 Hello, and welcome to International Ideas Session on Budgeting and Financing of Elections. My name is Erik Afzblund, and today I have Sead Alahotsik with me here at International Ideas. Sead, please describe why electoral risk management is an important element in both strategic and operational planning. Hello, Erik, and hello to viewers. Indeed, that is an important question that we should start asking ourselves more and more. As you well know, elections are very complex undertakings, and many things can go wrong. And risk management systems are methodologies that can be deployed by electoral management bodies to make sure that they are less exposed to these risks if they materialize. Now, risks can be of different nature. They may be technical, or they may be political. They may be legal, security, reputational, and so on. And it is therefore critical for election management body to understand, to start looking into these risks already during the phase of operational planning, because that will not only inform the quality of the planning processes, but will also help establish a system which will be able to monitor, analyze, and assess the risks in order for election management body to initiate timely and effective intervention mitigation action. Thank you, Sead. Based on your experience, what approaches do election management bodies have in terms of institutionalizing risk management? We have asked ourselves the same questions a few years back. And in 2014, we have developed a global survey which has covered only 87 countries. But we have learned that most election management bodies did not so far dedicate sufficient attention to systematic risk management. And some of them do not have any such systems in place. However, those which do have such systems take two different approaches. One approach is to put specific measures in place to prevent specific risks. And these processes are done very often in isolation from one another. While some electoral management bodies are trying to address this problem holistically. So therefore, in our policy paper on this topic, we have distinguished between incremental approaches where election management bodies are slowly building on their risk management system and comprehensive approaches where policy makers at the election management body understand importance of this system and initiate reform so that risk management covers all aspects of their work. Thank you. Maybe you can provide some examples of countries that have taken an incremental or comprehensive approach to electoral risk management. Indeed, we have been able to see from this survey but also from our experiences with working with election management bodies around the world how both approaches function. And for example, we have seen that incremental approach is working its way in countries such as Nepal and Nigeria where risk management was adopted with a specific purpose to prevent and mitigate security risks but then election management bodies have understood the value of this methodology in monitoring and addressing other risk to electoral processes. There are some countries which do have comprehensive risk management systems. We have seen experiences, for example, from Canada and Australia. But more recently, we have also been in position to coordinate and to learn from Election Commission of India that have initiated comprehensive risk management system there and maybe interesting to mention that in this process they have identified 191 risks that is faced by the by electoral administrators when implementing these processes. Thank you. Now what impact does adoption or the institutionalization of electoral risk management have on the election management bodies budget, do you think? Although it is hard to see very initially the positive impacts but I would say that introduction of risk management does initially require resources meaning stuff and some funds but this should not be ever seen as a cost but more as investment because well functioning risk management system is the best tool that election management bodies can adopt to make sure that what they are investing in other phases and events of the electoral cycle are well protected. And how is the adoption of risk management and elections financed, do you think? What we are seeing is actually that risk management is finding its way more and more into bureaucratic organizations. Looking in the distance we have seen how some sectors such as banking sector, medical sector, security sector have understood the benefits of systematic risk management and it has been standardized. Now there are more and more governmental agencies and ministries which are institutionalizing risk management because that's the governmental standard. So in my view funds and financing of introduction of risk management within an organization is something that needs to be part of the budget as any other activity. Thank you very much Saad and thank you for watching.