‘Critical infrastructures’ are those that deliver important goods and services to society in the face of high levels of variability. They may be electricity supply systems or food producing systems, for example. The key question is how do the goods and services (whether electricity or food) get delivered reliably, and who is involved?
In the fourth chapter of my new book – Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World – I take the example of the electricity supply system in California, studied by Emery Roe and colleagues based in Berkeley, and a pastoral system in northern Kenya, central to the PASTRES research.
What is interesting is that both operate in quite similar ways. Both rely heavily on what are called ‘high reliability professionals’ – people who can respond both to the immediate, day-to-day challenges and have understandings of and intelligence on the wider system. Tracking between these modes is essential and is how the lights are kept on in California and the herds kept alive in Kenya.
Such professionals in any complex infrastructure operate in networks, linking different people across the system. In both cases, their role is massively underappreciated and often completely unrecognised. But to respond to uncertainty and avoid the dangers of surprise through ignorance, such professionals and their networks are vital.
The chapter looks at a number of examples of ‘high reliability professionals’ and their networks. One is Rahma Mahmoud (not her real name), a herder from Isiolo county in Kenya. She had been planning how to keep her animals alive during a terrible drought in 2023. The chapter observes, “Just like the real-time operators and dispatchers in the California electricity system, she was developing scenarios about the future, responding to diverse contingencies. She was expanding her options – through making contacts with farmers in Meru and keeping in touch with national park guards and others. She had funds available and the ability to transfer them when needed. All this meant that she could respond rapidly if things got really tough and rains did not come in March or April. Given that the network is dispersed – just like the deregulated California electricity supply system – good communication is vital and mobile phones as well as motorbikes mean that everyone could be contacted quickly, as soon as the need arose. Monitoring the situation carefully is essential, so that she always keeps an eye on the condition of all her animals.” All this requires skill, knowledge and good networks, and is the basis of keeping animals alive in dryland areas such as Isiolo.
However, too often efforts at ‘improvement’, ‘reform’ or ‘development’ undermine such capacities. As the chapter notes, “By pushing an illusion of control, such interventions try to restructure and streamline to increase efficiency and provide improved technocratic oversight, focusing on risk not uncertainty. This usually acts to undermine existing practices of reliability, requiring new experiments and innovations by reliability professionals and their networks to avoid disasters…”
What then are the alternatives to a ‘control’ based approach, one that focuses on the flexible capacities of reliability professionals? In both cases – the California electricity supply system and the pastoral system of northern Kenya – we see some common patterns. Synthesising the lessons, the chapter suggests that, “Navigating uncertainty and generating reliability requires different skills – knowledge of what is possible, based on the building of scenarios and the scanning of horizons, as well as real-time responses in-the-moment to unfolding situations. It’s always a messy, complex situation with no clear rules, and most responses are informal, unrecognised, below-the-radar practices, yet are crucial to generating reliability. Tacit, experiential knowledge, case studies, scenario analysis and pattern-recognition skills, combine with astute vigilance and accumulated experience, held both by individuals and in common within networks.”
The chapter notes how “The continuous averting of disasters in critical infrastructures is a vital task in an uncertain world. Yet high reliability professionals, whether in California or northern Kenya, are often not recognised. Standard responses to risks and uncertainty rely on risk assessments, safety regulations and operational protocols or are imposed as externally-designed ‘development’ projects that can actually undermine the resilience of pastoral systems in the face of shocks and stresses. Formalising the informal out of existence, when critical service reliability is at stake, is always a big error.”
So, to improve reliability in critical infrastructures – whether electricity networks, water supply, nuclear power stations, air traffic control or food systems – there needs to be, the chapter concludes, “a better recognition of high reliability professionals, their knowledge, skills and aptitudes, along with the networks that they are embedded in, is a far better route to responding to diverse uncertainties faced by any critical infrastructure and requires a very different approach to staffing, training, reward systems, organisational design and external support.” This suggests some radically new ways of managing critical infrastructures and building resilience in the face uncertainty.
This series of blogs gives a taste of the different chapters, but you will have to read the book to get the full picture, as well as all the case study details, the references and footnotes! You can buy the book (or download it for free) through this link: Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World (politybooks.com). And if you are in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland or France, do come along to the first launches in October BOOK: Navigating Uncertainty – Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience – PASTRES (or join online at the IDS event on October 3, sign up here: Navigating uncertainty: Radical rethinking for a turbulent World – Institute of Development Studies (ids.ac.uk)).
