This post is written by Dr Kate Harrington, Head of Strategic Digital Initiatives, digital.nsw, Department of Customer Service and Dr Alan Thorogood, Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales.
- The problem: Digital capabilities in government are underdeveloped.
- Why it matters: More and more services are being transacted via digital channels.
- The solution: Flexible training and support mechanisms improve digital literacy.
Citizens increasingly want choice in how they consume government services. Emerging technology adoption, which augments or automates many of these services, is increasing. How effectively the public sector workforce responds to these challenges relies on the skills and capabilities to think differently, act differently and react differently to delivering services in a digital-first world.
Finding a consistent way of approaching employee skills and capabilities is a requirement in the public sector and helps agencies compare candidates when recruiting. Having a consistent way to define and compare skills also leads to two other benefits: greater mobility across the service and career pathways for employees. As the largest employer in many countries, substantial second order benefits flow to businesses and citizens when the public sector gets this right.
As the largest employer in many countries, substantial second order benefits flow to businesses and citizens when the public sector gets this right.
New South Wales (NSW) developed a Capability Framework in 2013, which has been the foundation of employee roles and remuneration calculations ever since. The Capability Framework has 16 core capabilities, organised into four groups: Personal Attributes, Relationships, Results and Business Enablers. In 2018 the NSW Public Service Commission (PSC) developed a definition of six new skill sets the sector needs to develop in the digital age, the Digital and Customer Capabilities Framework.
A new framework
As a foundation for the delivery of digital services, the Digital and Customer Capabilities Framework identifies:
Customer at the Centre — Driving a human-centred approach to everything we do. Designing for, and with, citizens, employees, and our industry partners.
Collaboration & Agility — Working together across clusters and agencies, being proactive, motivating others, and delivering outcome and value at speed.
Data, Decisions & Ethics — Understanding data and privacy, interpreting data through code, gaining insights to drive decision making, and telling stories about what we learn.
Ideas to Impact — Changing the way we get things done and fund projects. Using lean startup methods to accelerate outcomes to our customers.
Enabling Technology — Prioritising technology 4.0 that will help us deliver better outcomes to our customers. Keeping up with, and practising, digital ways of working.
Digital Leadership — Digital ways of working that have the potential to advance the way government works.
Having defined these areas of capability to uplift public sector performance, the PSC sought investment under the NSW Digital Restart Fund for a program to increase these skills across the sector.
The nature of these capabilities presented the opportunity to reimagine traditional approaches to delivering workplace learning. A three-phased model incorporated: 1) Pre-assessment and introduction to subject areas relevant for the development of capabilities, 2) Learning through a mix of physical and virtual resources that will also include on the job training, coaching, workshop mentoring, and special projects, and 3) Access to on-demand support and materials to apply learning in the day-to-day work environment like coaching, quick reference guides, and social collaboration.
Funding projects
The Digital Restart Fund requires adherence to agile project principles. Through an expression of interest selection process, a pilot of the ‘Customer at the Centre’ capability supported eight project teams. The projects were:
- Hiring processes for contingent labour
- Criminal journey user experience
- Improving candidate experience when hiring into the sector
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system upgrade
- Data management in a Local Health District
- Food labelling
- Development and distribution of e-resources for problematic and harmful sexual behaviours
- Understanding cultural land burning
The pilot took three months and included multiple learning modalities shown below:
The ‘Customer at the Centre’ learning journey enabled learners to upskill via self-paced and optional learning pathways. The project reached 80 public servants. The first COVID-19 lockdown happened during this window, and we were able to flex the modalities when circumstances changed. The intention was to create a learning journey that met the needs of the learners and their project outcomes. The pilot used both curated content from within the public sector and created new content that was fit for purpose drawn from the internet.
Learning in a contemporary way
Participant responses to learning design and approach were overwhelmingly positive. Participants reported a measurable uplift in confidence in applying “Customer at the Centre” skills and knowledge.
Participants valued what they saw as “learning in a contemporary way” anywhere, anytime. They reported a changed approach to product and service design by adopting new skills, tools, and techniques, especially customer personas and customer journey mapping, to design differently. This has resulted in changed project scopes reflecting the needs of customers better.
The pilot has informed the development and integration of a complete suite of learning pathways for the six Digital and Customer Capabilities, which will be rolled out across the sector through the Digital Restart Fund.
The pilot demonstrated three takeaways. First, Digital and Customer Capabilities are relevant to government service delivery, not just traditional ICT projects. The self-selection process had eight core government services enlist.
Second, participants found the uplift in Digital and Customer Capabilities improved outcomes for citizens. Personas and journey mapping captured citizens’ needs better.
Third, the project was an example of how the Digital Restart Fund’s requirement for agile project principles led to practical benefits for citizens. Financial levers can help to develop digital services with a citizen focus.
In the next stage, NSW is monitoring how the framework helps with recruitment, mobility and remuneration. For more information, please see our forthcoming article in Apolitical about the NSW Digital Restart Fund supporting services for the people of NSW. — Dr Kate Harrington & Dr Alan Thorogood
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(Picture credit: Unsplash)
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