By Pia Andrews, System Transformation Expert, Former Government Executive in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
This "My Take" was written for Linked up government, Trend #4 in the Government Trends 2022 report.
View the Government Trends 2022 report here >
Vertical accountabilities naturally lead to siloed efforts, siloed policy, and siloed systems in government. Vertical structures and budgets naturally lead public sector executives to continually narrow the scope of their efforts, with teams asked to prioritize staying within budget and ‘minimizing risk.’ As a result, we end up with gaps emerging between functions and portfolios. You can expand the example to any complex or wicked problem, and you quickly find that the gaps between functionally divided teams and vertical lines of responsibility have created systemic barriers to holistic program and policy delivery.
Meanwhile, the constant pressure to deliver a “good news story” rather than to be a responsible steward for long term public good, has created a culture of prioritizing many efforts as fast wins. Service improvement efforts are often limited to iterative improvements within the scope of an agency, which doesn’t address or improve the end-to-end experience of those that interact with government. In many governments, no one is responsible for an integrated experience. The result: a fragmented tapestry of inconsistent services, where public trust and confidence is only as strong as the weakest service provided.
The people and communities we serve shouldn’t have to understand the complexities of government just to find the right services. Creating connected government is our responsibility, and we need to establish horizontal levers, structures and operating models to provide an integrated experience for the public.
We should do a few key things to enable holistic services:
Single ownership of the citizen experience: You can only prioritize, deliver, manage and ensure a connected experience if someone has a mandate for a connected experience. Consolidated channels can be managed by a single entity with this accountability, with portfolio departments managing programs and backend business systems. Beyond the mandate, this requires channel delivery and management capabilities and a requirement for portfolio agencies to consolidate their front-end channels.
Design connected services: Beyond a consolidated channel, another powerful strategy is to design services around key life events, like having a child, moving, starting a business, or dealing with the death of a loved one. These “life journey services” provide a contextual framework that support an individual to traverse multiple organizations, jurisdictions, and sectors, with more efficient, effective and proactive public service delivery.
Participatory governance: We need to incorporate the public into the everyday work of the public sector, such as design and delivery of policies and services. If the people and communities we serve are involved in the process, this will help ensure that government is user-centered and truly able to be tapped into and responsive to changing needs and values.
Measure the impact more holistically: Create an “all of government” approach to measuring the impact and user journeys of government services. Agencies will be more naturally motivated to act holistically if they are measured holistically, especially if the measures extend beyond user and performance measures and into policy and quality of life measures.
Measure risk and impact holistically: The irony of public sector risk management is that by minimizing the personal risk for executives and for departments, we have created a culture of creating risk for society and the system as a whole. We must start to measure risk holistically and over the long term, in terms of actual impact on people and communities.
(Image Credit: Unsplash)
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