U.S. government
leaders, managers, and employees are experiencing pressure
to transform their organization from four sides. These
four streams of activity bear the promise of more effective
government and the risk of paralysis or inefficiency
if not woven together during transformation.
From the Leadership Side.
Congress, the Bush Administration,
and oversight agencies—Government
Accountability Office (GAO), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of
Personnel Management (OPM)—challenge federal agencies to improve their
performance by measuring results according to standard scorecards. They require
agencies to plan, initiate, and report on alternatives to their historical ways
of doing business, particularly for support service functions (e.g., shared services
agreements on IT, payroll, and human resources), and by providing flexibilities
in how they do their work and manage their employees. The President's Management
Agenda (past initiatives included the Government Performance Results Act and
Reinventing Government initiatives) and its resulting OMB assessments and Red-Yellow-Green
scorecards push agencies to create meaningful ways to measure themselves and
organize to achieve their goals according to those measurements.
Led by OMB
and insights from GAO and external organizations, agencies
now have available a menu of options in defining, organizing,
managing, and conducting their work. Outsourcing and
A-76 studies, shared services agreements with other
agencies that create government-wide support centers,
alternative contracting options, Program Assessment
and Rating Tool (PART) assessments, and other permutations allow agencies the
flexibility to re-define how work is accomplished—particularly in back
office and support functions. Congress has passed and the Administration has
implemented performance-based organizations (PBO) and HR flexibility demonstration
projects to provide agencies greater decision-making authority in organizing,
assigning, and rewarding the work of the federal workforce.
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This article was published
in the Winter
2006 issue
of Perspectives.
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Internally.
Workforce demographic changes and technology
advancements open options to the historical government processes,
services, and oversight roles. The age and skill profile
of the government workforce has been described as looking
like an unbalanced suspension bridge: a large group ready
to retire at one end, a smaller group at the other end, and
very little in the middle. The aging of the government workforce
poses the risk that agencies will lose their most knowledgeable,
experienced, and capable employees and managers—those
with the organizational and historical knowledge of policies
and practices that could prevent the agency from making the
same mistakes it may have made in the past.
At the same time,
many newer federal employees are more demographically diverse
and possess different motives in working for government.
They view their jobs more as a stage in their career rather
than their career itself. They are looking for the position
to provide skills and experiences they cannot get elsewhere.
To continue to do the work of government through this variegated
workforce, agencies have implemented a variety of work arrangements,
including telework, flex-time, temporary and detail assignments,
job shadowing, Management Fellows, and others. These arrangements
put pressure on leaders to target and program the skills
and capabilities of their staff so that they employ their
skills at the right time and in the right place.
Federal work
has permanently changed to knowledge work as a result of
information technology advancements. Previously, armies of
government employees would directly provide services, process
applications, invoices, appeals, paychecks, and other paperwork
functions, and report on the regulated communities. Now,
the application of information technologies and business
process changes has digitized, networked, automated, and
outsourced many of these functions. Government is becoming
networked and Web-based. Federal workers must use their skills
in analysis, assessment, judgment, decision-making, negotiations,
communications, creativity, technology tools, and organization
to work with increasingly sophisticated requirements from
their stakeholders and constituents.
From the Private Sector.
Businesses are providing models and approaches that, though
driven from different motives and goals, chart the course
toward flatter, leaner, and more responsive organizations.
Businesses are illustrating how to improve performance, and
at the same time enhance customer intimacy, through networked
relationships and product/service delivery, outsourced support
functions, supply-chain management, lean manufacturing and
management, and collaboration and game theory. They are showing
how disaggregating and restructuring business processes from
design and development through engineering and manufacturing,
and to marketing, sales, and customer relationships can yield
improved results at lower costs.
The profit motive dominates
the private sector and drives many of these changes. The
application and bridge to government functions require considerable
translation, adaptation, and realignment, while rejecting
some of these new practices that do not fit government's
role. Nevertheless, many private sector practices can point
the way to improving performance in government services and
functions.
Externally.
Citizens, constituents, and the regulated
communities are demanding faster, higher quality, and more
sophisticated services and responses from their government.
With their experience of variety, quality, and customer service
by the best of the private sector community, they are demanding
the same responsiveness—tailoring of services and customer
intimacy from their government interactions. When they file
taxes or an application, they expect the same services in
response as they would using Amazon.com. When they interact
with regulators, they expect agency representatives to interact
professionally and to work to understand their business as
they apply the legal and regulatory requirements to their
situation. They expect networked, Web-based, technology-enabled
interactions, and equally efficient responsiveness.
The confluence
of these four streams presents the context for transformation
in government. As a result of these factors, agencies are
already experimenting with new organizational forms to
meet their mandates. They are engaging in shared services
agreements with agencies expert in providing IT, HR, payroll,
and other support services. Many have formed public-private
partnerships to develop approaches that go beyond regulation,
provide more robust funding and better implementation for
traditional government services, and improve infrastructure.
Transformation presents both hope and risk. Due to the public
nature, oversight, and scrutiny of their actions, government
agencies have been risk averse in organizing their work
and in their relationships with the public and the regulated
communities. The environment for transformation is a fertile
ground of opportunity to conduct government more efficiently
and effectively at less cost. Transformation requires experimentation.
Experimentation results in failure as well as success.
As they transform their organizations, agency leaders will
have to balance this risk aversion with innovation and learn
from the failure and mistakes that are a necessary part of
experimentation while holding onto the promise of better
results.
Learn more about ICF International's capabilities
in organizational
development and transformation.
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