Public sector - Risk

For a public body in research and innovation – Identify, map and analyze risks associated with Trusted research and grants

The client and context:

· The client specializes in the research and innovation branch of the government.

· They need support in identifying, mapping and analyzing risks associated with trusted research and grants on a large scale to see what falls under high risk and their mitigations.

· Concerns were sighted associated with government funding to certain individuals where risk is seemingly high and in territories that are considered unfriendly.

The challenges:

· There is a very large set of data to go through including identifying new data sets from desk research.

· Sensitive data sets that were availed to us were largely qualitative and incomplete or raw and requires time to decipher and assemble to properly assess and evaluate.

· Many stakeholders were involved, internally or externally, whereby not all were available and data gathering was difficult due to client-related limitations.

What we Did:

· Took all the data sets and overran days, nights and weekends to decipher and assemble what’s needed in a proper format for friendly reading with focus on high level risk.

· Worked thoroughly with stakeholders and maintained open communication with all of them through our senior consultants, as well as our backoffice support.

· Mapped the risks associated with the high risk-related government funded research and grants under subject risks and geopolitical/sociopolitical risks, and included maturity assessments through phases.

· Investigated those risks with the funding recipients to qualitatively assess what they are doing about it, how the client is supporting them, and the missing gaps.

· Categorized risks into IP risk and Data risk associated with the government and what would be an issue especially with high risk countries.

· Maintained timely meetings, steercos, and deliverables on time even though some requisites were expected in a relatively short span of time that required our delivery team to work days and nights.

What we achieved:

Identified a detailed series of recommendations, steps to take and audits to perform in order to control the risks, reduce future similar occurrences, and avoid unwanted disadvantages related to working with high-risk subjects where the objective is important.