Change Management for e-Whitehall
Delivering Change in the Public
Sector
1 Introduction
The new possibilities opened by the Internet impact on
government by changing notions of sovereignty, application of fiscal policy and
trade and tariffs. ICT supports this transformation;
it cannot lead it.
Governments lie at the heart of social and economic
activity: attracting investment, supporting trade, and ensuring the value of
the currency and an adequate welfare system. As capital flows more globally, so
governments overtly compete with each other to attract investment. This
requires a move from the traditional administrative way of working to a
‘marketing’ approach. Coupled with this is an increased expectation of high
levels of service by the public, derived from their experience of the service
levels they enjoy as consumers and are expected to deliver at work.
The move to e-government is thus a fundamental
transformation of government and governance such as we have not seen since the
start of the Industrial Revolution. It
is a radical transformation of government services based around the citizen
rather than around administrative convenience. It implies a very profound
change in the behaviour of the Civil Service and this change has to be
demonstrated from the top. It demands,
as essential enablers of this transformation, the re-engineering of processes
and investment in ICT such as to achieve a transformation to citizen-centric
working, not merely automation of existing practice.
HMG has made an explicit commitment to modernise
government and provide a public service fit for the 21st century, thus creating
within the administration a compelling need for change. Some elements within the public sector -
particularly a number of agencies and local authorities - are already beginning
to achieve this, but Whitehall in particular appears not to view citizens as
customers, or to be accountable to them. Rather, Ministers are customers and
accountability is to them, to the NAO and to the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
So far, there has been temptation for politicians to
commit the Civil Service to this transformation without the essential
follow-through of leadership, motivation and training.
2 Government versus the
Private Sector - Differences and Common Factors
We have defined e-government as essentially e-business
for government. E-business incorporates but goes beyond e-commerce, the part
covering financial transactions via electronic media. In the application of
this technology, we see some common factors and some essential differences
between e-business and e-government.
Common Factors
Change
E-government and e-business are both about
transformation and altering frames of reference. Neither is particularly about
the Internet or automation although these are essential to implementation. Merely putting services on-line is not the
answer.
Customer Focus
Both are based around end-client (customer/citizen)
need. Just as e-business is customer-driven, so e-government is concerned with
“citizen-centric” service delivery. The
traditional 'one size fits all' approach to government service delivery is no
longer appropriate. As mentioned above, government needs to move to a
‘marketing’ approach nowadays, and in marketing terms, we are talking about
'niche of one' segmentation, whereby every citizen is treated as an individual
with different needs. The priorities and expectations of citizens must be
identified anew since these have changed with use of the Internet. Therefore
the first task is to discover what it is citizens want, and the form in which
they want services delivered. The medium of delivery – government, agency or
private sector - is not important to the citizen – provided it works.
Process
Management
Policy, procedure and process are
driven by customer activity and not by what suits the policy-maker or service
supplier. Process that supports policy needs to be flexible and not just
convenient to the administrator in this new world where an active, real time
link exists between client demand and the policy outcome. The Civil Service
must reorganise around the processes for service delivery to customers by
addressing customer goals and must redefine their objectives: to serve the
citizen.
Abandoning Silo Mentality
Just as in the private sector some years ago, the
removal of departmental ‘silos’ is a painful but unavoidable prerequisite to
enable effective service delivery. Effective service delivery goes smoothly
across departmental boundaries, and data sharing should ensure that the
customer does not have to make multiple applications, repeatedly defining their
personal details, in order to effect what is to them one process.
Essential Differences between
E-Business and E-Government
The Profit Motive
Shareholder value in terms of a competitive return on
investment is a fundamental pre-requisite and differentiator of the private
from the public sector.
Public Accountability
Governments are publicly accountable and this
responsibility is far more onerous than shareholder accountability. For most
governments, the administrative process is transparent. Some decisions may be
made under a cloak of national security; most are not.
Security and Privacy
In government, the issues of security and privacy are
paramount, given that governments hold some of the most sensitive information
about people, their health and their income. Governments recognise their
obligation to protect that. Importantly too, governments do not typically have
the right to combine different bits of information about an individual to
create new information unless there is some legally acceptable and publicly
accountable reason to do so. Codes of Conduct for information sharing across
the public sector are needed if concerns over data protection are not to
inhibit the joining-up of government.
Legislation
Governments can legislate. They have the ability to
create their own environment. This is somewhat similar to an enterprise's
ability to create a market, but potentially more intrusive.
Deliverables
The commercial world and the public
sector have different deliverables, but within the public
sector there is a markedly different approach to management in Government
Agencies, which deliver services and more closely resemble the private sector,
from that in Whitehall, which delivers policy.
Agencies should be able to act as missionaries to Whitehall to
demonstrate that solutions can be found in the public sector, not just the
commercial world.
Keeping the Customer in Sight
Whitehall has a problem identifying who its customers
are, how to communicate with them and how to get feedback from them. In today’s world, customers include a
variety of stakeholders including other government intermediaries (e.g. the
Post Office) with certain expectations of service, as well as the political
masters of the Civil Service.
Change Management
Applying change management processes to the unique
Whitehall environment presents a number of challenges. Standard management
texts from leading business gurus need to be applied selectively - but
nonetheless applied - to the Civil Service. These texts are aimed at the
corporate, not the public sector, environment; but the staff in both
environments serve people whose time is increasingly short and expectations
increasingly high. Mandatory training
for high-level staff in Change Management and an exercise to identify the
crucial differences between the public and private sector may be helpful
starting points.
Accountability
Public sector accountability appears to be concerned
more with the proper administration of processes than with achieving proper
outcomes from the investment. In
government currently, the project manager and the accounting officer are too
far apart. The real focus should be on delivering “what users want from
services and on their experience of them”. At present, staying out of trouble is more
likely to secure an official’s career than is successful project delivery. The Clive Ponting experience is still seen
as a warning even against telling the truth!
Implementing
Strategy
Top civil servants are good at
writing strategy but rarely have any opportunity to gain the skills for
implementing it. Governments have
increasingly expected civil servants to engage more effectively in management but
without equipping them to carry out the necessary tasks (i.e. defining how the
strategy will be achieved, how they will measure success, what evidence will be
used to qualify this success, how processes and behaviour will be developed to
guarantee delivery, etc.).
3 Creating the Climate
for Successful Change
"... in
my 20 years in the Civil Service I do not think anybody could ever tell me what
my professional and constitutional role was - even though everybody assumed
that I knew it and had acquired it by osmosis on entering the Civil Service ...
they have rather lost the sense of what their professionalism is, what the
specific skills are that they bring to the job".
Implementing e-government implies a
major cultural and behavioural change across government administration. From
experience, this relies on two factors – leadership and motivation. Modernising Government is about modernising
the people who govern.
Strong Leadership is Needed
Whatever the institution, such change demands
top-level personal leadership and demonstrated commitment: “70% of culture is down to leadership
style”. The Civil Service needs strong
leadership to bring about the required transformation and these leaders must
also be role models for the behaviour they want their subordinates to adopt.
Government needs to identify role models and copy or implement the exemplary
practices. The armed forces’ use of
role models illustrates their importance in leadership and motivation.
Without the consistent demonstration of these human
skills by those at the top of the organisation, not just those leading change
projects, the result (see Kotter
in Appendix) is likely to be that:-
o
downsizing fails to get
costs under control;
o
service improvement
programmes do not deliver the desired results.
These
are of particular importance in e-government, given the unavoidable public
accountability
Therefore, the primary issue is that the attributes
most associated with effective leadership are not necessarily those inherent in
senior civil servants or politicians - nor in business executives for that
matter – but in Whitehall, arguably, leadership is not allowed. (See Coleman in
Appendix).
Threats and other Motivations
Without threat there is much reduced
motivation for change – Whitehall has not, until very recently, perceived
itself as being under threat. Enterprises that have successfully effected
drastic change had the motivation of an extreme crisis and the benefit of
strong leadership and organisational discipline and also, often, degrees of
internal competition that are not permitted in the public sector.
Civil Service management structures and
culture must empower and motivate those in charge to bring about change. How do we encourage the Civil Service to
abandon its traditional hierarchies and implement citizen-centric processes? Perhaps by educating it to see ICT as both a
threat and the driver for change that will overwhelm short term “improper
professionalism that defends its own interests and resists public scrutiny”. Modern communications technology permits
small groups of citizens to bypass Government functions, as seen by the effect
of such single-issue campaigns as the September 2000 Petrol Crisis.
Training
Massive
investment in training is needed for all engaged in public service, providing
on-line and off-line training modules and skills development programmes for all
staff.
Politicians are happy to promise change but often fail
to take into account the implications of that change in terms of training for
the civil servants who have to implement it.
4 Implementing Successful Change
There is a whole behavioural
context that needs to be transformed to bring about successful change – a
strongly-led shift from a vertical hierarchy to horizontal, flexible,
team-based working. This is the biggest challenge to Civil Service, as it was
to the private sector. To achieve the new way of working implied by
e-government, Whitehall needs to:-
Define Objectives and Measures
Successful change requires a
clear definition of the objectives and the measures of success (reflecting
today’s emphasis on service to the customer/citizen) and rewarding success in
the new ways of working. The requisite strategy could be summarised as the
principles of CRM (Customer Relationship Management):-
o
identify who the customer is;
o
bear in mind that all sections of society have a claim
on government service;
o
establish what they
value;
o
create a measurement
system that proves that they are getting what they value;
o
continually check that
these measures remain valid.
“Keep Citizens at the Front of the Picture”
As in the private sector (which must serve both shareholders
and customers), the public sector has to look two ways, serving the Minister as
well as the Citizen, who may not have immediately compatible needs. This also
involves developing customer relationship management capabilities, including
segment analysis, customer satisfaction surveys and understanding how to meet
efficiently the needs of particular client groups.
Use Performance Models and
Leadership.
Performance models of how a modern organisation needs to be structured,
managed and measured have proven of great value in the private sector. They must be explicitly backed and
demonstrated by the organisation’s leadership.
Champions throughout the organisation - clearly endorsed by the
leadership - are then needed as role models to encourage follow-through. The
Cabinet Office Service First Unit possesses considerable expertise in the
structure and application of one - the European – model. Valuable lessons can
be learned cheaply from large private sector restructurings where these changes
have already been made.
Cope with Change
Kotter’s Rules for leading successful change (see Appendix) are largely about
effective leadership of a continuous improvement culture. Success equally
relies on continuous measurement and corrective actions to keep citizens at
the front of the picture. There has been too much focus on input measures
rather than output measures (e.g. in the NHS, emphasis on the number of new
doctors being taken on rather than service delivery to patients.)
Collaborate for Success
Rotation of staff - although the Civil Service is no
longer a closed shop and there is rotation both within and between departments
and recruitment into the Service, there is still room to bring more customers
into this rotation. Also, Whitehall
staff might benefit from more secondments into Agencies; the current trend is
for agency staff to be seconded to Whitehall.
Work Across Departmental Boundaries ('Silos')
This implies organisational redesign, such as from
geographically founded structures to organisational structures based on
customer segments. This implies many changes, moving:
·
from a clear authority
hierarchy to a flatter, more blurred hierarchy;
·
from strict functional
specialisation of units to a breakdown of barriers between units;
·
from lifetime employment
in one area to shifting work teams and flexible tasks;
·
from restricted access
to information, based on the job, to open access to information across the
whole organisation.
Making these deep-seated changes requires significant investment of
management energy, of time and of funds.
Review
Funding Procedures
Treasury
funding mechanisms set the business planning patterns for departments and until
funding structures move away from silos, people will not change the way they organise
themselves. This calls for a fundamental review of the funding philosophy of
the Treasury, and of the recognition and reward system for those officials
running departments.
Get
/ Give Value For Money
Funds voted by Parliament should be subject to
audit by an enlarged National Audit Office, reporting to the Public Accounts
Committee, with the emphasis on value for money. There should be no place for secrecy or commercial
confidentiality when public money is spent on a non-competitive contract, or
after the award of a competitive contract.
Use
ICT for what it can do
ICT
permits and facilitates change, but its implementation itself cannot bring
about the changes needed in human behaviour.
The technology must be positioned for what it will do, but it is not a
substitute for thinking or leadership; it is only a facilitator or an
accelerator.
So,
successful change is driven by listening to clients, is realised or constrained
by the capabilities of the organisation's personnel, especially the leadership,
and is at best enabled by ICT.
5 Current barriers
Funding Procedures
These
generally reinforce silo mentality and actively discourage joined up
government. Current cross-departmental
funding allocations are evidence of this – in the words of one official, “not
so much the icing on the cake as the “hundreds and thousands” on top of it”.
Culture of Avoiding Blame
Given
the imbalance between weak rewards for achieving success and draconian public
disgrace for failure, the Civil Service has an understandable culture of
avoiding blame. This must be changed since implementing strategy – particularly
an innovative strategy - is conditional on attributing personal responsibility,
which deserves reward for courage as well as for success.
Failure to Encourage
and Reward Innovative Solutions
Currently there is little if any reward for
initiative in the Civil Service, but plenty of risk. This must be changed.
Perceived
Politically Motivated Premature Publicity
Pilot
projects and initiatives are learning exercises. It is very damaging to
publicise them as instant solutions, which creates pressure to have them
demonstrate unrealistic success as completed projects. That is not what they are set up for.
Success will be in terms of lessons learned to apply in future. Closing a pilot
down after it has yielded valuable lessons for future implementation, albeit
not a total answer, is not a ‘failure’, and certainly not worthy of
retribution.
Excessive
Delegation
The
change in behaviour cannot be delegated; it must be demonstrated from the top.
Thus successful change requires close personal identification by the political
leadership and by the most senior officials who must associate themselves
closely with the project and take a leadership role in managing - and
constantly measuring the success of - the whole change project.
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Change Management for e-Whitehall
APPENDIX
Notes
A Coleman's
work (Harvard Business Review,
Nov-Dec 1998 "What makes a Leader?") has identified 'emotional
intelligence' as the key attribute of successful leaders, comprising:
1. self-awareness -
the ability to recognise one's moods and drives and their effect on others;
2. self-regulation - the propensity to suspend judgment, and
think before acting;
3. motivation - a
passion to work for reasons beyond money and status, a propensity to pursue end
results with energy and persistence;
4. empathy - the
ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people, skill in treating
people according to their emotional reactions;
5. social skill -
proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, and ability to
find common ground and rapport.
The
work of the management scientist J P Kotter provides a useful summary (his
‘eight stage process to creating change’) of the scope of the task in hand, and
a useful benchmark against which to compare how the public sector operates at
present:-
- Establish a sense of urgency.
- Create a guiding coalition, with enough power to lead the change,
and work together as a team.
- Develop a vision - to focus the change effort - and strategies for
achieving that vision.
- Communicate the change vision constantly, using every vehicle
possible, not least by the guiding coalition demonstrating the new
behaviour asked of the rest of the organization.
- Empower broad-based action, removing obstacles, changing systems
that undermine the vision, encouraging non-traditional ideas, activities
and actions.
- Generate short term, visible improvements in performance, creating
them and visibly recognising and rewarding those who made these 'wins'
possible.
- Consolidate gains and produce more change, using the increased
credibility to accelerate and spread change, to develop and promote people
who can implement the change vision, to reinvigorate the process with new
projects, themes and change agents.
- Most important in terms of a real return on the investment – anchor
the new approaches in the culture though client and outcome orientated
behaviour, more and better leadership, more effective management.
Articulate the connections between new behaviours and organizational
success, and develop means to ensure development and succession of
leadership into the future.
Using the Kotter rules as a benchmark, the EURIM
working party identified the following inhibitors to applying them in the
public sector.
Point 1: Currently there is massive “initiative
fatigue” from too many announcements by politicians. This exhausts any sense of
urgency. Projects should be broken into
smaller chunks with feasible timetables within a guiding framework. An example of a success was Y2K, where there
was a real sense of urgency - no procrastination was possible. This also achieved exemplary collaboration
with the private sector.
None of the points 2
- 5 is difficult to achieve but all appear alien to the Civil Service culture
at present. A high-up culture shift is
needed to achieve a guiding coalition.
We don’t see the most senior officials personally identifying themselves
with the delivery of the e-government project. Our impression so far of the
Information Age Champion and subsequent champions is that their motivation and
progress are unclear. These points are cumulative. Given that a vision has not been developed (point 3) it is
impossible to communicate what it is (point 4).
Recognition and reward (point 6) and consolidation of
achievements (point 7) are usually missing from most public sector change
management strategies.
