Cybersecurity is daily news. Data leaks and hackers are common features in the media. We tend to look to the government when things go wrong: what is the government doing about it? In this special issue we also look to the government and ask ourselves whether we are ready for the challenges of cybersecurity. Asking this question is simple. Answering it, however, requires sophisticated knowledge. This includes knowledge about the technology of today and the future. It also includes knowledge about governance. Who should be prepared in the age of distributed responsibilities? Which public and private parties can enhance cybersecurity, including you and me? Finally, what is does ‘being prepared’ mean exactly? This special issue includes three academic articles, five interviews and a column. Cybersecurity is viewed from different academic perspectives and professional positions. In its entirety, this special issue provides state-of-the-art of academic and professional thinking on government cybersecurity.

Government cybersecurity requires action from many public and private actors. Both collective knowledge and collective priority are needed to ensure cybersecurity at a government level. This makes collective learning essential. There is a system of arrangements that includes all kinds of governmental organisations and private parties. How can learning be stimulated in this system? And what is the need for steering here? This article provides answers to these questions, based on the contributions in this special issue. We conclude that both central control and self-regulation are essential to cybersecurity, even if they are in conflict. We coin the term ‘complimentary self-regulation’. We also conclude that many arrangements have been developed or are under development, however, it is difficult to institutionalise the coherence between these initiatives. There is a long road ahead in terms of gaining a collective understanding. Cybersecurity and its organisation will probably not vanish from the administrative agenda any time soon.

Interview with Jantine Kriens, chairwoman of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities.

Interview with Gert-Jan Buitendijk, director-general Administration and Kingdom Relations at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

In this issue of Bestuurskunde we deal with the claim that municipalities should be first port of call for citizens when it comes to the provision of public services. We discuss what this position means for municipalities and which challenges and dangers it brings.

This concluding article provides several suggestions on how municipalities can perform best in their role as ‘first governments’ and how they can deal with the tensions that this position produces.

Currently, Dutch cities are facing persistent societal problems as well as changing circumstances, due to the financial crisis and changing national policies. This special issue seeks to take analysis beyond a sense of mere crisis and investigates contemporary urban initiatives in order to discern what innovative modes of governance they offer.

The problems discussed in the articles of this special issue are not merely wicked in the sense of involving normative dissensus and factual uncertainty. They also are systemic: they reflect institutional inertia, discursive inertia and the disruptive impact of sociological trends (individualization, Europeanization etc.) on incumbent practices and institutions. This systemic character tends to makes them persistent: while fundamental change is unavoidable, such change is likely to be bothered by the very institutional and discursive inertia it seeks to address. Reflecting, from a public policy studies point of view, on previous articles we deduce four principles from urban practices to deal with these challenges: 1) reduce dissent and uncertainty where possible; 2) acknowledge normative diversity by promoting context-specific solutions; 3) organize policies around societal/market initiatives that have emerged in a context and 4) define institutional changes that may further promote and simplify such policies and seize opportunities for structural change.