Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 24, 2018 (SKNIS): The one-day Enterprise Risk Management Policy and Risk Assessments Seminar held for permanent secretaries on Monday, July 24, provided an avenue for fruitful collaboration across government ministries and departments.
“I find that it is promoting a lot of collaboration and I think that is absolutely necessary so that we don’t have systems that duplicate each other in other words a lot of redundancies in our ministries. From my take, I am understanding that there should be a collaborative type of approach, a comprehensive system where government is concerned and we work together basically off of that general template,” said Carleen Henry-Morton, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, who noted that the seminar was interesting and provided much food for thought.
Mrs. Henry-Morton explained that after going back to the individual ministries there is a possibility that there will be areas which require permanent secretaries to drill down on in order to have systems that apply to their respective ministries. She noted that the collaboration comes when they regroup for further discussions.
“Whenever we get together, we are looking at resolving issues and challenges and there must be that big picture approach to resolving the challenges and understanding what the risks are generally-speaking before we can begin to understand what the specific risks are within our individual ministries,” said the permanent secretary.”
Permanent Secretary Henry-Morton said that she intends to share a lot of what was discussed with the unit heads within her ministry and then generally with the staff so that they too can understand the concept of risk management.
The one-day executive risk management seminar for permanent secretaries afforded the public servants the high-level of understanding and perspective they will need to effectively lead the establishment of risk policy, roles and responsibilities, as well as determining risk criteria for subsequent risk assessments to be performed by all business process managers under their authority.
According to a release from the Honourable Vincent Byron, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Legal Affairs and Communication, a training of this nature is important for the mere fact that the Federation, like any other country is exposed to risks.
“All activities of our country involve risk. We manage risk by identifying it, analyzing it and then evaluating whether the risk should be modified by risk treatment to satisfy the risk criteria. Throughout this process, we communicate and consult with stakeholders and monitor and review the risk and the controls that are modifying the risk to ensure that no further risk treatment is required,” said the Minister of Justice, Legal Affairs and Communication.
