1950s. the experiment shows that the extra work this would require from the swedish people corresponds to a labour cost of 7 per cent of gdp a year, which is around sek 190 billion a year. what i want to illustrate is that it is important to protect the entirety, so that we can continue using the services that are so important to the swedish economy, all the way down to the individual level. this is where the riksbank, together with other authorities and organisations, comes into the picture. we work on preparations to create resilience and contingency solutions, which is called business continuity planning by those who work with these issues. the planning with regard to what to do when problems arise is called crisis recovery planning. this entails using contingency routines to maintain the capacity to make payments, which does not necessarily mean that the function needs to be maintained in all parts of the payment system. it may be a good idea to have contingency solutions that are entirely independent of the regular system. given the important function of the payment system in society, priority must be given to investment in building up resilience and managing crises. however, at the same time, these investments must be constantly balanced against the aim that the system should have the functions that are in demand and it should be cost - efficient to society. for instance, the aim for the riksbank's business continuity and crisis recovery planning is that it should be at a level that provides a sufficiently stable system, but still be cost efficient. several authorities and private companies own and have responsibility for the payment system infrastructure. these different agents may have different opinions as to what level is most appropriate for business continuity and crisis recovery planning. the riksbank ’ s tasks the riksbank ’ s role with regard to business continuity and crisis recovery planning can be divided into two areas. one of these concerns our role in mediating cash and payments and the other is our role of overseeing financial stability. with regard to the first role, the riksbank issues banknotes and coins. we are also responsible for the system that makes large - value payments between the banks and for lending money intraday so that these payments can be made. the business continuity and crisis recovery planning for cash management is aimed at security for values and personnel and also reliability of supply. with regard to the rix system, the business continuity and crisis recovery planning are aimed at being able to continue activities despite problems. it is also a question of

error was detected the contingency routines were implemented, which meant that payments could be made without being entered more than once. the problem was due to an error in the communications system that links the banks to rix. it took a total of five days to find the fault and implement a new solution. nordbanken ’ s problems meant, amongst other things, that it was impossible to compile the bank ’ s normal background data for customer payments. outwardly this was noticeable in that customers experienced problems using nordbanken ’ s bank cards and through delayed payments. however, it was possible to limit the damage since the system functioned from time to time and the contingency communications system was working. the problems were partly due to faulty software in the system. the problems began between christmas and new year 2000 and were not entirely resolved until 3 days into the new year. afterwards, we can note that the consequences of these two problems were slight and that the existing contingency routines were sufficient to limit them. however, both examples show how important it is to have preparations that enable operations to continue, despite various types of disruption. the cost of creating an entirely resilient system must at the same time be balanced against the cost of having a slightly less resilient system and instead having good contingency routines that can be implemented when problems arise. i will return to the work on creating resilience in the system. firstly, i shall describe how the financial infrastructure functions in practice and the importance of crisis recovery planning. the functions of the payment system to provide an idea of the extent and complexity of the payment system, i will give you a concrete example. the swedish social insurance administration pays out billions of kronor every month in pensions. in theory, it would seem like a fairly simple process for them to send money to ingrid, aged 93. however, if we describe the entire chain, from the swedish social insurance administration beginning the payment process until ingrid actually has the money in her hand, there is a fairly substantial amount of infrastructure, infrastructure communications and payment flows required. in addition to the basic infrastructure of electricity, telecommunications and post, the computer systems at the swedish national debt office, the banks, the riksbank and the bankgirocentralen are used to implement ordinary, simple pension payments. in order for ingrid the pensioner to receive her pension, the social insurance office sends a payment order to the swedish national debt office and one to the banks the swedish