Ungurytė-Ragauskienė, Svajūnė

When analyzing services as institutions in the context of public sector organizations as a whole, we need to consider various aspects, for example the environment in which both collaboration and competition can prevail. All of these aspects are important in examining the interrelationships and regulatory links between organizations. Relationship between institutions has become one of the central themes of public governance, which has impact for overcoming with challenges facing public sectors as socio-demographic, economic and technological changes occur. Purpose – to analyze national security system of Lithuania according to three ideal types (synergistic, cooperative and conflictive) of institutional fragmentation. Design/methodology/approach. Institutional fragmentation can be analyzed through the number of institutions and the prism of their legal regulation (Zelli, 2011). In the scientific literature fragmentation is divided into three types - synergistic, cooperative and conflictive (Biermann et al, 2009). Synergistic fragmentation is characterized by an equal participation of all institutes, providing the general operating principles, separating the regulation of activities, but essentially integrating all institutional structures. Collaborative or cooperative fragmentation is characterized by poorly integrated institutions and decision-making procedures, where the relationship between these different norms and principles is often ambiguous or when not all institutions are involved in core activities. In the context of conflictive institutional fragmentation, institutions have different decisionmaking procedures, operating principles, norms and rules are even contradictory (Biermann et al, 2009). The case study method was chosen, which allows to thoroughly analyze the situation in the real context and to describe and explain the phenomenon under study. This method generally adopt a neutral, distanced and factual tone with the purpose of explaining results to peers so that they can be re-applied, tested and, ideally, reproduced (Lapoule and Lynch, 2018). In the case study the key element is undoubtedly the case which also has a number of characteristic features (Sherzod et al., 2020). In this research national security system as a specific case was chosen. Finding. Currently in Lithuania we have very fragmented national security model. In order to deal with this situation, it would be advisable to unify the general provisions of the statutory civil service and to regulate them in a single legal act. The analysis shows that the reforms following the restoration of independence did not set clear goals for the national security system. Research limitations/implications. This research provides a case study based on national security services regulation. Practical implications. The strict separation between the statutory and military services, which attributes the civil defense service to the system of statutory services, suggests that Lithuania has an overly fragmented, even conflicted model of regulating relations between national security services. National security system documents to improve this system are disadvantageous, as this policy aspect, which covers the responsibilities of many ministries and even individual branches of government, does not clearly distinguish national security activities from the functions of other institutions. The absence of such a demarcation means that we cannot adequately assess the adequacy of national security capabilities to challenges or potential adverse scenarios. Originality/Value. National security system is considered as the activity of individual services without examining the whole and separating the statutory from the military services. This case study looks at these services together as a whole of the national security system.

Kibernetinės atakos sudėtingėja ir tampa vis labiau rafinuotos. Vis daugiau kibernetinių incidentų paremti manipuliavimu žmonėmis, jų silpnybėmis, siekiama apeiti informacijos apsaugos sistemas bei pavogti ir užvaldyti konfidencialią informaciją. Pastebimas socialinės inžinerijos metodais paremtų kibernetinių incidentų skaičiaus didėjimas. Tokia statistika verčia organizacijas reaguoti į pokyčius ir prisitaikyti prie vyraujančio institucinio lauko, tobulinti esamą teisinį reguliavimą. Straipsnio tikslas – išanalizavus socialinės inžinerijos sąvokos turinį ir tokio tipo kibernetinių atakų atsiradimo prielaidas bei kibernetinių incidentų valdymo reglamentavimą nacionalinėje teisėje, pateikti išvadas ir rekomendacijas kibernetinio saugumo reguliavimo tobulinimui institucinio izomorfizmo kontekste. Atlikta analizė atskleidė, jog šiuo metu Lietuvoje socialinės inžinerijos institucinis izomorfizmas nukreiptas tik į techninius kibernetinį saugumą užtikrinančius veiksnius, o žmogiškajam faktoriui skiriama nepakankamai dėmesio. Siekiant įveikti socialinės inžinerijos keliamus iššūkius išauga darbuotojų švietimo kibernetinio saugumo tematika poreikis. Augant socialinės inžinerijos rūšies kibernetiniams incidentams taip pat svarbu vadovautis gerąja praktika, kuri kartu su nacionalinės teisės aktais būtų įtvirtinta organizacijų kibernetinio saugumo politikoje, numatant aiškią kibernetinių incidentų valdymo procedūrą.

This paper discusses the results of two focus group discussions with managing officers within the European border guarding community. Frontex - EU’s executive border and coast guard agency conducts multiple activities, which involve member-state officers in various forms. In one of these Frontex format we have identified a group of officers and officials who have extensive professional experience at both national and European levels of border security policy and enforcement. In our study we find that the perception of European border security challenges closely related to how these officers see EU integration overall. For the officers it is clear that effective external border security enforcement requires further policy harmonization and there is alignment of views how that can be achieved. At the same time the officers take a mostly fatalistic stance towards the political feasibility of overcoming many of the hurdles. The key hurdles that discussions have identified are: (i) a lack of political agreement on what the endgame of integration is, (ii) opaque motivation of national and European political decision-makers towards border security policy, and (iii) resource misallocation. EU border security is one of the two flagship EU integration projects that show a global political ambition and constitute key hallmarks at the same time causing challenges that current EU institutions find hard to tackle with. Assuming that neither federalization, nor a retreat from the Schengen agreement will occur this paper discusses what border security management models are feasible within the existing institution constraints and the findings from the focus group discussions, offering a contribution to the theory European administrative space from a street-level bureaucracy perspective.

From a historical-institutional angle, this chapter focuses on Lithuania’s internal security services development. Resulting from both a decades-long period of economic growth as well as demographic decline, the Lithuanian security services are faced with an unfavorable recruitment environment, severely impeding the staffing of military units. In the light of the newly recognized threats from Russia, Lithuania needs to expand its military, which, amongst others, necessitates the expansion of the professional officer corps beyond the number of cadets graduating from the Military Academy. Despite increasing investments in defence and other measures, currently expansion requirements still cannot be met. Changes to the Interior Service Statute, which regulates the officers’ status of uniformed services within the areas of responsibility (AoRs) of the Ministries of Interior, Finance and Justice may offer some room to expand and develop the professional military officer corps. Although under Wartime Law, many of these services would be subjected to military command and considered part of the armed services, until now, defence policy developments have had little effect on the professional development of Interior Service officers. This chapter explores why the security services fail to coordinate the development of professional military competencies amongst themselves. We find three possible reasons. First, the security services fit into the broader Lithuanian governance model, which is characterized by multi-level fragmentation and appears resistant to integration policies, even in instances of great political salience. Furthermore, as the Interior Service Statute covers many agencies and services, some have their civilian functions ‘militarized’, whilst others have their military functions ‘demilitarized’. In doing so, the development of military competences across all services is hampered. Third, and seemingly paradoxically, increased defence spending seems to drive the military and other services in the armed forces apart.

Purpose. The ongoing processes of European integration are confronted with the challenge of "different speed" EU. Union is often divided into "eurozone" - central and peripheral countries or old and new Europe. However, it is forgotten and ignored that "speeds" mean differences. Such heterogeneity can lead to a pessimistic EU scenario where European countries move at different speeds and do not always pursue the same goal. On the one hand, there is a presumption that the EU Member States must continue to seek solidarity through the development of a common administrative model and, on the other hand, the growth of sovereign powers. The question arises as to whether reforms carried out by EU Member States contribute to the overall integration of Member States in the field of institutionalism. Design/methodology/approach. Thus, it is through the functioning of institutes that economic phenomena and processes are analyzed with the help of institutionalism theory. Based on this theory, institutions define the rules of public gaming or human-made constraints that shape their interactions. In general, the representatives of the theory of institutionalism pay much attention to the analysis of the economic behavior and political motives of individuals. A multi-faceted approach has made institutionalist interpretations one of the most important tools for theoretical perspectives and organizational research. Institutionalism is the conventional theoretical wisdom of EU studies. Finding. EU integration has attracted particular attention since its origins as a result of the political and economic union of the Member States. Recognizing the administrative convergence of EU Member States as one of the key factors for achieving common goals and criteria, the challenges of a rapidly expanding organization have been overcome by several means over several decades. However, in the recent decade of the EU, with the global economic crisis, the Brexit talks, the Hungarian and Polish Eurosceptic political forces, the difficult-to-manage migration problem have hit Europe hard and have led many to thinking about the future of a united Europe. Research limitations/implications. Institutionalist interpretations helps to explain separate and different phenomena of European integration. However, institutionalism cannot explain long-term transformation of EU integration processes. What is more, viewpoint article is short article which focus on some of the key challenges, issues or developments in natural products research. This article is "opinion" style article, which gives the author’s perspective on a particular issue, backed up by the literature. Practical implications. Idea of EU as single federal state showed that there are too much of differences in the same union. EU integration may be initiated by agreements among governments, international institutions, once established, take on a political life of their own, and the rule-making authority delegated to them by states collectively binds and bounds governments by locking in patterns of collective behavior and ratcheting supranationality. Institutionalism approaches (sociological, historical, rational choice and discursive) help to explain different phenomena that have been occurring in the experience of EU integration. Originality/Value. There is a lack of research in scientific literature that examines and evaluates the importance of increasing administrative complexity and public administration fragmentation processes in EU Member States. It is clear that such diversity only complicates intergovernmental cooperation between countries, but there is a lack of scientific insight into what aspects of sovereign change in public service contribute to the strengthening of the EU and which weaken it. The assessment of change in public governance is also determined by the aspect of belonging to "central" and "peripheral" EU countries. The main argument of the critics of the "different speed" European model concerns the inequality of the states of such a union, the non-member countries of the EU will have much less chance of defining the details of their rules, and the pace and conditions of European unification will almost entirely be controlled by nuclear states. In this case EU would become even more fragmented in the future.