Towards a Baltic Sea Region Strategy in Critical ... - Helsinki.fi

CHAPTER III: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Political dimension
Policies have traditionally resulted from governments’ decision to act (or not to
act) upon a certain issue, typically in the interest of the general citizenry. For
instance, Jenkins defines policy as “a set of interrelated decisions taken by a
political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means
of achieving them within a specified situation where those decisions should, in
principle, be within the power of those actors to achieve” (Jenkins 1978).
Rauscher extends the definition of policy to include agreements, standards,
policies, and regulations, as well as the framework within which different actors
interact (Rauscher et al 2006). The US government was one of the first public
institutions to formally address the challenge of CIP and developed a national
protection strategy under the auspices of the Presidential Commission on Critical
Infrastructure Protection (PCCIP) in 1996 (Executive Order 1996). The efforts of
the PCCIP and subsequent commissions resulted in key government policies on
CIIP outlining a range of underlying factors (e.g., organizational, legislative,
regulatory).
The CIP/CIIP initiatives pioneered by the US government have since been
adapted in other countries, albeit with varying interpretations of the challenge and
recommended approaches. These differences are clearly noticeable in Volume I of
the International CIIP 2006 Handbook that collates a survey of the CIIP policies of
20 countries (Abele-Wigert and
Dunn 2006). 81 Moreover, the
cross-sector nature of CIIP has
meant that multiple agencies
(public security, emergency, lawenforcement
etc.) working under
the same government have
tackled the issue of CIIP from
different vantage points, with
each introducing unique
perspectives on the CIIP policymaking
process. Abele-Wigert
identifies the co-existence of
technical (system-level),
business, law-enforcement and
national security perspectives on
CIIP in most surveyed countries,
though the prominence of a
particular perspective may vary
from country to country (Abele- Figure III—26 A holistic approach to CIIP policy
Wigert 2006). Furthermore, the
making.
author notes that applying a
holistic approach in CIIP policy making would result in policy that is more
effective than the one resulting from sum of the individual perspectives (Abele-
81
The survey includes profiles of CIIP policies from three BSR countries: Sweden, Finland and
Germany.
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