The city has a clear appreciation of its goals and objectives with respect to risk management, that it has created a risk management strategy and is moving forward in light of that strategy.

The goals and objectives reflected in the city’s risk management strategy are highlighted by top managers’ ability to answer satisfactorily the following strategic questions before rolling out a risk management program:
 

• Is top management clear about its risk management goals?

• Do appropriate managers and officials agree on the timetable for program implementation, monitoring, and reviewing?

• Have programmatic measures of success been identified and have the actual terms of success been agreed upon?

• Have the resources necessary to achieving strategic objectives been allocated?

• Has top management agreed on its approach to risk financing?

• Has there been agreement on the roles and responsibilities for strategy implementation and review (including outside review)?

• Has top management identified the skills, knowledge, and training necessary to support strategy implementation and review?

• Has top management clearly communicated the categories of risk that managers and employees should assess and control, and for which they will be held responsible?

Have appropriate local government risk management experts been closely involved in the strategic planning process? Does anyone else need to review the plan prior to implementation?

In addition to these top level questions, a series of operational level questions deserve answers prior to program implementation, or shortly after implementation has occurred. They are:
 

• Is there evidence that the risk management program or process has been applied to all areas of the organization?

• Are managers confident that all categories of risk have been examined?

• Have key partners been consulted in areas of overlapping risk?

• Have appropriate tools, techniques, and methods for managing the risk been identified?

• Has all necessary information on managing risk been communicated to relevant employees, managers, and service users?

• Has the information needed to collect and maintain our risk profile been identified?

• Have the local government’s risk management experts been closely involved in the planning and pre-implementation process?