Government at risk: between distributed risks and threats and effective policy-responses

Human-driven and human-centred cybersecurity: policy-making implications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the prevailing, stereotypical approach of the human aspect of cybersecurity, i.e. treating people as weakness or threat. Instead, several reflections are presented, pertaining to the ways of making cybersecurity human-centred.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper bases on the authors’ own experiences, gathered whilst working in cybersecurity projects; the resulting comments and reflections have been enriched and backed up by the results of a targeted literature study.

Findings

The findings show that the way the human aspects of cybersecurity are understood is changing, and deviates from the stereotypical approach.

Practical implications

This paper provides a number of practical recommendations for policymakers, as well as cybersecurity managers on how to make the cybersecurity more human-centred; it also inspires further research directions.

Originality/value

This paper presents a fresh, positive approach to humans in cybersecurity and opens the doors to further discourse about new paradigms in the field.

Who is calling the shot? Risk culture experiments on bi-level governments

Purpose

This study aims to explore how risk culture – tone at the top (TATT) and informed risk decision (IRD) – can affect the effectiveness of risk management (EORM) in the government.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors experimented on 84 civil servants working in central and local governments in Indonesia, focusing on vital local governments and critical ministries/institutions in central governments.

Findings

TATT and its interaction with IRD do not affect the EORM, while IRD and socialization of risk affect and improve it. A weak TATT, low commitment and ineffective implementation of risk culture to the lower-middle echelon may impair a country’s risk management (RM) practice. IRD with socialization is also the key to improving decision-making and RM.

Originality/value

This paper illuminates the possibility of risk culture in regulating the EORM in the governmental general planning process using the experiment as the research method and provides different facets in the application of risk culture in the government, where the focus is on policy-making, budgeting and planning aspects by involving several important ministries, institutions and strategic local government’s civil servants.

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing: Methods, Technologies, Systems, Applications and Policy Making

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Managing the COVID-19 pandemic: does social infrastructure matter? Evidence from India

Purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic educed extraordinary policy responses globally, including in India, to flatten the infection-growth curve. The trajectories of infections, recovery, and deaths vastly differed across Indian states. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether persistent investments by states in critical social sectors, such as health and education, explain their preparedness and hence better management of the pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses secondary data on the number of infected, recovered and deceased due to COVID-19, along with data on population and income across 302 districts in 11 major states in India. Data on health and education indices are collected at the state-level. Linear regression models that also control for heteroskedasticity are applied.

Findings

This study finds that higher investments in health care and education reduce the propensity of the infection spread. Further, states with persistent investments in health care and education exhibit a higher rate of recovery. This study also finds that death rates are significantly lower in states with higher investments in education.

Research limitations/implications

The findings support the conjecture that states that have consistently invested in social sectors benefited from the associated positive externalities during the crisis that helped them manage the pandemic better.

Originality/value

This study will help policymakers understand the underlying social forces critical to the success in the fight against pandemics. Apart from improving preparedness for future pandemics, the evidence provided in the paper may help give better direction and purpose to tax-financed public spending in states where social sector development has hitherto received low priority.

Failing to pull together: South Africa’s troubled response to COVID-19

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a country case study of South Africa’s response during the first six months following its first COVID-19 case. The focus is on the government’s (mis-)management of its non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) (or “lockdown”) to stem the pandemic and the organized business sector’s resistance against the lockdown.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper makes use of a literature review and provides descriptive statistics and quantitative analysis of COVID-19 and the lockdown stringency in South Africa, based on data from Google Mobility Trends, Oxford University’s Stringency Index, Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker and Our World in Data.

Findings

This paper finds that both the government and the business sector’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been problematic. These key actors have been failing to “pull together,” leaving South Africa’s citizens in-between corrupt and incompetent officials on the one hand, and lockdown skeptics on the other. This paper argues that to break through this impasse, the country should change direction by agreeing on a smart or “Goldilocks” lockdown, based on data, testing, decentralization, demographics and appropriate economic support measures, including export support. Such a Goldilocks lockdown is argued, based on available evidence from the emerging scientific literature, to be able to save lives, improve trust in government, limit economic damages and moreover improve the country’s long-term recovery prospects.

Research limitations/implications

The pandemic is an unprecedented crisis and moreover was still unfolding at the time of writing. This has two implications. First, precise data on the economic impact and certain epidemiological parameters was not (yet) available. Second, the causes of the mismanagement by the government are not clear yet, within such a short time frame. More research and better data may be able in future to allow conclusions to be drawn whether the problems that were besetting the country’s management of COVID-19 are unique or perhaps part of a more general problem across developing countries.

Practical implications

The paper provides clear practical implications for both government and organized business. The South African Government should not altogether end its lockdown measures, but follow a smart and flexible lockdown. The organized business sector should abandon its calls for ending the lockdown while the country is still among the most affected countries in the world, and no vaccine is available.

Social implications

There should be better collaboration between government, business and civil society to manage a smart lockdown. Government should re-establish lost trust because of the mismanagement of the lockdown during the first six months of the pandemic.

Originality/value

The outline of the smart lockdown that is proposed for the country combines NPIs with the promotion of exports, as a policy intervention to help aggregate demand to recover. The paper provides advice on how to resolve an impasse created by mismanagement of COVID-19, which could be valuable for decision-making during a crisis, particularly in developing countries.

COVID-19: US shelter-in-place orders and demographic characteristics linked to cases, mortality, and recovery rates

Purpose

This study aims to examine the relationship between the duration (in days) of states’ shelter-in-place orders; state demographic characteristics; and the rates of spread (cases), death (mortality), and recovery of COVID-19 in the USA.

Design/methodology/approach

State-level data across 50 states and Washington D.C. from January 23, 2020, to June 11, 2020, and a multivariate regression analysis were used to empirically investigate the impacts of the duration of shelter-in-place orders and state demographic characteristics on the rates of cases, mortality and recovery per capita of COVID-19.

Findings

This study finds that a longer duration of a shelter-in-place order is associated with lower cases and deaths per capita from COVID-19. This study also finds that demographic characteristics, such as the percentage of people who are unsheltered homeless, family size, percentage of individuals with health insurance, income inequality, unemployment rate, gender and race, are related to cases, mortality and recovery rates of COVID-19.

Social implications

This study offers policy implications for state and locality (e.g., city, region and country) lockdown decisions and salient demographics to consider curbing the spread and mortality rate of the COVID-19 pandemic. Study results are important to consider as the world braces for the anticipated resurgence of COVID-19.

Originality/value

This study reveals that the duration of shelter-in-place orders and demographics in states are related to the rates of spread, mortality, and recovery of COVID-19.

Regulation in the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic times: day-watchman tackling the novel coronavirus

Purpose

While fighting with the novel coronavirus will not be the main goal of sectoral regulators, different regulatory authorities join the struggle by providing a regulatory response. The purpose of this paper is to address this regulatory response in pandemic gathered around eight thematic areas.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper discusses the regulatory response in pandemic gathered around eight thematic areas, namely, the objectives, rules and standards, authorization and permits, procedure, monitoring and surveillance, enforcement, accountability and an institution presenting regulatory actions to tackle coronavirus (COVID-19) in reference to day-watchman type regulation.

Findings

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic should be a knowledge-based approach (taking as much as possible from best available practices with respect to the novel coronavirus) with a framework of rules, standards, authorization, permits and guidance, monitored and enforced in a way adjusted to conditions of the pandemic, being as safe (as non-physical, as online) as possible, with suspended or extended deadlines, free of unnecessary administrative burdens. In this way, regulation should be pragmatic and flexible, as under the day-watchman model.

Research limitations/implications

In a post-pandemic regime, in the short run, the regulators should try to minimize the social and economic challenges faced by consumers and entrepreneurs. Among them, one may find scaling back, at least temporarily, the rules developed in non-disaster contexts. However, in the end, the post-disaster reforms tended to strengthen regulators’ hands, also under the deregulated government. The day-watchman type regulation balances both, as a middle ground approach, being a bridge between “a total subordination” and “a complete release.”

Practical implications

The disaster management (including public law regulation) provided by public authorities when tackling the effects of hurricanes, earthquakes or tsunamis can be a benchmark for regulatory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This concerns the support offered to entities and individuals affected by the negative consequences of reducing or stopping their businesses and staying in isolation.

Social implications

The day-watchman approach, visible in certain examples of public response to COVID-19 may serve as a framework for establishing a regulatory regime that would automatically take effect in case of another pandemic, limiting delays in regulatory actions, reducing non-compliance and accelerating recovery.

Originality/value

This study provides an analysis of different theories on public regulation addressing the notion of regulation using the day-watchman theory, which could be applied in regulatory actions during a pandemic. The paper discusses concrete steps taken by regulatory authorities worldwide, bringing examples from the USA, Canada, the UK, France, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It juxtaposes the regulatory experiences derived from different catastrophes such as hurricanes, earthquakes or tsunamis with the regulatory response in a pandemic.