In the thesaurus, synonyms for risk include exposure, jeopardy and liability. All of those dangers are translated by the public sector as being well-known for adversity to risk.
But being risk-adverse and being able to manage risk are different things. This week there have been several warnings for the public sector, particularly local government, about how being able to manage risk needs careful assessment and the right skills.
Yesterday, the Audit Commission came out from its corner fighting, with strong words from chairman Michael O'Higgins, defending his organisation's criticism of seven local authorities for investing in Icelandic banks last October.
The criticism of several councils, including the London borough of Havering and Kent county council, were first made by the commission in its report, Risk and Return, in March, and resulted in the threat of court action, now averted.
"The simple fact is that seven authorities, including Kent and Havering, invested in Icelandic banks when they should not have done," said yesterday's statement from the commission.
"These were extraordinary circumstances that called for vigilance. Whether it was through negligence, carelessness or following an inappropriate policy, millions of pounds of public money was put at risk when it should not have been."
This is all about risk management. O'Higgins said the authorities failed to make use of up-to-date market intelligence to ensure the security of public money.
A similar warning has also come from a new report commissioned by Zurich Municipal, on the handling of supply chain risk in the public sector, and the "potentially catastrophic" implications for services as councils increase their reliance on outsourcing their backoffice systems, such as IT and HR, and use partners to deliver frontline services.
The report says that without proper management of these functions, there could be disastrous failures: examples could be suppliers' costs rising unexpectedly, or badly-handled social care contracts.
Indeed, up comes almost at once just such an example, in our story about the cost of authorities losing millions through not checking their contracts with construction companies carefully enough.
How are senior public managers to tackle these issues? One way may be to make greater use of their existing, in-house expertise.
All councils in England and Wales are required to identify their key risks and many already employ dedicated risk managers.
The public risk management association, Alarm, is certainly hoping that the rising need to manage risk more effectively across all public organisations will highlight the role of risk managers and help them, according to Alarm chairman Paul Dudley, shine a bit more light on some of the "darker corners" of public sector work.
"I suspect treasury management could have been one of those darker corners," says Dudley. "There is an opportunity here for being proactive in suggesting areas where risk managers haven't always been involved, and that message may be heard more easily."
Partnership working is an area highlighted both in the Zurich report and by Dudley as something that can hold risks for public bodies. "It is of concern," comments Dudley. "It can be challenging for local authorities working with partners that may have a different approach to managing risk."
Alarm is working on a model that will enable councils to assess their risk management arrangements - but that won't be available until early next year.
In the meantime, as the economic climate grows riskier, public managers have to consider not merely attempting to avoid risk, but trying to manage the inevitable risks of operating in an uncertain environment. It's not something either the public sector, or, in fairness, the private sector has found easy.
In the banking world, years of work went into a standard on risk management called Basel 2 to try and ensure banks assessed their exposure to risk - and look where that got us, come last autumn's banking crisis.
