ABSTRACT
While new risk offices are being set up throughout government, some of them may be short on staffing and resources and some may lack the support of the agency’s program offices. This chapter explores how a new risk office can get the traction required to add value to its agency and earn the credibility required to do its job. With many areas in need of attention, a risk office has considerable flexibility in prioritizing the projects to tackle. The authors’ experience suggests that the risk office initially should seek to solve only a few significant problems, starting with those that particularly concern individual program areas. Managers of individual programs often grapple by themselves with the same kinds of risks that concern other program areas as well. Taking the perspective of the entire organization, the risk office can apply agency-wide data effectively and address these common risks strategically for the entire agency. Solving problems for program areas can lead them to view the risk office as an extension of their own resources rather than fearing it as some sort of watchdog for top management.
