Critical Infrastructure is infrastructure that, if destroyed, degraded or rendered unavailable for an extended period, will significantly impact on social or economic well‑being or affect national security or defence. The Commonwealth Government maintain a database of nationally significant critical infrastructure.
State and territory governments:
- identify and maintain a database of CI in their jurisdictions
- provide guidance to owners/operators in developing relevant security, emergency and contingency plans and capabilities to protect CI and ensure continuity of service, and
- harmonise prevention, response and recovery plans and arrangements between government and owners/operators.
Health critical infrastructure includes hospitals, public health infrastructure and Research and Development Laboratories.
WA Health, as a State Government agency and owner/operator of health critical infrastructure, is required to:
- provide adequate security of their assets
- actively undertake the planning process in accordance with Risk Management Standard, AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009
- conduct a review of the risk management plan on an annual basis, and
- participate in any exercises to test plans conducted by government authorities, and report any incidents or suspicious activity to State or Territory police.
WA Health’s critical infrastructure database (CID)
The WA Health CID is the central data repository for all essential and unique health service infrastructure and service provision for Health Services throughout Western Australia. The database is used to:
- maintain accurate contact details of Health Services
- provide details of individual, district, regional and state-wide health infrastructure
- provide details of individual, district, regional and state-wide health service provision
- provide data to assist in disaster response activities and recovery
- detail individual and pooled threats to infrastructure and service provision, and
- meet commonwealth critical infrastructure database requirements.
The database is administered by the DPMU.
The database is currently being updated.
The national guidelines for protecting critical infrastructure from terrorism
The National Guidelines for Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Terrorism provide a nationally consistent approach to help critical infrastructure owners and operators protect their assets from terrorism.
The guidelines have been designed specifically to help critical infrastructure owners and operators make informed decisions about risk management and security planning.
They provide information on different areas of responsibility, how critical infrastructure is identified, how to prepare risk assessments, how to manage public information and the media, prevention and preparedness, and response and recovery.
The guidelines are not a public document. The guidelines are available to authorized users from the DPMU or The Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) for Critical Infrastructure Resilience (http://www.tisn.gov.au/).
The Guidelines complement both the National Counter Terrorism Plan (External link) and the Australian Government’s Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy (see below).
Critical infrastructure resilience strategy
On 30 June 2010, the Australian Government released its Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy. The aim of the Strategy is the continued operation of critical infrastructure in the face of all hazards, as this critical infrastructure supports Australia’s national defence and national security, and underpins our economic prosperity and social wellbeing. More resilient critical infrastructure will also help to achieve the continued provision of essential services to the community.
The Strategy has two key objectives:
- critical infrastructure owners and operators (including the Australian Government) are effective in managing foreseeable risks to the continuity of their operations, through an intelligence and information led, risk informed approach
- critical infrastructure owners and operators enhance their capacity to manage unforeseen or unexpected risk to the continuity of their operations, through an organisational resilience approach.
A key imperative of the strategy is to have an effective business-government partnership with critical infrastructure owners and operators. The Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) for Critical Infrastructure Resilience is one avenue for this partnership.
The strategy is available from the Attorney General’s Department website (External link).
For more information, please contact us.
