(2) Resilience Councils – the concept

By Onno Hansen-Staszyński | Last Updated: 20 November 2024

The SAUFEX project started with a detailed concept of what Resilience Councils (RCs) should be. In this blog post, I will describe this original concept. Over time, it will become clear how much of it will survive and how much will have been adapted to reality.

Steps

The project initially foresaw the following steps needed to create an RC: drafting a methodology for the creation of the RC, drafting regulations for the formal accreditation of the RC, conducting consultations with representatives of parliamentary and governmental institutions on the draft regulations, formalizing the accreditation of the RC as an advisory body to the legislative and executive branches of government including the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), establishing the RC, and finally, recruiting and appointing members of the RC.

The methodology for the creation of RCs was to consist of the following steps: establishing criteria for becoming a member of the RC based on expertise and experience in Poland and beyond, inviting potential members, training the potential members based on a FIMI and DSA course that will be developed in the SAUFEX project, and providing the potential members with a recruitment exam - more on FIMI in the third blog post.

Tasks

The RC is to be an intermediary between state and non-state actors. Firstly, the RC gathers civil society input and advice. Concretely, it collects feedback from civil society and private stakeholders on the public’s perception of hybrid threats. As a result, it brings together currently fragmented data in a centralized secure FIMI knowledge database. Ideally, the RC will be capable of attributing FIMI incidents to actors. The RC will share its accumulated knowledge and expertise with governmental agencies, researchers, and, very importantly, with civil society.

Secondly, based on the input of civil society and the expertise of its members, the RC will formulate recommendations regarding evidence-informed policies, appropriate and proportional tactical and political responses, and communication strategies. In theory, as a consequence of the RC’s information sharing and recommendations, a more coordinated, harmonized, and standardized approach to FIMI will emerge among national and international stakeholders.

Thirdly, the RC will advise the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), who is nationally responsible for enforcing the DSA. The support of the DSC by the RC goes beyond informing and recommending. It also involves providing the DSC with knowledge of media so that FIMI content can be effectively addressed without having to resort to censorship – see the first blog post.

Impact

The RC is to decentralize and democratize the processes of FIMI analyses and responses. It is to lead to better informed, coordinated, and consistent decision-making regarding FIMI, as well as greater resilience by civil society, democratic processes, and democratic institutions.

Composition

Members of the RC should be experts in media and technology. The first group of potential members to be invited are practitioners from civil society organizations, active in the field of FIMI detection and responding to FIMI incidents.

All future members are to be trained by means of a course on FIMI and the DSA that is to be developed by the SAUFEX project. It could become mandatory for future RC members to pass a recruitment exam at the end of the course.

At least fifty percent of RC members will be women.

Tools

Members of the RC are to work with state-of-the-art tools to categorize and report FIMI incidents (e.g. OpenCTI, STIX, DISARM). These tools are being upgraded and made more appropriate to the FIMI domain by the SAUFEX project as well as by other current HORIZON-funded projects.

Geographic reach

An initial RC is to be erected in Poland. Would this turn out to be unfeasible, the first RC is to be erected in Lithuania. While RCs are foreseen in all European Union Member States, priority will be given to RCs in Poland, Lithuania, Finland, and the Netherlands. A central European institution, consisting of the heads of national RCs, is to be established to coordinate, harmonize, and standardize the activities of the national RCs.

Funding

Regarding the funding of RCs two potential sources are foreseen: the European Union and self-financing. Self-financing can be the outcome of public-private partnerships, consultancy services, and research funding. Within the SAUFEX project, a percentage of the exploitation of SAUFEX tools will be directed to the initial RC.

What the two potential sources of funding have in common is that they are independent of national governments, thus assuring that the RC will not be subject to fluctuating political will or governmental budgetary changes.

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