3.2 Ownership
Like risk itself, ownership of risk is a concept of many dimensions and interpretations. The most important aspect of ownership is a clear mutual understanding of the responsibilities among parties to a contract and/or the responsibilities among parties to a cooperative venture. The second most important aspect is for a similar understanding on an intra-organizational basis.

It is common for government customers to weight risk in establishing the reach and scopes of procurement contracts. Part of this weighting is a consideration of risk retained by the government versus passing risks to a contractor (for higher profits). Such issues need to be fully understood by all parties to a contract. Failure to achieve this understanding can result in wrongly conceived priorities by the wrong organization and in the failure to assure that the real risk owner gets all facts and impacts germane to the risk.

Every risk identified in a program should have an organization tagged for ownership, and a position holder should be tagged as managerial lead for its resolution.