Another gap that surfaced from the practitioners’ workshop is related with the overall lessons learnt process. More specifically, the need for the adoption of a solid approach to efficiently exploit lessons learnt from past events and other EU MS was identified. Knowledge developed from dealing with similar incidents in the past, actions that worked or failed to work, what measures were more efficient than others and general what constitutes tacit knowledge, are not adequately exploited by many organisations. Transfer of knowledge can occur within the same organisations, practitioners from different disciplines that encountered similar challenges, and even between practitioner organisations from other EU MS.

To optimally exploit knowledge and lessons learned, an organisation should use a repository to record past events, their timeline, the stakeholders evolved, findings from debriefings, etc. Past records from incident databases can be examined and analysed to retrieve useful experience and avoid their recurrence (if possible) or better mitigate their consequences. Lessons learned can be derived for the technology (solutions that make an impact), Human (training required or joint exercises between stakeholders who should collaborate more effectively), Organisational and Regulatory/Policy dimensions. Past incidents can also be used for awareness and focused trainings. Lastly, analysts will gain valuable knowledge from past incidents and might come across useful findings.

Please note that this capability gap is also identified in TCP4 with 4.CGF.20