SPS Spotlight: Risk Management and the Nation

If you were given the entire federal budget to do as you wished… how would you spend and allocate it? Enterprise risk management, or “ERM,” is a good way to help think that through. 

At the SPS Spotlight event "Risk Strategy and the Nation: Using Enterprise Risk Management to Protect Citizens and Advance National Goals," Academic Director of the M.S. in Enterprise Risk Management Sim Segal introduced his upcoming white paper on how a national value-based ERM program enhances the ability of a nation to protect its citizens and achieve national goals.

To apply a value-based ERM program at the federal level, Segal says, first answer the following: What are the critical national objectives? What are key metrics for success? Then, value-based ERM helps address follow-up questions. What are key risks? What are key risk scenario impacts or likelihoods? What decisions increase the likelihood of success? 

Value-based ERM marries risk and reward--both sides need each other, Segal says. Also, many ERM programs get lost because they are focusing on too many risks. What is left out is sometimes much more important, because it clarifies critical issues and leads to actions.

Tremendous value is generated when organizations bring together different disciplines, ideas and perspectives--just what the School of Professional Studies aims to do in promoting all-School networking events like the Spotlight series.