Background

Of the many functions within the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, the department regulates vehicle recalls in Australia. Upcoming legislative changes meant that the Department would be taking on a greater, and more active, role in management of manufacturers, meaning both a large scaling of work volumes, but also the accountability of a critical regulatory function.

With the coming changes, the Department not only needed to prepare its operational processes to absorb the new activity, but it wanted to lay foundations of leading risk thinking into its approach of navigating uncertainty, and resource prioritisation and response. This meant bedding both practices, and a risk culture.

Outcomes

• Risk characterisation tools and response frameworks to support evaluation and response
• Dashboard monitoring of risk exposure of the entire branch
• Defined accountability and processes through all operational lines in the branch
• Executive leaders and managers trained in applying anti-fragility thinking and risk tools

Insights

• Intelligent tools are important, but must be in concert to an informed and engaged anti-fragile leadership
• Planning your move ahead of future scale or volatility minimises the teething problems that will inevitably occur
• It can never be under-stated that success in risk intelligence must come from a sustained embedding of the thinking to your culture