Final Report Summary - ETTIS (ETTIS - European security trends and threats in society)
Executive Summary:
ETTIS: European Security Trends and Threats in Society is a collaborative research project funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Program. It ran from January 2012 to December 2014. Through these three years, ETTIS has contributed to a renewed conceptualization of key elements of the policy and priority setting in the field of security, providing tools to foster societal security in Europe.
▪ From traditional security to societal security: ETTIS put forward an operational concept of societal security to support decision makers and end-users in practical settings.
▪ Expanding the concept of ‘innovation’ as it pertains to societal research: ETTIS developed a taxonomy of R&I models, better suited to cover the broader boundaries of societal security, based on the rate of change and the type of concerns at stake.
▪ Practical processes for the identification of threats, needs, and solutions for society: ETTIS developed tools, methodologies and processes to assist researchers and policy makers identify threats, needs, and solutions within the societal security domain. This included a three-step-process for the development of context-based threat scenarios and subsequent identification of threats and societal security needs.
▪ Policy and priorities settings in societal security: ETTIS has developed an innovative method to identify research priorities and set up research agenda for societal security by putting forward an adaptive 4 phase model of planning. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms. First of all, it rejects the linear interpretation of the R&I programming process and emphasizes its recursive nature. Indeed, using a single vision as the starting point for defining longer-term research agendas is not appropriate in a highly dynamic field like security. New insights into the nature of security challenges and the potential higher-order impacts of possible options/solutions need to be continuously fed into the structuring of the challenges to be addressed and the assessment of options, as well as the actual implementation of longer-term research endeavours.
ETTIS underlines that generalised programme planning needs to be re-balanced with bottom-up mechanisms for defining research and innovation. Monitoring and learning, supported by understanding-oriented research and future anticipation, turn into permanent activities to enhance the adaptivity of the entire programming cycle. In sum, R&I programming should build on a highly flexible and adaptive model that can also draw on more than simply centralized approaches to prioritization and implementation.
Project Context and Objectives:
European Security Trends and Threats In Society (ETTIS) identified and assessed opportunities for enhancing societal security, improving situation awareness and informing investment options for societal security. ETTIS aimed to construct a comprehensive framework that can be used in the formulation of future decisions and security policies.
In particular, the ETTIS project aimed to conduct research on the following four issues:
a) identify and assess in a scenarios framework future threats, needs and opportunities for societal security;
b) develop and test a methodological approach and model for a revolving process of security research priority setting;
c) derive research priorities geared towards the needs of user organisations, as well as rationales and options for policy intervention; and
d) help increase awareness of and attention to security research results, and contribute to overcoming barriers by advancing and testing a range of intelligence tools and techniques.
ETTIS relied on a comprehensive concept of security encompassing both technological and non-technological opportunities as well as emerging security-related ethical, cultural and organisational challenges. It conducted a comprehensive analysis of completed, on-going and planned security research projects, while combining different research methodologies: theoretical and empirical, analytical as well as participatory. Future threats and associated needs of security organisations were explored in context and situational scenarios.
The identification and assessment of opportunities for enhancing societal security was conducted within the context of these scenarios. The options identified were assessed in a stakeholder process, aiming to identify collective priorities. Needs and options for policy intervention were explored, with a particular emphasis on the European policy level. The work was embedded in a generalised methodological framework and learning environment for threat- and opportunity-based priority-setting, which served also for updating the European security research agenda.
The constant interaction with key stakeholders and the dissemination of the project results to a wide security audience is of paramount importance for ETTIS. Indeed, ETTIS engages a multidisciplinary group of experts, a user reflection group, who are invited to suggest issues for research, lines of inquiry to be followed and questions to be addressed as the project progresses.
ETTIS was built on the following knowledge areas, with project partners being among the international leaders:
• Conceptualisation of security,
• Identification and evaluation of future threats,
• Coping with complexity and uncertainties,
• Opportunities for societal security,
• Priority setting and policy rationales.
Interdisciplinary and even trans-disciplinary work between these knowledge areas were key to ETTIS.
The results of ETTIS are expected to help improve the situation awareness of authorities, stakeholders and the population, and provide them with the necessary methods to better assess alternative investment options for societal security.
Project Results:
ETTIS has a developed an innovative method to identify research and investment (R&I) priorities. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms.
First of all, it rejects the linear interpretation of the R&I programming process and emphasizes its recursive nature. Indeed, using a single vision as the starting point for defining longer-term research agendas is not appropriate in a highly dynamic field like security. New insights into the nature of security challenges and the potential higher-order impacts of possible options/solutions need to be continuously fed into the structuring of the challenges to be addressed and the assessment of options, as well as the actual implementation of longer-term research endeavours.
ETTIS underlines that generalised programme planning needs to be re-balanced with bottom-up mechanisms for defining research and innovation. Monitoring and learning, supported by understanding-oriented research and future anticipation, turn into permanent activities to enhance the adaptivity of the entire programming cycle. In sum, R&I programming should build on a highly flexible and adaptive model that can also draw on more than simply centralized approaches to prioritization and implementation.
From the experience of the ETTIS project, ten operational principles or requirements for new mission-oriented security R&I programming and priority-setting have been derived, several of which also apply to other challenge-oriented areas of R&I. These requirements should be considered at all stages of the programming cycle and pave the way towards a model of security R&I programming and priority-setting with greater positive socio-economic effects.
1. Give guidance and orientation: Security R&I programs should be guided by a comprehensive understanding of societal security. Some guiding principles could be defined as to how enhancing societal security could be underpinned.
2. Include the needs of those affected: A broader range of addressees needs to be incorporated into the focus of R&I programs. This includes those who might be affected by, or contribute to, societal security.
3. Consider both social and technological innovation: Depending on the project, social innovation may be more important than technological innovation for enhancing societal security and vice versa.
4. Ensure flexibility and adaptivity: Flexibility and adaptivity introduce a time perspective into programming; as such both short-term and long-term considerations need to be taken into account in mission-oriented security R&I programs.
5. Ensure embedding of R&I in the context of use: The successful embedding of R&I outputs requires both more attention and a more sophisticated approach for managing the end-user interface in security R&I than in many other fields.
6. Policy coordination: If enhancing societal security is supposed to provide the guiding ideas for security R&I programming, then matching the security R&I policy with the wider security policy during the first phase of structuring the challenge is essential. This can also help ensure that subsequent R&I results meet the actual security needs.
7. Inter- and trans-disciplinarity: The inter-disciplinary cooperation between social sciences/humanities on the one hand and natural/engineering sciences on the other is crucial in this regard. However, in view of some of the arguments set out above, also essential is the close trans-disciplinary cooperation with the end-users.
8. Ensure specificity of local solutions: Modular approaches can be helpful for customizing innovative solutions to local needs. There are also difficult issues to be addressed related to path-dependencies of investment in both R&I and concrete security solutions, which cannot be easily tackled in all security domains.
9. Address a global geographic area of concern: For R&I to be meaningful, the global embedding of security challenges needs to be taken into account in R&I programming.
10. Consider ethical implications and dilemmas: Security easily touches upon contentious ethical issues, where ethical principles and other political goals need to be balanced with security needs. This difficulty is exacerbated by the occurrence of counter-productive second-order effects; for example, ethnic profiling leading to radicalization in the targeted ethnicity. Taking such dilemmas seriously when defining and implementing security R&I programs is essential.
Finally, ETTIS emphasizes that foresight can prove an essential tool to signal, at early stages, the potential impact, and the socio-economic implications of security R&I programming and priority-setting.
In order to outreach key stakeholders and maximize its impact at socio-political level, ETTIS translated its research results into general recommendations for policy makers and end-users when it comes to societal security:
1/ Need for more research on societal securities.
The shift towards societal security implies more complexity in the understanding of different sources of security. Somehow, societal security is not a point of arrival but a new departure in engaging with society at large. If more actors participate to the definition of what is worth securing, this means that there are possibly going to be conflicting claims. This implies a quite dynamic approach, where what constitutes ‘societal security’ is not given once for all for everybody, but should be continuously assessed through interactions with different actors.
2/ No ready-made, one-fits-all rationality.
Avoid the risk of ‘securitizing’ societies: i.e. transposing existing military or police mentalities into the solving of issues that do not pertain to these fields (even when they are considered to be at the core of societal security). Avoid the mirage of ‘technological fixes’: technologies and societies co-constitute each other, which means that it is important to understand how different actors interact, make use, modify and may be positively and negatively influenced by technologies. The same technologies can be used with different results in different domains. In turns, this implies a dynamic assessment of, and eventual adjustments to, technological solutions (starting as early as their design).
3/ Resilience should be nurtured.
Societal security challenges are not a novelty. Surely, globalisation and digitalisation (inter alia) may have emphasised them to the eyes of policy makers and end-users, and have made some of them more compelling. Yet, several actors, including non-professional ones, have developed more or less formalised competences in response to societal security challenges. These skills may form a backdrop of resilience that needs to be nurtured. Policy makers and end-users should be careful in devising societal security solutions that do not hamper resilience, or do not preclude actors to develop complementary, and more tuned, responses.
In addition, several precise recommendations focusing on the critical stages of agenda-setting and formation of R&I programmes in societal security were formulated:
1/ Security R&I programs should be guided by a comprehensive understanding of societal security.
To further this end, the development of institutional guiding principles can be a valuable tool. Provide guidance and orientation to those creating R&I programmes to ensure that enhancing societal security is prioritised and underpins decision-making.
2/ A broader range of addressees needs to be incorporated into the focus of R&I programs in all phases of the programming cycle.
Ensure a broad range as possible of the needs of those affected is included in the agenda-setting and formation of programmes.
Social innovation may be equally, if not more, important for enhancing societal security than technological innovation. Consider both social and technological innovation.
An outstanding feature of the security field is its breadth and complexity in terms of inter-dependencies and interactions between security challenges and security solutions. As a result this field is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity, ensure flexibility and adaptivity of research programmes so they can respond to unforeseen changes and developments.
3/ The successful embedding of security R&I outputs requires more attention and a more sophisticated approach to managing the interactions with end-users than in many other fields.
Ensure the contextual, operational use of the output is embedded in the R&I process itself. If enhancing societal security is supposed to provide the guiding ideas for security R&I programming, then a tight embedding of security R&I policy into security policy during the first phase of structuring the challenge is essential. This can also help ensure that R&I results developed during the process meet actual security needs. Security policy and security R&I policy must be coordinated from the very beginning of agenda-setting and programme formation if later R&I results are to meet actual security needs.
4/ The inter-disciplinary cooperation between social sciences and/or humanities, and natural and/or engineering sciences is crucial.
Inter-disciplinary cooperation is a crucial ongoing requirement. Striking the balance between creating centralised R&I efforts and decentralised solutions for concrete security challenges is a critical requirement for security R&I programming. Ensure security R&I programmes can successfully address localised problems with localised solutions.
5/ Many security challenges need to address global issues and determinants.
For R&I to be meaningful, the incorporation of global security challenges needs to be taken into account in R&I programming. Ensure security R&I programmes can successfully incorporate and address global security problems. Security easily touches upon contentious ethical issues, where ethical principles and other political goals need to be balanced with security needs. Consider and incorporate ethical issues and implications within security R&I agendas and programmes. R&I security planning needs to incorporate international, national, corporate, and civilian perspectives on security which can be very different across various domains. Instead of national security it is more appropriate to speak of societal security, and instead of risks, it is more appropriate to focus on societal security challenges and societal security needs. While this still allows for multiple interpretations, a common lingo will clarify the framing of the research debate and shape the overall direction of the R&I Agenda. R&I security planning needs to employ a much broader concept of security than the one that has typically been employed in national security R&I planning.
Finally, specific recommendations for end-users conducting challenge-oriented societal security R&I programmes were formulated:
1/ Providing normative guidance and orientation: The ‘mission’ to which R&I shall contribute needs to be defined in order to guide research and innovation activities.
2/ Respecting diversity of innovations: The diversity of innovation patterns needs to be respected, in particular as regards the balance between technological and social innovation and the pace at which innovation and change occur.
3/ Moving towards implementation: Much more emphasis is put on the diffusion and uptake of novel solution, which is why the implementation side of innovation attracts more attention than in the past.
4/ Including a broader range of stakeholders: In order to improve societal security, it is necessary to deal differently with the stakeholders of security than in the past. The people concerned about and affected by security matters must be considered as also active players for security.
5/ Inter- and trans-disciplinarity: Due to the attention to diverse and comprehensive solutions, a broader range of disciplines needs to be involved in specific challenge-oriented R&I activities.
6/ Embed specific R&I activities in a global perspectives: Developments at global scale often need to be taken into account in developing specific R&I solutions at European, national or local levels.
7/ Improving policy coordination: With the attention to diffusion and implementation of novel solutions, the coherence between R&I policy on the one hand and sectoral policies (such as security policy) needs to be improved.
8/ Dealing with uncertainty and complexity: In view of uncertainty about future challenges and possible options for tackling them, adaptivity and flexibility needs to be built into R&I system structures and mission-oriented R&I programmes to allow responding faster to upcoming events and disruptions.
Security is often about addressing a large number of identified low probability events with high potential negative consequences, in an environment characterised by great uncertainty over the exact form and timing of the manifestation of these events. This environment creates challenges not only for governments producing national security policies and security R&I programmes, but also for the researchers and developers undertaking the programmes. These groups struggle to implement a single correct model of R&I within security.
No single model of R&I can adequately cater to all the different facets and modern conceptualisations of security, characterised by variable levels of social/technical concern and different rates of change. Designing solutions appropriate for the variety of societal security challenges and societal security needs, requires different innovation models. All models take a different approach to prioritising and guiding research based on the specific framing of the security challenge at hand. New ways of organising R&I are required that put a stronger emphasis on societal aspects, and on new mechanisms for moving from research to innovation and widespread realisation of security solutions. Innovation for societal security needs to focus both on fast and slow rate of changes and technical and societal concerns requiring diverse R&I models.
Once a range of R&I model capable of covering the gamut of societal security has been developed, attention must shift to the challenge of how to prioritise different societal security R&I programmes and research opportunities.
Priority-setting in societal security R&I is not just a technocratic decision, but one that requires the involvement of a range of actors and stakeholders. The concept of priority-setting in R&I is based on a combination of technical arguments (technical rationality) and social processes (social rationality) to create legitimacy for collective and governmental choices in security research and innovation.
• Technical rationality provides the lines of reasoning why certain priorities in security R&I should be set; technical rationales provide the reservoir of by and large scientifically accepted lines of reasoning in the context of priority-setting.
• Social rationality defines the process through which these different technical rationales are interpreted from the individual stakeholders’ perspectives, their interests, capabilities and concerns, and how they are brought to bear in the various stages of the process of programming and priority-setting. This social dimension is crucial, because technical rationales are far from uncontested, and they may well give rise to conflicts of interest, to some actors winning and others losing.
Social rationality needs to complement technical rationality, in particular in areas where controversial values and assessments are likely to exist. Such conflicts of interest might hinder priorities from being implemented, and for good reasons. The balanced involvement of stakeholders in this process is crucial to both dealing with potential conflicts and improving the potential benefits of priorities selected. We need to design processes of priority-setting that not only take technical rationales into account, but that also give stakeholders the opportunity to feed their knowledge, their concerns and their interests into that process.
Even when combining technical and social rationality, it is unlikely that clear and uncontested priorities can be found easily. Ultimately, priority-setting is not a scientific, but a political process where political choices need to be made. What social rationality can contribute is enhanced transparency and the consideration of all relevant perspectives and interests as a basis for informed political choices.
Potential Impact:
IMPACT
ETTIS has a developed an innovative method to identify research and investment (R&I) priorities. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms.
Even though the project has finished, the results of ETTIS will be exploited via various channels:
• The policy briefs will be promoted further and the results will be translated into a short, user-friendly overview, which will be added on the website and distributed to policy makers and end users via the existing mailing lists.
• The research results also will be re-used into new project applications, thus allowing to build on the existing results.
• Due to the nature of the project and the final results of ETTIS, a policy-oriented use of the results on different levels will be explored.
• Dissemination of the results towards the end users will be stimulated, also through possible participation to project meetings of other projects.
• In addition, several publications are still in the making with a publication date in 2015.
Towards a new approach
The ETTIS approach to security R&I policy, programming and priority setting resides on three main elements:
1. A differentiated innovation model
ETTIS suggests departing from a purely industrial innovation model to underpin security R&I, and move to a more differentiated meta-model of four archetypes of innovation, which spans a sufficiently broad spectrum of security R&I configurations. Next to a modified industrial innovation model (ETTIS example: Professional Security Services), which still remains valid in several domains of security R&I, three additional models are suggested: (1) a fast and open innovation model, where products and services are launched at a very high frequency (ETTIS example: Cyber Defence Systems), (2) a social innovation model (ETTIS example: Cyber Civic Resilience), and (3) a commons-oriented innovation model (ETTIS example: Climate and Migration). In systematic terms, these four models can be positioned along two main dimensions, namely the balance between social and technological elements, and the pace of change at which innovation occurs.
2. A flexible and adaptive governance framework for the programming of security R&I
ETTIS has developed an adaptive model of the programming cycle, which takes into consideration many of the specific requirements by which security R&I is characterised. It departs from the prevailing linear model of moving from a guiding security vision to a strategic research agenda that is subsequently implemented. Instead, it stresses the idea that an interactive and adaptive programming approach is needed in security R&I. A continuous adjustment to newly emerging threats and options is necessary. It needs to be underpinned by research on both new options and a better understanding of security challenges. New insights generated need to be fed back immediately into the process of structuring security challenges that need to be addressed. This requires close coordination with security policy as the policy area where the overarching mission for security R&I is supposed to be defined. Finally, the involvement of stakeholders, and of end-users in particular, is crucial in all phases of the programming cycle.
3. A process model for priority-setting
Priority-setting is an important part of the programming cycle. In particular when subscribing to an adaptive programming approach, clear guiding rationales of priority-setting are key ensuring coherence in deciding why some topics should be favoured over others. ETTIS suggests distinguishing between technical rationales (i.e. arguments that justify priorities from an overarching scientific perspective) and social rationales (i.e. arguments that relate to the perspectives of different stakeholders). Technical rationales can be of four different kinds: (1) Rationales from R&I policy are needed to argue what the purpose of R&I policy is supposed to be. In this regard, we have seen a shift from competitiveness as the main purpose of R&I towards enhancing societal security as the new mission of security R&I. (2) As a consequence of this shift towards a new mission-type approach, rationales from security policy need to be drawn upon in order to identify which security challenges are to be addressed by security R&I. (3) Security R&I policy rationales are needed to define the kinds of structural and thematic issues to be addressed, taking into account the structural and organisational specificities of the security domain with its respective innovation models. (4) Clear rationales are also needed to argue why policy intervention in R&I, and in particular also European policy intervention, is needed. Complementary to these technical rationales, a socially rational, usually participatory process should allow taking into account the interests, competencies and potential synergies/conflicts of actors and stakeholders.
These rationales apply at different stage of the priority-setting process, as simulated in the ETTIS project. It starts with confirming the mission of security R&I as being geared towards the concept of societal security. Then future scenarios in key domains are developed in order to identify future societal security needs in line with societal security. Against this backdrop, more specific security challenges and possible R&I options for addressing them are specified in an iterative process. In order to deal with these challenges and options in security R&I systems, both structural priorities (i.e. how the R&I systems need to be organised) and thematic priorities (i.e. thematic R&I agendas) are developed. Finally, the question is raised regarding the need for and the instruments of policy intervention for realising R&I on these priorities. Stakeholder participation is essential along the entire priority-setting process, with different types of stakeholders likely to play more prominent roles in some stages, and less prominent roles in others.
PAST & ON-GOING DISSEMINATION & IMPACT
The research of ETTIS has been disseminated through various channels. These activities have been described in detail in D7.5 Dissemination Activities Report.
These activities include the following:
1/ Project website. In the second period, this website has been regularly updated and announced events and workshops. The submitted deliverables have been uploaded. The link to the video has been added recently. This website will be online in the coming years. This website has a high visibility on google when searching for ETTIS or related keywords.
2/ Newsletters and direct stakeholders mailings. Several electronic newsletters were sent to the stakeholder list. These newsletters were tailored to coincide with the moments in ETTIS when we had notable output or announced upcoming events. These newsletters and direct stakeholder mailings proved to be a reasonable communication strategy, most useful for publicising upcoming events.
In sum, this strategy of direct communication proved to be particularly useful: ETTIS newsletters and direct stakeholder mailings were very effective for publicising upcoming events.
3/ Conferences: Mid-Term Conference (Dublin) and High Level Event (Brussels)
The mid-term conference took place on 16th May 2013 in Dublin. It coincided with the Irish Presidency of the European Council and attracted an audience of end users, policy makers, academia and military audience. All presentations at the conference were recorded and these presentations were made public (with the necessary consent) via the ETTIS project website.
The High Level Event in Brussels was organised on 20 November 2014. Members of the consortium took the floor with presentations of the outcomes of the research project, one month from its conclusion. In addition to the consortium partners and members of ETTIS’ User Reflection Group, external end users were also involved in this event; both as attendees and panelists/guest-speakers. In particular there were presentations by representatives from the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, and Directorate-General Home Affairs.
This event differed from the more conventional style of ‘final project conference’ in that rather than operating as a relatively static presentation of results to a largely passive audience it was organised in a much more dynamic fashion. During the conference, audio recordings were made of all presentations and PowerPoint sides were used. For the majority of the panel sessions and speeches, consent was given by the respective speakers for their presentations to be made public. These presentations were subsequently made available online via the ETTIS project website.
In sum, ETTIS conferences proved to be very successful dissemination strategies with multiple layers of impact, including:
- the simple one-way exchange of information;
- validation and improvements of outputs resulting from two-way discussions;
- networking and fostering of relationships for later interactions and collaborations.
4/ Presentations at other EU projects and events co-hosted with other EU projects.
These activities allowed to reinforce knowledge exchange and across project cooperation. Presenting at external events assisted in fostering knowledge exchange about the ETTIS project and its underlying deliverables. It also demonstrated the contemporary relevance of ETTIS by the way in which it intersected with other ongoing EU projects as well as with wider conference proceedings.
In other words, external event presentations offered the occasion to foster knowledge exchange about the ETTIS project and its underlying deliverables. They also demonstrated the contemporary relevance of ETTIS by the way in which it intersected with other ongoing EU projects as well as with wider conference proceedings.
5/ Publications.
Publications arising from the research within ETTIS formed an invaluable conduit for dissemination of results, albeit often with specific targeted groups of recipients in mind. They are divided here into three categories:
(1) articles (both for journals and other targets) relevant to the research areas pertaining to ETTIS, published in peer-reviewed publications with their largely academic focus, and representing a resilient broad-based dissemination tool; and articles for other targets including government agencies/departments, think-tank’s, etc.;
(2) policy papers targeted at European policy makers and practitioners, public officials and other high-level decision makers arising from specific deliverables and WPs;
(3) magazine article (both hard copy and digital) within ‘Europe in Review 2014’. The printed version targets high-level decision makers, while the digital version has a wider public, business, and media audience.
Below is a detailed list of the already available publications:
[5.1] Publications in journals: several articles have been published and more are about to be published.
- Dönitz, Ewa, Erduana Shala and Timo Leimbach, “Future Threat Scenarios for Identifying Societal Security Needs – The Methodological Approach Based on European Project ETTIS” (under review)
- Lagazio, Monica, Nazneen Sherifb and Mike Cushman, “A multi-level approach to understanding the impact of cyber crime on the financial sector”, Computers & Security, Vol. 45, September 2014, pp. 58–74.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016740481400087X
- Lagazio, Monica, “The Evolution of the Concept of Security”, The Thinker, Vol. 43, 2012, pp 36-42.
- HCSS produced a paper on Societal Security and Resilience based on the ETTIS work in WP1, Presented to the Dutch National Security Think tank, a high level advisory board consisting of Dutch security experts to the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice.
- Weber, M and E.A. Eriksson, “Governing R&I for Societal Security: Towards new innovation models and policies”, 2015. (under review)
- Eriksson, E. A., H. Carlsen. ”Policy analysis for high end risks: possibilistic and probabilistic approaches to robustness” (under review)
- Henrik Carlsen, E. Anders Eriksson, Karl Henrik Dreborg, Bengt Johansson, Örjan Bodin. ”Systematic exploration of scenario spaces” (under review)
[5.2] Policy Papers: three policy papers have been published. These are disseminated via targeted mailings and via the website:
- Mapping innovation in securing society: Taxonomy for identification of research-based opportunities for societal security, corresponds to WP5, Task 5.2 D5.3 and was authored by Dr. E. Anders Eriksson of the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).
- How to foster security R&I able to support comprehensive societal security, corresponds to WP6, Task 6.4 D6.4 and was authored by Dr. Matthias Weber of the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Dr. E. Anders Eriksson of the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).
- European security trends and threats in society: final project summary, corresponds to WP6, Task 6.5 D6.5 and was authored by Dr. Monica Lagazio and Dr. Timothy Mitchener-Nissen of Trilateral Research and Consulting (TRI), and Rocco Bellanova of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
[5.3] Magazine article in 'Europe in Review 2014', aiming at EC institutions policy makers in particular. The Europe in Review 2014 focus magazine was launched in the European Parliament and is produced in both print and digital formats. We have published a full page article in this magazine highlighting both principle findings from ETTIS as well as publicising the ETTIS website and its collection of publically accessible deliverables. The digital version is published on www.eubserver.com and publicised through their newsletter and via social medias. This digital version also contains a link to the ETTIS website
With regard to the overall publication strategy, it should be noted that:
- By adopting a variety of different formats (articles, policy papers, and a magazine article) we were able to maximise the reach of our dissemination activities from publications, both by the total readership as well as the range of readers.
- Journal article publications proved a valuable tool for fostering cross EU-project collaborations, thereby benefitting multiple projects in an efficient manner. It assisted in reducing the silo-ing of research projects and results thereby maximising their impact.
- Policy briefs restricted to 8-10 pages may represent the most economical and efficient publication dissemination activity for presenting detailed and/or high-level results to specifically targeted readers; both from the perspective of the producer of the brief and the reader.
- Magazine articles proved incredibly useful for raising awareness of the project, though the amount of information, and the level of detail achievable, are both restricted. They work well when combined with an established website containing detailed deliverables by directing the readers to these.
6/ Press releases.
Communication with the media was undertaken through the use of press releases. Media contacts were identified by the consortium during the construction of the wider list of relevant stakeholders. As a concept, ‘media’ in this context was widely interpreted so as to include bloggers, journals, and webzines alongside the more traditional newspapers, television and radio sources. Throughout the lifecycle of the project and at key moments these individuals were sent a number of press releases in major European languages. Given the structure of the ETTIS research, in particular the different times at which notable outputs were produced and events occurred, the distribution of these press releases were not evenly spaced over the course of the applicable 36 months. Rather they were necessarily skewed towards both the beginning and end of the project
Key media-communication/press-release impact insights are:
- The successful impact of press releases from ETTIS was most visible in two ways:
a) By the information being picked-up and repeated by the targeted media source. This goal was achieved through articles such as the one below from the Global Security Magazine.
b) By the attendance of media representatives at both the Mid-term Conference and the Final High-Level Event.
7/ Workshops.
Workshops were an essential knowledge dissemination means. The ETTIS workshops were employed to successfully produce both internal and external dissemination benefits.
Internally, consortium partners used workshops to discuss, present and deliberate project-related matters and findings. The benefits they facilitated included:
a) robust discussions over ongoing deliverables,
b) assisted the genesis and development of ideas and concepts for incorporation into ETTIS, and
c) highlighted avenues for maximising external benefits through the identification of; (i) gaps in the collective expertise/knowledge-base of the research consortium requiring external input to fill, and (ii) optimal targets from external stakeholders for future workshops.
External dissemination benefits arising from the ETTIS workshops, beyond the more obvious ‘spreading the word about ETTIS and the results produced herein’ included the following:
a) the facilitation of reflexive communication with individuals outside of the research consortium who were independent of the group, and thereby not subject to any group-think or blinkered attachment to specific ideas; activities which are always at risk of entering collaborative projects,
b) providing avenues and contacts for further dissemination beyond those attending the workshops themselves through introducing the ETTIS consortium to secondary contacts.
Within a number of the workshops undertaken throughout ETTIS and described above, small focus groups were assembled from identified key stakeholders to assist in knowledge generation. Specifically these focus groups were utilised in the development of the key case-studies (Professional Security Capabilities, Cyber Defence Systems, Cyber Civic Resilience, and Climate-Induced Migration) and the associated identification of threats, needs, and R&I opportunities.
External dissemination of the ETTIS project was not a driving motivation for including these groups with the overall ETTIS research methodology, as primarily these groups were used for the internal dissemination and validation of knowledge and ideas. Nevertheless, these focus groups are noted here as they do represent small, targeted groups to whom specific information from the ETTIS project was disseminated.
It should be highlighted that:
- Workshops were incredibly successful as a means of disseminating the underlying concepts of the ETTIS project to external stakeholders from different Member States and beyond who would conceivably take up the results of the project.
- By incorporating the User Reflection Group and other invitees, the results from the project could be improved and validated before being more widely disseminated.
- The importance of societal security as a security topic was confirmed.
- Workshops enabled the successful incorporation of stakeholder and end-user views from a diverse group of individuals into the cases and models being developed within ETTIS. Externally, these individuals were able to take away the concepts and generated knowledge from ETTIS to their own private and public organisations.
- Workshops and focus groups facilitated meaningful information exchanges with the attending EU representatives.
8/ Scenario video.
A scenario video was made in the final semester of ETTIS and finalised in M36. The video was based on the scenario building exercise that took place in WP4. The WP leader and PRIO identified a video-maker after several rounds of information gathering on the basis of several proposals submitted by video production companies, assessed according to price for value principles that are usual at PRIO. Pionierfilm GmbH (Darmstadt) was selected, as they could show good results with one of the other partners, Fraunhofer Institute. The first draft of the video was discussed at the final Steering Committee meeting in Brussels, and screened at the High Level Event on 20 November 2014. The video provides a simplified understanding to a lay audience of the nature, methods and potential results of security foresighting. The aim of the brief video presentation is to give a simple, visual representation of the building blocks of security foresighting, and to show how they can be assembled and rearranged in order to give a realistic view of the possibilities that lie in the future.
In concrete terms, the video presents the basic terms and ideas used in the work of security foresighting, including a graphic presentation of the concept of future foresighting and the ideas and tools that it connects to. It also shows in a simplified, easy-to-understand way, how security foresighting is done and takes the viewer through the analysis of cyber security, used as a useful everyday example. All viewers of the film will have a relationship to it, but few may have considered how it relates to the security of their societies. Finally, the video also explains the potential benefits of security foresighting. The video appears on the home page of the ETTIS website. The scenario video has also been made available on YouTube and from the ETTIS website from February 2015 onwards. The simplest measure of the impact of this video will be the number of ‘views’ obtained as well as the number of likes/dislikes.
9/ Social Networking.
Only a selection of available social networking options were employed as dissemination tactics within ETTIS; namely the use of LinkedIn to promote membership of the ETTIS research consortium by individual members, and the uploading onto YouTube of selected speeches from the Mid-Term conference. This decision was motivated by the security nature of the project and its deliverables, and the need to adopt a focused and targeted social media strategy.
In addition, a brief presentation of the ETTIS project was given at the 5th Meeting of the Horizon 2020 Programme Committee configuration for Secure Societies. This happened at the premises of the European Commission on 30 September 2014, and was done by the project coordinator (PRIO), represented by Rocco Bellanova.
The social networking strategy proved that:
- YouTube videos of project conference presentations are an effective method of reaching a larger audience than is possible at the conference itself. They also help to ensure the legacy of the project as they will outlast the lifecycle of the project itself.
- Between the 9th October 2013 and 13th December 2014 the six ETTIS Mid-term Conference videos were viewed a combined total of 996 times.
10/ User Reflection Group.
The User Reflection Group (URG) advised on scientific and policy-focused matters relevant to ETTIS. It supported the consortium in guaranteeing both scientific excellence and policy relevance, validated various outputs and deliverables throughout the project, and ensured that ETTIS incorporated the input of various stakeholders. It thus formed an important part of the ETTIS dissemination strategy.
The URG included a wide range of expertise from different stakeholder organisations such as government, industry, research organisations, civil protection authorities, civil society, think tanks, academia, agencies dealing with security matters, and co-ordinators of relevant projects.
Different combinations of members from the URG attended 9 workshops during the project (a total of 31 attendees) as well as both the mid-term conference and the final high level event (a total of 4 attendees). As this indicates the focus was very much on the workshops. This reflects the practical purpose of the URG throughout the project whereby they were employed as a valuable expert body for discussing, improving, and validating the output from ETTIS, as well a vehicle for disseminating results and advertising the project itself.
In other words, the engagement with the User Reflection Group proved that:
- Interviews and discussions with members from the User Reflection Group (URG) indicated that on the whole these members were able to incorporate knowledge gained from participating within the URG to their other work. This is an important impact result for the ETTIS project as it displays the relevance and value of the project to the work of others.
- Members of the URG added value to the deliverables themselves through validation processes and by adding their expertise to complement the skill-sets of the ETTIS researchers.
- Just as important as the information exchanged was the opinions/views of both the URG and the consortium as to the value of this process. The URG felt they were able to add value to the project outputs and that their opinions were valued by the researchers. Similarly, the consortium researchers expressed a genuine appreciation over the presence of the URG members, recognising that these individuals were able to complement their own knowledge.
- User reflection groups allow the addition of individuals to a project who might not otherwise be able to join a consortium as a full partner for a variety of reasons. This is particularly valuable when seeking input from people working in fields a research project is trying to assist.
List of Websites:
Website: http://ettis-project.eu/
ETTIS video: Threat scenario video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BdxUfwxpLg
ETTIS: European Security Trends and Threats in Society is a collaborative research project funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Program. It ran from January 2012 to December 2014. Through these three years, ETTIS has contributed to a renewed conceptualization of key elements of the policy and priority setting in the field of security, providing tools to foster societal security in Europe.
▪ From traditional security to societal security: ETTIS put forward an operational concept of societal security to support decision makers and end-users in practical settings.
▪ Expanding the concept of ‘innovation’ as it pertains to societal research: ETTIS developed a taxonomy of R&I models, better suited to cover the broader boundaries of societal security, based on the rate of change and the type of concerns at stake.
▪ Practical processes for the identification of threats, needs, and solutions for society: ETTIS developed tools, methodologies and processes to assist researchers and policy makers identify threats, needs, and solutions within the societal security domain. This included a three-step-process for the development of context-based threat scenarios and subsequent identification of threats and societal security needs.
▪ Policy and priorities settings in societal security: ETTIS has developed an innovative method to identify research priorities and set up research agenda for societal security by putting forward an adaptive 4 phase model of planning. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms. First of all, it rejects the linear interpretation of the R&I programming process and emphasizes its recursive nature. Indeed, using a single vision as the starting point for defining longer-term research agendas is not appropriate in a highly dynamic field like security. New insights into the nature of security challenges and the potential higher-order impacts of possible options/solutions need to be continuously fed into the structuring of the challenges to be addressed and the assessment of options, as well as the actual implementation of longer-term research endeavours.
ETTIS underlines that generalised programme planning needs to be re-balanced with bottom-up mechanisms for defining research and innovation. Monitoring and learning, supported by understanding-oriented research and future anticipation, turn into permanent activities to enhance the adaptivity of the entire programming cycle. In sum, R&I programming should build on a highly flexible and adaptive model that can also draw on more than simply centralized approaches to prioritization and implementation.
Project Context and Objectives:
European Security Trends and Threats In Society (ETTIS) identified and assessed opportunities for enhancing societal security, improving situation awareness and informing investment options for societal security. ETTIS aimed to construct a comprehensive framework that can be used in the formulation of future decisions and security policies.
In particular, the ETTIS project aimed to conduct research on the following four issues:
a) identify and assess in a scenarios framework future threats, needs and opportunities for societal security;
b) develop and test a methodological approach and model for a revolving process of security research priority setting;
c) derive research priorities geared towards the needs of user organisations, as well as rationales and options for policy intervention; and
d) help increase awareness of and attention to security research results, and contribute to overcoming barriers by advancing and testing a range of intelligence tools and techniques.
ETTIS relied on a comprehensive concept of security encompassing both technological and non-technological opportunities as well as emerging security-related ethical, cultural and organisational challenges. It conducted a comprehensive analysis of completed, on-going and planned security research projects, while combining different research methodologies: theoretical and empirical, analytical as well as participatory. Future threats and associated needs of security organisations were explored in context and situational scenarios.
The identification and assessment of opportunities for enhancing societal security was conducted within the context of these scenarios. The options identified were assessed in a stakeholder process, aiming to identify collective priorities. Needs and options for policy intervention were explored, with a particular emphasis on the European policy level. The work was embedded in a generalised methodological framework and learning environment for threat- and opportunity-based priority-setting, which served also for updating the European security research agenda.
The constant interaction with key stakeholders and the dissemination of the project results to a wide security audience is of paramount importance for ETTIS. Indeed, ETTIS engages a multidisciplinary group of experts, a user reflection group, who are invited to suggest issues for research, lines of inquiry to be followed and questions to be addressed as the project progresses.
ETTIS was built on the following knowledge areas, with project partners being among the international leaders:
• Conceptualisation of security,
• Identification and evaluation of future threats,
• Coping with complexity and uncertainties,
• Opportunities for societal security,
• Priority setting and policy rationales.
Interdisciplinary and even trans-disciplinary work between these knowledge areas were key to ETTIS.
The results of ETTIS are expected to help improve the situation awareness of authorities, stakeholders and the population, and provide them with the necessary methods to better assess alternative investment options for societal security.
Project Results:
ETTIS has a developed an innovative method to identify research and investment (R&I) priorities. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms.
First of all, it rejects the linear interpretation of the R&I programming process and emphasizes its recursive nature. Indeed, using a single vision as the starting point for defining longer-term research agendas is not appropriate in a highly dynamic field like security. New insights into the nature of security challenges and the potential higher-order impacts of possible options/solutions need to be continuously fed into the structuring of the challenges to be addressed and the assessment of options, as well as the actual implementation of longer-term research endeavours.
ETTIS underlines that generalised programme planning needs to be re-balanced with bottom-up mechanisms for defining research and innovation. Monitoring and learning, supported by understanding-oriented research and future anticipation, turn into permanent activities to enhance the adaptivity of the entire programming cycle. In sum, R&I programming should build on a highly flexible and adaptive model that can also draw on more than simply centralized approaches to prioritization and implementation.
From the experience of the ETTIS project, ten operational principles or requirements for new mission-oriented security R&I programming and priority-setting have been derived, several of which also apply to other challenge-oriented areas of R&I. These requirements should be considered at all stages of the programming cycle and pave the way towards a model of security R&I programming and priority-setting with greater positive socio-economic effects.
1. Give guidance and orientation: Security R&I programs should be guided by a comprehensive understanding of societal security. Some guiding principles could be defined as to how enhancing societal security could be underpinned.
2. Include the needs of those affected: A broader range of addressees needs to be incorporated into the focus of R&I programs. This includes those who might be affected by, or contribute to, societal security.
3. Consider both social and technological innovation: Depending on the project, social innovation may be more important than technological innovation for enhancing societal security and vice versa.
4. Ensure flexibility and adaptivity: Flexibility and adaptivity introduce a time perspective into programming; as such both short-term and long-term considerations need to be taken into account in mission-oriented security R&I programs.
5. Ensure embedding of R&I in the context of use: The successful embedding of R&I outputs requires both more attention and a more sophisticated approach for managing the end-user interface in security R&I than in many other fields.
6. Policy coordination: If enhancing societal security is supposed to provide the guiding ideas for security R&I programming, then matching the security R&I policy with the wider security policy during the first phase of structuring the challenge is essential. This can also help ensure that subsequent R&I results meet the actual security needs.
7. Inter- and trans-disciplinarity: The inter-disciplinary cooperation between social sciences/humanities on the one hand and natural/engineering sciences on the other is crucial in this regard. However, in view of some of the arguments set out above, also essential is the close trans-disciplinary cooperation with the end-users.
8. Ensure specificity of local solutions: Modular approaches can be helpful for customizing innovative solutions to local needs. There are also difficult issues to be addressed related to path-dependencies of investment in both R&I and concrete security solutions, which cannot be easily tackled in all security domains.
9. Address a global geographic area of concern: For R&I to be meaningful, the global embedding of security challenges needs to be taken into account in R&I programming.
10. Consider ethical implications and dilemmas: Security easily touches upon contentious ethical issues, where ethical principles and other political goals need to be balanced with security needs. This difficulty is exacerbated by the occurrence of counter-productive second-order effects; for example, ethnic profiling leading to radicalization in the targeted ethnicity. Taking such dilemmas seriously when defining and implementing security R&I programs is essential.
Finally, ETTIS emphasizes that foresight can prove an essential tool to signal, at early stages, the potential impact, and the socio-economic implications of security R&I programming and priority-setting.
In order to outreach key stakeholders and maximize its impact at socio-political level, ETTIS translated its research results into general recommendations for policy makers and end-users when it comes to societal security:
1/ Need for more research on societal securities.
The shift towards societal security implies more complexity in the understanding of different sources of security. Somehow, societal security is not a point of arrival but a new departure in engaging with society at large. If more actors participate to the definition of what is worth securing, this means that there are possibly going to be conflicting claims. This implies a quite dynamic approach, where what constitutes ‘societal security’ is not given once for all for everybody, but should be continuously assessed through interactions with different actors.
2/ No ready-made, one-fits-all rationality.
Avoid the risk of ‘securitizing’ societies: i.e. transposing existing military or police mentalities into the solving of issues that do not pertain to these fields (even when they are considered to be at the core of societal security). Avoid the mirage of ‘technological fixes’: technologies and societies co-constitute each other, which means that it is important to understand how different actors interact, make use, modify and may be positively and negatively influenced by technologies. The same technologies can be used with different results in different domains. In turns, this implies a dynamic assessment of, and eventual adjustments to, technological solutions (starting as early as their design).
3/ Resilience should be nurtured.
Societal security challenges are not a novelty. Surely, globalisation and digitalisation (inter alia) may have emphasised them to the eyes of policy makers and end-users, and have made some of them more compelling. Yet, several actors, including non-professional ones, have developed more or less formalised competences in response to societal security challenges. These skills may form a backdrop of resilience that needs to be nurtured. Policy makers and end-users should be careful in devising societal security solutions that do not hamper resilience, or do not preclude actors to develop complementary, and more tuned, responses.
In addition, several precise recommendations focusing on the critical stages of agenda-setting and formation of R&I programmes in societal security were formulated:
1/ Security R&I programs should be guided by a comprehensive understanding of societal security.
To further this end, the development of institutional guiding principles can be a valuable tool. Provide guidance and orientation to those creating R&I programmes to ensure that enhancing societal security is prioritised and underpins decision-making.
2/ A broader range of addressees needs to be incorporated into the focus of R&I programs in all phases of the programming cycle.
Ensure a broad range as possible of the needs of those affected is included in the agenda-setting and formation of programmes.
Social innovation may be equally, if not more, important for enhancing societal security than technological innovation. Consider both social and technological innovation.
An outstanding feature of the security field is its breadth and complexity in terms of inter-dependencies and interactions between security challenges and security solutions. As a result this field is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity, ensure flexibility and adaptivity of research programmes so they can respond to unforeseen changes and developments.
3/ The successful embedding of security R&I outputs requires more attention and a more sophisticated approach to managing the interactions with end-users than in many other fields.
Ensure the contextual, operational use of the output is embedded in the R&I process itself. If enhancing societal security is supposed to provide the guiding ideas for security R&I programming, then a tight embedding of security R&I policy into security policy during the first phase of structuring the challenge is essential. This can also help ensure that R&I results developed during the process meet actual security needs. Security policy and security R&I policy must be coordinated from the very beginning of agenda-setting and programme formation if later R&I results are to meet actual security needs.
4/ The inter-disciplinary cooperation between social sciences and/or humanities, and natural and/or engineering sciences is crucial.
Inter-disciplinary cooperation is a crucial ongoing requirement. Striking the balance between creating centralised R&I efforts and decentralised solutions for concrete security challenges is a critical requirement for security R&I programming. Ensure security R&I programmes can successfully address localised problems with localised solutions.
5/ Many security challenges need to address global issues and determinants.
For R&I to be meaningful, the incorporation of global security challenges needs to be taken into account in R&I programming. Ensure security R&I programmes can successfully incorporate and address global security problems. Security easily touches upon contentious ethical issues, where ethical principles and other political goals need to be balanced with security needs. Consider and incorporate ethical issues and implications within security R&I agendas and programmes. R&I security planning needs to incorporate international, national, corporate, and civilian perspectives on security which can be very different across various domains. Instead of national security it is more appropriate to speak of societal security, and instead of risks, it is more appropriate to focus on societal security challenges and societal security needs. While this still allows for multiple interpretations, a common lingo will clarify the framing of the research debate and shape the overall direction of the R&I Agenda. R&I security planning needs to employ a much broader concept of security than the one that has typically been employed in national security R&I planning.
Finally, specific recommendations for end-users conducting challenge-oriented societal security R&I programmes were formulated:
1/ Providing normative guidance and orientation: The ‘mission’ to which R&I shall contribute needs to be defined in order to guide research and innovation activities.
2/ Respecting diversity of innovations: The diversity of innovation patterns needs to be respected, in particular as regards the balance between technological and social innovation and the pace at which innovation and change occur.
3/ Moving towards implementation: Much more emphasis is put on the diffusion and uptake of novel solution, which is why the implementation side of innovation attracts more attention than in the past.
4/ Including a broader range of stakeholders: In order to improve societal security, it is necessary to deal differently with the stakeholders of security than in the past. The people concerned about and affected by security matters must be considered as also active players for security.
5/ Inter- and trans-disciplinarity: Due to the attention to diverse and comprehensive solutions, a broader range of disciplines needs to be involved in specific challenge-oriented R&I activities.
6/ Embed specific R&I activities in a global perspectives: Developments at global scale often need to be taken into account in developing specific R&I solutions at European, national or local levels.
7/ Improving policy coordination: With the attention to diffusion and implementation of novel solutions, the coherence between R&I policy on the one hand and sectoral policies (such as security policy) needs to be improved.
8/ Dealing with uncertainty and complexity: In view of uncertainty about future challenges and possible options for tackling them, adaptivity and flexibility needs to be built into R&I system structures and mission-oriented R&I programmes to allow responding faster to upcoming events and disruptions.
Security is often about addressing a large number of identified low probability events with high potential negative consequences, in an environment characterised by great uncertainty over the exact form and timing of the manifestation of these events. This environment creates challenges not only for governments producing national security policies and security R&I programmes, but also for the researchers and developers undertaking the programmes. These groups struggle to implement a single correct model of R&I within security.
No single model of R&I can adequately cater to all the different facets and modern conceptualisations of security, characterised by variable levels of social/technical concern and different rates of change. Designing solutions appropriate for the variety of societal security challenges and societal security needs, requires different innovation models. All models take a different approach to prioritising and guiding research based on the specific framing of the security challenge at hand. New ways of organising R&I are required that put a stronger emphasis on societal aspects, and on new mechanisms for moving from research to innovation and widespread realisation of security solutions. Innovation for societal security needs to focus both on fast and slow rate of changes and technical and societal concerns requiring diverse R&I models.
Once a range of R&I model capable of covering the gamut of societal security has been developed, attention must shift to the challenge of how to prioritise different societal security R&I programmes and research opportunities.
Priority-setting in societal security R&I is not just a technocratic decision, but one that requires the involvement of a range of actors and stakeholders. The concept of priority-setting in R&I is based on a combination of technical arguments (technical rationality) and social processes (social rationality) to create legitimacy for collective and governmental choices in security research and innovation.
• Technical rationality provides the lines of reasoning why certain priorities in security R&I should be set; technical rationales provide the reservoir of by and large scientifically accepted lines of reasoning in the context of priority-setting.
• Social rationality defines the process through which these different technical rationales are interpreted from the individual stakeholders’ perspectives, their interests, capabilities and concerns, and how they are brought to bear in the various stages of the process of programming and priority-setting. This social dimension is crucial, because technical rationales are far from uncontested, and they may well give rise to conflicts of interest, to some actors winning and others losing.
Social rationality needs to complement technical rationality, in particular in areas where controversial values and assessments are likely to exist. Such conflicts of interest might hinder priorities from being implemented, and for good reasons. The balanced involvement of stakeholders in this process is crucial to both dealing with potential conflicts and improving the potential benefits of priorities selected. We need to design processes of priority-setting that not only take technical rationales into account, but that also give stakeholders the opportunity to feed their knowledge, their concerns and their interests into that process.
Even when combining technical and social rationality, it is unlikely that clear and uncontested priorities can be found easily. Ultimately, priority-setting is not a scientific, but a political process where political choices need to be made. What social rationality can contribute is enhanced transparency and the consideration of all relevant perspectives and interests as a basis for informed political choices.
Potential Impact:
IMPACT
ETTIS has a developed an innovative method to identify research and investment (R&I) priorities. Potentially, this model has far reaching positive effects in socio-economic terms.
Even though the project has finished, the results of ETTIS will be exploited via various channels:
• The policy briefs will be promoted further and the results will be translated into a short, user-friendly overview, which will be added on the website and distributed to policy makers and end users via the existing mailing lists.
• The research results also will be re-used into new project applications, thus allowing to build on the existing results.
• Due to the nature of the project and the final results of ETTIS, a policy-oriented use of the results on different levels will be explored.
• Dissemination of the results towards the end users will be stimulated, also through possible participation to project meetings of other projects.
• In addition, several publications are still in the making with a publication date in 2015.
Towards a new approach
The ETTIS approach to security R&I policy, programming and priority setting resides on three main elements:
1. A differentiated innovation model
ETTIS suggests departing from a purely industrial innovation model to underpin security R&I, and move to a more differentiated meta-model of four archetypes of innovation, which spans a sufficiently broad spectrum of security R&I configurations. Next to a modified industrial innovation model (ETTIS example: Professional Security Services), which still remains valid in several domains of security R&I, three additional models are suggested: (1) a fast and open innovation model, where products and services are launched at a very high frequency (ETTIS example: Cyber Defence Systems), (2) a social innovation model (ETTIS example: Cyber Civic Resilience), and (3) a commons-oriented innovation model (ETTIS example: Climate and Migration). In systematic terms, these four models can be positioned along two main dimensions, namely the balance between social and technological elements, and the pace of change at which innovation occurs.
2. A flexible and adaptive governance framework for the programming of security R&I
ETTIS has developed an adaptive model of the programming cycle, which takes into consideration many of the specific requirements by which security R&I is characterised. It departs from the prevailing linear model of moving from a guiding security vision to a strategic research agenda that is subsequently implemented. Instead, it stresses the idea that an interactive and adaptive programming approach is needed in security R&I. A continuous adjustment to newly emerging threats and options is necessary. It needs to be underpinned by research on both new options and a better understanding of security challenges. New insights generated need to be fed back immediately into the process of structuring security challenges that need to be addressed. This requires close coordination with security policy as the policy area where the overarching mission for security R&I is supposed to be defined. Finally, the involvement of stakeholders, and of end-users in particular, is crucial in all phases of the programming cycle.
3. A process model for priority-setting
Priority-setting is an important part of the programming cycle. In particular when subscribing to an adaptive programming approach, clear guiding rationales of priority-setting are key ensuring coherence in deciding why some topics should be favoured over others. ETTIS suggests distinguishing between technical rationales (i.e. arguments that justify priorities from an overarching scientific perspective) and social rationales (i.e. arguments that relate to the perspectives of different stakeholders). Technical rationales can be of four different kinds: (1) Rationales from R&I policy are needed to argue what the purpose of R&I policy is supposed to be. In this regard, we have seen a shift from competitiveness as the main purpose of R&I towards enhancing societal security as the new mission of security R&I. (2) As a consequence of this shift towards a new mission-type approach, rationales from security policy need to be drawn upon in order to identify which security challenges are to be addressed by security R&I. (3) Security R&I policy rationales are needed to define the kinds of structural and thematic issues to be addressed, taking into account the structural and organisational specificities of the security domain with its respective innovation models. (4) Clear rationales are also needed to argue why policy intervention in R&I, and in particular also European policy intervention, is needed. Complementary to these technical rationales, a socially rational, usually participatory process should allow taking into account the interests, competencies and potential synergies/conflicts of actors and stakeholders.
These rationales apply at different stage of the priority-setting process, as simulated in the ETTIS project. It starts with confirming the mission of security R&I as being geared towards the concept of societal security. Then future scenarios in key domains are developed in order to identify future societal security needs in line with societal security. Against this backdrop, more specific security challenges and possible R&I options for addressing them are specified in an iterative process. In order to deal with these challenges and options in security R&I systems, both structural priorities (i.e. how the R&I systems need to be organised) and thematic priorities (i.e. thematic R&I agendas) are developed. Finally, the question is raised regarding the need for and the instruments of policy intervention for realising R&I on these priorities. Stakeholder participation is essential along the entire priority-setting process, with different types of stakeholders likely to play more prominent roles in some stages, and less prominent roles in others.
PAST & ON-GOING DISSEMINATION & IMPACT
The research of ETTIS has been disseminated through various channels. These activities have been described in detail in D7.5 Dissemination Activities Report.
These activities include the following:
1/ Project website. In the second period, this website has been regularly updated and announced events and workshops. The submitted deliverables have been uploaded. The link to the video has been added recently. This website will be online in the coming years. This website has a high visibility on google when searching for ETTIS or related keywords.
2/ Newsletters and direct stakeholders mailings. Several electronic newsletters were sent to the stakeholder list. These newsletters were tailored to coincide with the moments in ETTIS when we had notable output or announced upcoming events. These newsletters and direct stakeholder mailings proved to be a reasonable communication strategy, most useful for publicising upcoming events.
In sum, this strategy of direct communication proved to be particularly useful: ETTIS newsletters and direct stakeholder mailings were very effective for publicising upcoming events.
3/ Conferences: Mid-Term Conference (Dublin) and High Level Event (Brussels)
The mid-term conference took place on 16th May 2013 in Dublin. It coincided with the Irish Presidency of the European Council and attracted an audience of end users, policy makers, academia and military audience. All presentations at the conference were recorded and these presentations were made public (with the necessary consent) via the ETTIS project website.
The High Level Event in Brussels was organised on 20 November 2014. Members of the consortium took the floor with presentations of the outcomes of the research project, one month from its conclusion. In addition to the consortium partners and members of ETTIS’ User Reflection Group, external end users were also involved in this event; both as attendees and panelists/guest-speakers. In particular there were presentations by representatives from the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, and Directorate-General Home Affairs.
This event differed from the more conventional style of ‘final project conference’ in that rather than operating as a relatively static presentation of results to a largely passive audience it was organised in a much more dynamic fashion. During the conference, audio recordings were made of all presentations and PowerPoint sides were used. For the majority of the panel sessions and speeches, consent was given by the respective speakers for their presentations to be made public. These presentations were subsequently made available online via the ETTIS project website.
In sum, ETTIS conferences proved to be very successful dissemination strategies with multiple layers of impact, including:
- the simple one-way exchange of information;
- validation and improvements of outputs resulting from two-way discussions;
- networking and fostering of relationships for later interactions and collaborations.
4/ Presentations at other EU projects and events co-hosted with other EU projects.
These activities allowed to reinforce knowledge exchange and across project cooperation. Presenting at external events assisted in fostering knowledge exchange about the ETTIS project and its underlying deliverables. It also demonstrated the contemporary relevance of ETTIS by the way in which it intersected with other ongoing EU projects as well as with wider conference proceedings.
In other words, external event presentations offered the occasion to foster knowledge exchange about the ETTIS project and its underlying deliverables. They also demonstrated the contemporary relevance of ETTIS by the way in which it intersected with other ongoing EU projects as well as with wider conference proceedings.
5/ Publications.
Publications arising from the research within ETTIS formed an invaluable conduit for dissemination of results, albeit often with specific targeted groups of recipients in mind. They are divided here into three categories:
(1) articles (both for journals and other targets) relevant to the research areas pertaining to ETTIS, published in peer-reviewed publications with their largely academic focus, and representing a resilient broad-based dissemination tool; and articles for other targets including government agencies/departments, think-tank’s, etc.;
(2) policy papers targeted at European policy makers and practitioners, public officials and other high-level decision makers arising from specific deliverables and WPs;
(3) magazine article (both hard copy and digital) within ‘Europe in Review 2014’. The printed version targets high-level decision makers, while the digital version has a wider public, business, and media audience.
Below is a detailed list of the already available publications:
[5.1] Publications in journals: several articles have been published and more are about to be published.
- Dönitz, Ewa, Erduana Shala and Timo Leimbach, “Future Threat Scenarios for Identifying Societal Security Needs – The Methodological Approach Based on European Project ETTIS” (under review)
- Lagazio, Monica, Nazneen Sherifb and Mike Cushman, “A multi-level approach to understanding the impact of cyber crime on the financial sector”, Computers & Security, Vol. 45, September 2014, pp. 58–74.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016740481400087X
- Lagazio, Monica, “The Evolution of the Concept of Security”, The Thinker, Vol. 43, 2012, pp 36-42.
- HCSS produced a paper on Societal Security and Resilience based on the ETTIS work in WP1, Presented to the Dutch National Security Think tank, a high level advisory board consisting of Dutch security experts to the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice.
- Weber, M and E.A. Eriksson, “Governing R&I for Societal Security: Towards new innovation models and policies”, 2015. (under review)
- Eriksson, E. A., H. Carlsen. ”Policy analysis for high end risks: possibilistic and probabilistic approaches to robustness” (under review)
- Henrik Carlsen, E. Anders Eriksson, Karl Henrik Dreborg, Bengt Johansson, Örjan Bodin. ”Systematic exploration of scenario spaces” (under review)
[5.2] Policy Papers: three policy papers have been published. These are disseminated via targeted mailings and via the website:
- Mapping innovation in securing society: Taxonomy for identification of research-based opportunities for societal security, corresponds to WP5, Task 5.2 D5.3 and was authored by Dr. E. Anders Eriksson of the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).
- How to foster security R&I able to support comprehensive societal security, corresponds to WP6, Task 6.4 D6.4 and was authored by Dr. Matthias Weber of the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Dr. E. Anders Eriksson of the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).
- European security trends and threats in society: final project summary, corresponds to WP6, Task 6.5 D6.5 and was authored by Dr. Monica Lagazio and Dr. Timothy Mitchener-Nissen of Trilateral Research and Consulting (TRI), and Rocco Bellanova of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
[5.3] Magazine article in 'Europe in Review 2014', aiming at EC institutions policy makers in particular. The Europe in Review 2014 focus magazine was launched in the European Parliament and is produced in both print and digital formats. We have published a full page article in this magazine highlighting both principle findings from ETTIS as well as publicising the ETTIS website and its collection of publically accessible deliverables. The digital version is published on www.eubserver.com and publicised through their newsletter and via social medias. This digital version also contains a link to the ETTIS website
With regard to the overall publication strategy, it should be noted that:
- By adopting a variety of different formats (articles, policy papers, and a magazine article) we were able to maximise the reach of our dissemination activities from publications, both by the total readership as well as the range of readers.
- Journal article publications proved a valuable tool for fostering cross EU-project collaborations, thereby benefitting multiple projects in an efficient manner. It assisted in reducing the silo-ing of research projects and results thereby maximising their impact.
- Policy briefs restricted to 8-10 pages may represent the most economical and efficient publication dissemination activity for presenting detailed and/or high-level results to specifically targeted readers; both from the perspective of the producer of the brief and the reader.
- Magazine articles proved incredibly useful for raising awareness of the project, though the amount of information, and the level of detail achievable, are both restricted. They work well when combined with an established website containing detailed deliverables by directing the readers to these.
6/ Press releases.
Communication with the media was undertaken through the use of press releases. Media contacts were identified by the consortium during the construction of the wider list of relevant stakeholders. As a concept, ‘media’ in this context was widely interpreted so as to include bloggers, journals, and webzines alongside the more traditional newspapers, television and radio sources. Throughout the lifecycle of the project and at key moments these individuals were sent a number of press releases in major European languages. Given the structure of the ETTIS research, in particular the different times at which notable outputs were produced and events occurred, the distribution of these press releases were not evenly spaced over the course of the applicable 36 months. Rather they were necessarily skewed towards both the beginning and end of the project
Key media-communication/press-release impact insights are:
- The successful impact of press releases from ETTIS was most visible in two ways:
a) By the information being picked-up and repeated by the targeted media source. This goal was achieved through articles such as the one below from the Global Security Magazine.
b) By the attendance of media representatives at both the Mid-term Conference and the Final High-Level Event.
7/ Workshops.
Workshops were an essential knowledge dissemination means. The ETTIS workshops were employed to successfully produce both internal and external dissemination benefits.
Internally, consortium partners used workshops to discuss, present and deliberate project-related matters and findings. The benefits they facilitated included:
a) robust discussions over ongoing deliverables,
b) assisted the genesis and development of ideas and concepts for incorporation into ETTIS, and
c) highlighted avenues for maximising external benefits through the identification of; (i) gaps in the collective expertise/knowledge-base of the research consortium requiring external input to fill, and (ii) optimal targets from external stakeholders for future workshops.
External dissemination benefits arising from the ETTIS workshops, beyond the more obvious ‘spreading the word about ETTIS and the results produced herein’ included the following:
a) the facilitation of reflexive communication with individuals outside of the research consortium who were independent of the group, and thereby not subject to any group-think or blinkered attachment to specific ideas; activities which are always at risk of entering collaborative projects,
b) providing avenues and contacts for further dissemination beyond those attending the workshops themselves through introducing the ETTIS consortium to secondary contacts.
Within a number of the workshops undertaken throughout ETTIS and described above, small focus groups were assembled from identified key stakeholders to assist in knowledge generation. Specifically these focus groups were utilised in the development of the key case-studies (Professional Security Capabilities, Cyber Defence Systems, Cyber Civic Resilience, and Climate-Induced Migration) and the associated identification of threats, needs, and R&I opportunities.
External dissemination of the ETTIS project was not a driving motivation for including these groups with the overall ETTIS research methodology, as primarily these groups were used for the internal dissemination and validation of knowledge and ideas. Nevertheless, these focus groups are noted here as they do represent small, targeted groups to whom specific information from the ETTIS project was disseminated.
It should be highlighted that:
- Workshops were incredibly successful as a means of disseminating the underlying concepts of the ETTIS project to external stakeholders from different Member States and beyond who would conceivably take up the results of the project.
- By incorporating the User Reflection Group and other invitees, the results from the project could be improved and validated before being more widely disseminated.
- The importance of societal security as a security topic was confirmed.
- Workshops enabled the successful incorporation of stakeholder and end-user views from a diverse group of individuals into the cases and models being developed within ETTIS. Externally, these individuals were able to take away the concepts and generated knowledge from ETTIS to their own private and public organisations.
- Workshops and focus groups facilitated meaningful information exchanges with the attending EU representatives.
8/ Scenario video.
A scenario video was made in the final semester of ETTIS and finalised in M36. The video was based on the scenario building exercise that took place in WP4. The WP leader and PRIO identified a video-maker after several rounds of information gathering on the basis of several proposals submitted by video production companies, assessed according to price for value principles that are usual at PRIO. Pionierfilm GmbH (Darmstadt) was selected, as they could show good results with one of the other partners, Fraunhofer Institute. The first draft of the video was discussed at the final Steering Committee meeting in Brussels, and screened at the High Level Event on 20 November 2014. The video provides a simplified understanding to a lay audience of the nature, methods and potential results of security foresighting. The aim of the brief video presentation is to give a simple, visual representation of the building blocks of security foresighting, and to show how they can be assembled and rearranged in order to give a realistic view of the possibilities that lie in the future.
In concrete terms, the video presents the basic terms and ideas used in the work of security foresighting, including a graphic presentation of the concept of future foresighting and the ideas and tools that it connects to. It also shows in a simplified, easy-to-understand way, how security foresighting is done and takes the viewer through the analysis of cyber security, used as a useful everyday example. All viewers of the film will have a relationship to it, but few may have considered how it relates to the security of their societies. Finally, the video also explains the potential benefits of security foresighting. The video appears on the home page of the ETTIS website. The scenario video has also been made available on YouTube and from the ETTIS website from February 2015 onwards. The simplest measure of the impact of this video will be the number of ‘views’ obtained as well as the number of likes/dislikes.
9/ Social Networking.
Only a selection of available social networking options were employed as dissemination tactics within ETTIS; namely the use of LinkedIn to promote membership of the ETTIS research consortium by individual members, and the uploading onto YouTube of selected speeches from the Mid-Term conference. This decision was motivated by the security nature of the project and its deliverables, and the need to adopt a focused and targeted social media strategy.
In addition, a brief presentation of the ETTIS project was given at the 5th Meeting of the Horizon 2020 Programme Committee configuration for Secure Societies. This happened at the premises of the European Commission on 30 September 2014, and was done by the project coordinator (PRIO), represented by Rocco Bellanova.
The social networking strategy proved that:
- YouTube videos of project conference presentations are an effective method of reaching a larger audience than is possible at the conference itself. They also help to ensure the legacy of the project as they will outlast the lifecycle of the project itself.
- Between the 9th October 2013 and 13th December 2014 the six ETTIS Mid-term Conference videos were viewed a combined total of 996 times.
10/ User Reflection Group.
The User Reflection Group (URG) advised on scientific and policy-focused matters relevant to ETTIS. It supported the consortium in guaranteeing both scientific excellence and policy relevance, validated various outputs and deliverables throughout the project, and ensured that ETTIS incorporated the input of various stakeholders. It thus formed an important part of the ETTIS dissemination strategy.
The URG included a wide range of expertise from different stakeholder organisations such as government, industry, research organisations, civil protection authorities, civil society, think tanks, academia, agencies dealing with security matters, and co-ordinators of relevant projects.
Different combinations of members from the URG attended 9 workshops during the project (a total of 31 attendees) as well as both the mid-term conference and the final high level event (a total of 4 attendees). As this indicates the focus was very much on the workshops. This reflects the practical purpose of the URG throughout the project whereby they were employed as a valuable expert body for discussing, improving, and validating the output from ETTIS, as well a vehicle for disseminating results and advertising the project itself.
In other words, the engagement with the User Reflection Group proved that:
- Interviews and discussions with members from the User Reflection Group (URG) indicated that on the whole these members were able to incorporate knowledge gained from participating within the URG to their other work. This is an important impact result for the ETTIS project as it displays the relevance and value of the project to the work of others.
- Members of the URG added value to the deliverables themselves through validation processes and by adding their expertise to complement the skill-sets of the ETTIS researchers.
- Just as important as the information exchanged was the opinions/views of both the URG and the consortium as to the value of this process. The URG felt they were able to add value to the project outputs and that their opinions were valued by the researchers. Similarly, the consortium researchers expressed a genuine appreciation over the presence of the URG members, recognising that these individuals were able to complement their own knowledge.
- User reflection groups allow the addition of individuals to a project who might not otherwise be able to join a consortium as a full partner for a variety of reasons. This is particularly valuable when seeking input from people working in fields a research project is trying to assist.
List of Websites:
Website: http://ettis-project.eu/
ETTIS video: Threat scenario video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BdxUfwxpLg