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The Alarms That Were Sent, but Never Received: Attention Bias in a Novel Setting

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The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination

Part of the book series: Executive Politics and Governance ((EXPOLGOV))

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Abstract

In an analysis of the Norwegian police’s response to two terrorist attacks in 2011, Renå examines the reasons behind and implications of the failure of the police’s internal alarm system to work. The system was email based with limited functionality and had been given hardly any attention pre-2011. The chapter argues the alarm system was a de facto blind spot. Renå shows that this was a result of locally rational behaviours, because (i) crisis coordination in the police was traditionally a one-to-one interaction at the local level, (ii) there was no disruptive incident that put swift crisis coordination on the political agenda, and (iii) the political steering of the police was characterized by detailed and biased performance management—biased towards issues other than crisis preparedness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An Official Norwegian Report (Norsk offentlig utredning, NOU) is a report written by an ad hoc advisory commission appointed by the national government or one of the ministries. The 22 July Commission report was written by an independent commission appointed by the government to investigate 22/7 (see NOU, 2012).

  2. 2.

    All citations from references in Norwegian have been translated to English by the author.

  3. 3.

    Subtle change is outside the scope of this chapter and is thus not further discussed (see Feldman & Pentland, 2003, for an elaboration).

  4. 4.

    The performance contracts for the period 2001–03 are excluded because their format is less elaborate. The operationalization draws on Askim and colleagues’ large-N studies of annual performance contracts (Askim, 2015; Askim et al., 2017). The numbers have also been validated by cross-checking with an existing study on political control and steering in police (Fremstad, 2013). I thank Askim, Bjurstrøm, and Fremstad for giving me access to their data.

  5. 5.

    In the aftermath of 22/7, the national police commissioner set up an internal committee to evaluate the police response, called the Sønderland committee after the name of the leader of the committee (see Sønderland, 2012). In addition, the respective police districts, agencies , and the POD conducted their own internal evaluations of their own response. When referring to these reports, I use the name of the police agency (e.g. Kripos, 2011).

  6. 6.

    There are some parallels between PIT’s response, which signal both professional autonomy and loyalty, and the chapter in this volume by Wolfgang Seibel on the tension between the ‘logic of professional integrity’ and the ‘logic of system maintenance’.

  7. 7.

    The data source does not say anything about the total number of police districts that did and did not respond respectively.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Helge Renå

Authors
  1. Helge Renå
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helge Renå .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Tobias Bach

  2. Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

    Kai Wegrich

Appendix

Appendix

List of Interviewees

  1. 1.

    Ingelin Killengreen, former national police commissioner, POD (2000–11). Correspondence with author (email and telephone) in December 2016.

  2. 2.

    Vidar Refvik, assistant director, POD (2005–17). Interviewed by the author on 4 October 2016.

  3. 3.

    Oddbjørn Mjølhus, commissioner, later chief inspector; leader of the Crisis Management Unit in the POD (2001–12). Retired in 2015. Interviewed by the author on 13 June 2017.

  4. 4.

    Martin Strand, senior police officer, POD (2010–11). Had implementing the alarm system as one of his main tasks . Interviewed by the author on 8 June 2017.

  5. 5.

    Hans-Peder Torgersen, police inspector, employed with Kripos since 1992. Worked from 1996 to 2005 in the department operating the alarm system. Interviewed by the author on 26 June 2017.

  6. 6.

    Mats Berg, senior advisor, working in PIT since 2002. From 2005 onwards, was involved in the processes related to developing new technical solutions for an alarm system. Interviewed by the author on 2 November 2017.

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Renå, H. (2019). The Alarms That Were Sent, but Never Received: Attention Bias in a Novel Setting. In: Bach, T., Wegrich, K. (eds) The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination. Executive Politics and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76672-0_5

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