Preparation of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania for civil resistance
SCALE
- EUR 114.2 million planned for 2023-2025; 15 institutions delivering 46 measures of the implementation plan
- 16 municipalities, 85 vocational training programmes and 29 schools examined
- 33 328 people completed the basic civil resistance course in 2024; training ran in 31 of the country's 60 municipalities
COMPLIANCE
- a parliamentary resolution adopting the national agenda on preparing citizens for civil resistance, and the government plan implementing it
- the martial law statute and the law on the fundamentals of national security, which assign leadership and the civil resistance function
- crisis management and mobilisation statutes opening the use of non-governmental organisations to institutions from 2022 and from 2025
ECONOMY
- money planned for the period against four measures carrying no allocation of their own
- the absence of any total for what the state spends on the task
- payment of the instructors who deliver the training and of the organisations that supply them
EFFICIENCY
- coordination acts by the three bodies holding the mandate during the implementation period
- alignment between the plan's indicators and the institutions' own strategic plans, and reporting of money actually used
- collection of data on who completes the training, and on civic education in higher studies
EFFECTIVENESS
- readiness to organise and carry out unarmed resistance in crisis, mobilisation or war
- take-up of the optional national security and defence programme, and the geographic reach of adult training
- municipal readiness to evacuate and to care for vulnerable people in war
1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them
Coordination Integration Responsibility Accountability Alignment
Parliament did not leave the question open. It put the Government in charge in peacetime and gave coordination of the process to the National Security Commission, which the Prime Minister chairs (p.13). What the holders of that mandate then did is the finding, and the report states it in a single line: 'During the period of the plan's implementation the Government and the NSC did not carry out coordination actions' (p.13). The third body was created on 20 December 2023 to open public debate among citizens and non-governmental organisations and to put proposals to the Commission; 'In 2023 to the first quarter of 2025 the council's meetings did not take place. The council's first meeting was held on 12 May 2025, almost 17 months after its establishment' (p.14). Below them the statutory mandates do not reach either: the activities of the defence ministry and of its mobilisation and civil resistance department 'do not cover all the elements of the civil resistance process: building resilience, strengthening civic will, imparting knowledge and skills' (p.14), while 15 institutions deliver 46 measures across defence, education, culture, social security and labour, and home affairs (pp.4, 14). The report's conclusion is arithmetic: with leadership and coordination functions set for three subjects, 'there is no single subject empowered to coordinate the institutions acting in the preparation for civil resistance and to ensure inter-institutional solutions' (p.14). The first recommendation puts a date on the remedy - appoint a coordinating subject by 1 January 2026 (p.29).
- Function: Governance, Strategy, Organizational structure
- Value: Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Mandating authority, Lawmaker
- Quality: Effective state Functioning oversight and governance Avoidance of duplication and fragmentation
2. Nobody can say what the whole effort costs
Value management Process planning Reporting Monitoring
The plan carries a figure. 'EUR 114,228.81 thousand is planned for implementing the agenda plan' (p.14), divided across the three years as 43,446.4, 38,806.5 and 31,975.9 thousand (figure 2, p.15). It is not the whole cost, and the report says so twice over. Three defence measures and one interior measure carry no planned sum at all, 'financed respectively from the money planned in general for the Lithuanian Armed Forces' exercises and military training and for the activity of the interior ministry's institutions' (p.15). Then, in its own words: 'There is no data on how much in total the state invests in preparing citizens for civil resistance' (p.15). What was spent is not reported back in full either - of the measures they ran, the culture ministry accounted for 3 of 4, the education ministry 1 of 5, the interior ministry none, and the government office 2 of 5 for 2023 and 1 of 4 for 2024 (p.16). A programme whose total nobody holds cannot be judged value for money by anyone, including the parliament that voted it.
- Function: Finance, Planning, Governance
- Value: Finance, Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Management, Oversight
- Quality: Cost control and value for money Reliable, integrated information base
3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them
Goal-setting Target Alignment Process planning Monitoring
A national plan is delivered through the strategic plans of individual institutions, and here the two documents do not meet. 'Not all the agenda plan's indicators are planned in the institutions' 2024-2026 strategic plans, and the target values differ' (p.16). The detail is sharper than any aggregate: indicators left unplanned run to '5 (of 6) at the education, science and sport ministry, 1 (of 8) at the interior ministry, 3 (of 4) at the government chancellery, 33 (of 37) at the defence ministry' (p.16, annex 4). The institution carrying the largest share of the task has nine tenths of its indicators missing from the plan it actually works to. Where the figures do appear they have been moved: having assessed how 2023 went, the interior ministry planned for 2024 and 2025 a value 10 percentage points lower for the indicator on residents knowing what to do in a nuclear or radiological accident (p.16). The money does not line up either - the sums planned and used in 2023-2024 for agenda measures differ from the agenda plan itself (p.15).
- Function: Planning, Strategy, Governance
- Value: Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Management, Oversight
- Quality: Clear objectives and goal-setting Functioning oversight and governance
4. Targets beaten rather than missed, one of them at nineteen times its value
Target Goal-setting Performance analysis Monitoring
The indicator set does not fail by being missed. It fails by being beaten. 'The implementing institutions' reports show that in 2023 8 (of 96) and in 2024 20 (of 89) indicator values were not achieved. In 2023, 38 (of 96) indicator values were exceeded: from 101 to 200 per cent - 31, from 200 to 500 per cent - 5, from 500 to 966 per cent - 2. In 2024, 37 (of 89) indicator values were exceeded: from 101 to 200 per cent - 26, from 200 to 500 per cent - 7, from 500 to 1,879 per cent - 4' (p.16). Four in ten targets passed, and four of them in 2024 passed at more than five times their value, the highest at nearly nineteen. The audit draws the only available conclusion: 'This shows that the values were planned without properly assessing the circumstances, or that they are insufficiently ambitious' (p.16). The institutions answered that the values were set from strategic documents and forecasts, against financial capacity and geopolitical trends (p.16). A target passed at 1,879 per cent measured nothing about the effort that passed it, and nothing a reader of the annual report can use.
- Function: Planning, Governance
- Value: Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Management, Oversight
- Quality: Clear objectives and goal-setting Functioning oversight and governance
5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised
Contingency planning Crisis management Resilience Process planning Responsibility Coordination
The strategy exists for what happens in a crisis, and that is the part not yet written. The organisation statutorily charged with unarmed civil resistance has the measures running - unarmed resistance training, civic education in schools, participation in exercises - and spent EUR 4,947.6 thousand on them in 2023-2024, with 2,582.0 thousand planned for 2025 (p.18). What is missing sits above them. 'A draft Concept of Unarmed Civil Resistance has been prepared and is being agreed within the defence ministry' (p.17); under it the organisation would coordinate the organised action of citizens ready to contribute to the unarmed defence of the country, with tasks such as support to the armed forces through war commandant offices, help to residents in meeting essential needs, and reception and distribution of humanitarian aid (pp.17-18). The plan to carry any of that out does not exist yet: 'the action plan for organising and carrying out these tasks is planned to be prepared in the fourth quarter of 2025' (p.18) - after the audit reported, and more than three years after the strategy was adopted. The reach of the groundwork shows the same gap: cooperation agreements are signed with 17 of the country's 60 municipalities, and 10 of the 16 municipalities examined have none (p.18).
- Function: Security, Planning, Governance
- Value: Regulatory system, Community
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Delivery partner, Citizen
- Quality: Effective state Clear objectives and goal-setting
6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level
Education Instruction Guidance Monitoring Data management
The offer runs through every stage of schooling and is taken up at almost none of it. The renewed optional national security and national defence programme for the final two gymnasium years began in 2023-2024 and 'was chosen by fewer than 1 per cent of pupils: in 2023-2024, 142 (of 44,413); in 2024-2025, 78 (of 44,835). The programme is taught in only 10 (of 60) municipalities, in 14 schools' (p.20). Take-up nearly halved in the second year while the cohort grew. Underneath it the compulsory civics course lacks the basic equipment - textbooks are missing in 13 of the 16 municipalities examined (p.19) - and the teachers are not tracked: the national education agency 'does not have precise data on how many teachers raised their qualifications in the field of civic education, because their qualification development is decentralised', with 19 per cent (6,715 of 34,608) recorded for 2023 under the relevant priority area and no data at all for 2024 (pp.21). Above school the subject stops: 'Civic education is not provided for in higher education studies. The ministry does not have information about civic education in higher education institutions. The centre for quality assessment of studies does not assess programmes in this respect and has no information about it' (p.22). The one route built for it ran dry too - 16 people entered state-funded first-cycle places after military service against the 100 planned (p.23).
- Function: Human resources, Planning, Governance
- Value: Human capital, Domain knowledge
- Stakeholders: Policy setter, Staff, Citizen
- Quality: Clear objectives and goal-setting Reliable, integrated information base Adequate resources and competences
7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there
Training Skill-building Instruction Procedures Process planning
Where the training happened is not a side effect; it is the design for next year as well. 'In 2024 civil resistance training was carried out in 31 municipalities. More than half of the people completed the training in the large cities: 50 per cent completed module 1 in Vilnius and Kaunas, 71 per cent completed module 2 in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda city and district, 50 per cent of those completing the drone course were from Vilnius' (p.24). The following year repeats it by plan rather than by accident: 'In 2025 the greater part of the training is also planned in the large cities: module 1 - 76 per cent, module 2 - 64 per cent, drones - 71 per cent' (p.24). The capacity to spread it was not built. Against a plan of 30 instructors per module for 2024, 24 were trained for the first and 74 for the second, not all of whom taught; for the drone course 'the need for instructors in 2024-2025 was not planned' at all (pp.24-25). Nor was teaching them paid for: no money was planned in 2024 to pay the instructors who delivered the two modules, and the non-governmental instructors were not paid (p.25). The report's own conclusion is that involving more groups across a larger part of the country, with the necessary number of instructors, is what would get the knowledge to citizens (p.25).
- Function: Product/service delivery, Planning, Human resources
- Value: Community, Human capital
- Stakeholders: Citizen, Delivery partner, Management
- Quality: Accessibility for the intended users Useful service Adequate resources and competences
8. No training a disabled person could use, because no organisation had asked for one
Training Procedures Guidance Responsibility
The programme was built to be universal and turned out not to be. The courses 'are universal for all persons and were not adapted for persons with disabilities (for example those with hearing, visual or intellectual disabilities). In 2024 no such training was organised' (p.23). The reason recorded is the part worth keeping: the department explained that this was 'because no requests were received from the organisations uniting these groups' (p.23). A right to prepare that waits to be asked for is available only to people already organised enough to ask. The remedy came during the audit and covers part of the ground: 'From 2 May 2025 the basic course material on the distance training platform can already be used by those with visual and hearing disabilities' (p.23) - which leaves intellectual disability, and the in-person modules, where they were. The recommendation puts a number and a date on it for the first time: identify the need together with the Lithuanian Disability Forum by 1 January 2026, and move the count of people with disabilities completing civil resistance training from 0 to 100 by 1 July 2027 (p.31). The starting value is the finding.
- Function: Product/service delivery, Planning
- Value: Community, Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Vulnerable group, Citizen, Delivery partner
- Quality: Accessibility for the intended users Useful service
9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are
Data management Data quality management Monitoring Activity tracking Reporting
The count is known; the composition is not. The basic course was completed by 33,328 people in 2024 against 33,000 planned, and from 1 September 2024 it is compulsory for 74 per cent of them (p.23). The department records them in three groups - '51 per cent (17,057) weapon owners, 12 per cent (4,087) civil servants, 10 per cent (3,440) persons entered in the civil mobilisation personnel reserve' - and then stops: 'what groups of persons make up the remaining 26 per cent (8,774), whether they are learning voluntarily or compulsorily, the department has no data' (pp.23-24). The same blindness covers the modules, which were heavily oversubscribed - 2,010 completed module 1 against 800 planned, and 2,975 completed module 2 against 400 (p.24) - but the module 1 programme names priority groups, among them mobilisation operations centre members, municipal leaders, preparedness officers, reserve entrants, riflemen, other NGO representatives and teachers, and 'the department has no data on persons from these groups who completed the training, because it collects data by 2 groups of persons (civilians and those registered with the war commandant offices)' (p.24). Nearly nine thousand people went through the course and the state cannot say which part of the population they came from, which is the one thing a programme aiming to reach the unreached has to know.
- Function: Planning, Governance
- Value: Domain knowledge
- Stakeholders: Management, Oversight, Citizen
- Quality: Reliable, integrated information base Functioning oversight and governance
10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war
Contingency planning Crisis management Coordination Data management Responsibility Procedures
At the level where an evacuation would actually happen, the paperwork does not describe one. Agreements with voluntary organisations are widespread and nearly empty: 13 of the 16 municipalities examined have signed with the Red Cross, one with the food bank, two with Caritas, one with the Order of Malta - and only two, Vilnius city and Lazdijai district, 'approved a plan providing for concrete cooperation activities, results sought and planned expenditure in the event of crises, emergencies and incidents (evacuation) and in the event of mobilisation and war' (p.26). The municipalities' own explanation is that plans were not approved because of limited finances and because they 'doubt the non-governmental organisations' human resource capacities and their ability to provide assistance in the event of war' (p.26). The plans that exist are old and aimed elsewhere: 'only 4 of 16 municipalities examined have identified a military threat (military attack, revolt, insurrection) as a threat', and the emergency management plans of 'more than half (9 of 16) have not been updated in the last 3 years (for example prepared in 2012 or 2015)' (p.27). Seven municipalities confirmed they have planned no actions for evacuating residents in the event of war, 'arguing that legal acts do not provide an obligation to prepare plans for wartime' (p.27). The national mass evacuation plan they would align to is still being drafted. Half of them also do not know who they would be evacuating: 8 of 16 'do not have precise data on socially vulnerable persons who would need to be cared for' (p.27).
- Function: Planning, Governance, Outsourcing
- Value: Community, Regulatory system
- Stakeholders: Partner, Delivery partner, Vulnerable group, Citizen
- Quality: Reliable, integrated information base Effective state Sound risk management
Control focus
| ICS phase | Control function | Cases |
|---|---|---|
| Functions applied to all stages | Coordination | 1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them<br/>5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war |
| Reporting | 2. Nobody can say what the whole effort costs<br/>9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are | |
| Coordination | Integration | 1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them |
| Alignment | 1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them<br/>3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them | |
| Initial phase | Responsibility | 1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them<br/>5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised<br/>8. No training a disabled person could use, because no organisation had asked for one<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war |
| Goal-setting | 3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them<br/>4. Targets beaten rather than missed, one of them at nineteen times its value | |
| Guidance | 6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level<br/>8. No training a disabled person could use, because no organisation had asked for one | |
| Training | 7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there<br/>8. No training a disabled person could use, because no organisation had asked for one | |
| Responsibility | Accountability | 1. Leadership was given to three bodies, and exercised by none of them |
| Benefits management | Value management | 2. Nobody can say what the whole effort costs |
| Design | Process planning | 2. Nobody can say what the whole effort costs<br/>3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them<br/>5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised<br/>7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there |
| Work processes | Monitoring | 2. Nobody can say what the whole effort costs<br/>3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them<br/>4. Targets beaten rather than missed, one of them at nineteen times its value<br/>6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level<br/>9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are |
| Procedures | 7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there<br/>8. No training a disabled person could use, because no organisation had asked for one<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war | |
| Goal-setting | Target | 3. Most of the plan's indicators never reached the plans of the bodies that must deliver them<br/>4. Targets beaten rather than missed, one of them at nineteen times its value |
| Monitoring | Performance analysis | 4. Targets beaten rather than missed, one of them at nineteen times its value |
| Activity tracking | 9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are | |
| Business continuity | Contingency planning | 5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war |
| Crisis management | 5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war | |
| Resilience | 5. Years into the programme there is still no plan for how the resistance itself would be organised | |
| Training | Education | 6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level |
| Instruction | 6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level<br/>7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there | |
| Skill-building | 7. Training concentrated in the big cities, and planned to stay there | |
| Organic elements of a process | Data management | 6. A national defence course fewer pupils take each year, and nothing at all above school level<br/>9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are<br/>10. Agreements and emergency plans that do not contemplate a war |
| Data management | Data quality management | 9. No record of who a quarter of the trainees are |