Preparing governments for future shocks

Government leaders increasingly indicate that what were previously viewed as Black Swan events are now becoming more frequent — and more destabilizing — shocks. The past three years saw acceleration toward a connected world where physical goods and digital services are increasingly interdependent. The vulnerability of social and economic well-being is laid bare by reliance on connectivity and distributed value chains subject to disruption on multiple fronts. The IBM Center for The Business of Government and the IBM Institute for Business Value, and in partnership with the National Academy of Public Administration (the Academy), has launched an initiative to help government identify core capabilities critical to building such resilience, and make progress toward addressing major national and international priorities including the Grand Challenges in Public Administration put forth by the Academy.

Through this initiative, we are convening a series of international roundtable discussions with global leaders from across the public, private, academic, and non-profit sectors to capture lessons across six key domain areas: Emergency Preparedness and Response, Cybersecurity, Supply Chain, Sustainability, Workforce Skills, and International Cooperation. In each domain, we will harvest insights from the roundtables to identify strategies and solutions for governments to act. Learn more about the initiative by reading the blog, ‘Preparing Governments for Future Shocks’ or listening to the podcast interview overview.

The first roundtables convened leaders in emergency management, cybersecurity, and supply chain for insightful discussions of actionable, and practical steps to build resilience by preparing for future shocks. Learn more by reading the roundtable read ahead documents, summary blog posts, and final report. This section will be updated periodically as we release new content.

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