hales & Chakravorty, 2016). Warning signs, therefore, are ambiguous and may have unproblematic or innocent explanations. The most critical action is to investigate the signals that are appearing until they have been demonstrated to have innocent explanations or have been confirmed to be unambiguous indicators of danger. This is what mindfulness organizations do. Mindfulness organizations conduct interpretive work that reveals the true significance of the signals.
Question 3
Partnerships between private and public sectors have proven that it can play a fundamental role in building the resilience of the society against major impacts of the disasters as well as in protecting the critical infrastructure. Public and private sector forms collaborative partnerships across all levels of the government, business, individuals, and non-government sector. At the heart of public-private center cooperation is to form a robust capacity or ability of the physical systems that respond and recover from the effects of extreme events and also minimize the disruptions to functions and structures. The concept of risk reduction in the event of a disaster is to identify and address the disaster risk as well as evaluating how the risks can be reduced, transferred, and accepted. Public-private partnerships help address the question of when happens when a disruption occurs. The synergy created by public-private partnership helps in the process of preparing as well as responding to the eventual actualization of the increasingly diverse hazards.
The Australian govern met knows that public-private partnerships help in building the reliability and confidence in the continued provision of critical protection infrastructure services that would help in supporting the national security, social and economic well-being in the communities. The Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) that was established in 2003 forms the basis of formidable government and private sector partnership approach to ensuring that critical infrastructure is given protection. TSN members include both operators and owners of the critical infrastructure, State, Territory, and Federal government as well as other agency representatives. TISN was instituted to raise awareness of the risks to critical infrastructure and share information. This partnership also helps in sharing techniques that are required to evaluate and mitigate risks and hazards and build resilience capacity within the communities and organizations (Abou-Bakr, 2012). The private and public sector has allowed government, industry, and competitors in sharing information as well as in collaborating on common subjects through cross-sectional and specific activities. Ideally, solutions to domestic security and protection to critical infrastructure can only be developed in a trusted environment where both public and private sectors play a role.
Question 4
Many emergency management plans fail due to several factors that range from poor planning and inaccurate contact information between emergency response teams and external resources. Therefore, organizations, businesses, and the government should have plans in place if an emergency or disaster occurs. Some organizations such as the government and hospitals require disaster recovery plans to be in place to help in mitigating the likely hazards and risks when a disaster has occurred (Cowick & Cowick. 2019). Failure to plan makes a chaotic situation that can be detrimental to business and society. An emergency plan is likely to fail if not practiced beforehand. Disaster plans should be exercised regularly. This may include going through the motions since this is when mistakes can be caught such as lack of pre-identified gathering location and blocked escape route. Inconsistencies in the emergency plans would, therefore, render it less potent in managing disasters and in the recovery process.
The other reason why emergency management plans fail is due to a failure to communicate with the applicable personnel. When the emergency management plans have been created, all people identified in the plan from health professionals, ambulance drivers, CEOs, police, firefighters, government personnel, and other stakeholders should understand their roles and responsibilities when an emergency has occurred. This would help in coordinating the response to a disaster or an emergency when it occurs. More so, an emergency management plan is likely to fail if it contains too much or too little information about the communication, personnel, and coordination process (Canton, 2019). Leaving out vital information may hinder personnel in evacuation responses and recovery. Including too much information also may be cumbersome especially when looking for the specifics in the emergency management plans. Failure to review the emergency management plan regularly may also be disastrous. Emergency plans must be reviewed regularly and updated every six months. Over time many changes occur such as operations and employees and organizational growth as well as physical changes of critical infrastructure and this necessitates the need to review the emergency management plans
References
Abou-Bakr, A. J. (2012). Managing disasters through public-private partnerships. Georgetown University Press.
Busch, N. E., & Givens, A. D. (2013). Achieving resilience in disaster management: the role of public-private partnerships. Journal of strategic security, 6(2), 1-19.
Christianson, M. K., Sutcliffe, K. M., Miller, M. A., & Iwashyna, T. J. (2011). Becoming a high-reliability organization. Critical care, 15(6), 314.
Canton, L. G. (2019). Emergency Management: Concepts and strategies for effective programs. John Wiley & Sons.
Cowick, C., & Cowick, J. (2019). Planning for a disaster: Effective emergency management in the 21st century. In Emergency and Disaster Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 142-163). IGI Global.
Hales, D. N., & Chakravorty, S. S. (2016). Creating high-reliability organizations using mindfulness. Journal of Business Research, 69(8), 2873-2881.
Partnerships, P. P. (2011). Public-Private Partnerships and Disaster Resilience.
Yusta, J. M., Correa, G. J., & Lacal-Arántegui, R. (2011). Methodologies and applications for critical infrastructure protection: State-of-the-art. Energy Policy, 39(10), 6100-6119.