Enterprise Risk: The Future of Public Private Partnerships...

When it comes to the overall Business Resilience in a city or geographic region, there are a plethora of Public Private Partnerships that have been in development for decades between government entities and the private sector.

The goal for some, is the simple exchange of information on relevant topics of community and local or federal jurisdictions. Others have a very distinct role and measurable outcomes designed into their structure, to achieve a mutual purpose. The Houston Ship Channel Security District is a rare example:

The Houston Ship Channel Security District, a unique public-private partnership, improves security and safety for facilities, employees and communities surrounding the Houston Ship Channel.

There are other Public Private Partnerships (PPP) that help address the safety and security of the United States, including the FBI's InfraGard program. This is an approach to engaging with private and public sector individuals in a region or sector of critical infrastructure, as opposed to a specific business entity.

The combination of an individual-based intelligence sharing organization of subject matter experts, combined with a more business owner-operator and city, county and state governments model, is one that needs continuous care and oversight to remain effective.

There are hundreds of other local and national models that converge on the goal of a true public private partnership, that never achieve excellence. They continuously miss the mark from several levels of information exchange, coordination, cooperation and collaboration.

These failed attempts at getting the private sector working in concert with government, still comes back to one key criteria for success; people. Regardless of whether you have the funding resources or not, a single or handful of motivated, dedicated and smart people, can and will make the relationship work.

Simultaneously, people can also be the roadblock, the resistance or the problem in getting a public private partnership working as effectively as it could be, to achieve the mission. This is when the mechanisms of governance, oversight and common sense are needed to guide the respective initiatives and operations of the entity either public or private, in the right direction.

You only have to look at the leadership in many cases to understand why there is continuing success in achieving SMART objectives or why there is failure. Service before self-interest is what becomes a major facet of why many of these organizations perish and then you have to examine who is really the beneficiary of the work being done by these dedicated volunteers.

Another effective public private example is the Intelligence National Security Alliance (INSA):

"INSA provides a nonpartisan forum for collaboration among the public, private, and academic sectors of the intelligence and national security communities that bring together committed experts in and out of government to identify, develop, and promote practical and creative solutions to national security problems."

When you are able to converge the thought leaders from a particular vertical discussion area, to produce the best thinking on an Operational Risk topic, the output is extraordinary. The key is to keep these same set of thought leaders together long enough and often enough, for the trust factors to build and for the true sense of collaboration to emerge.

INSA has accomplished this with the "Homeland Security Intelligence Council". Formed in 2010 and now renamed the "Domestic Security Council" and working continuously on a monthly and even bi-weekly basis, they have produced several valuable outcomes from their work together. One example is the white paper produced soon before the tenth and also the fifteenth anniversary event of 9/11.

Homeland Security Intelligence is a discipline that depends on the successful fusion of foreign and domestic intelligence to produce the kind of actionable intelligence necessary to protect the homeland. INSA is one private private organization that realizes this more than others.

The key to public private partnerships in the U.S., the "Enterprise" is not just government when it comes to intelligence and situational awareness. One only has to look at the number of iPhones and camera enabled devices being carried around by hundreds of millions of people to understand this today. Social Media and global real-time information discovery will remain our continuous situational awareness challenge.

The private sector companies, who in many cases are the owners of critical infrastructure assets in the nation remain the power base. The willingness or reluctance to share the right information at the most appropriate time from government and combine it with private sector capabilities, will always be the largest challenge for the public private enterprise going forward.