In our last blog, we discussed four ‘enabling practices’ that can help governments share responsibility for outcomes with their citizens, build more productive relationships between citizens and governments, and bridge the gap between expectations and reality.

Here are some examples of how Canadian governments align their policies and programs with these four principles. 

The principles, and supporting examples, are as follows:

1) Leverage insight into customers’ needs to improve equality of outcomes

To achieve the balance between equality of outcomes on one hand and choice and flexibility of service delivery on the other, public service providers should undertake detailed customer segmentation studies to understand their customer base better and use this understanding to inform all aspects of their services, including resource allocation, service design, channel strategy, and communications and engagement strategies.

For example, the Ministry of Labour and Citizens’ Services in British Columbia recently conducted extensive, needs-based segmentation among its large and growing new immigrant population, to understand better and respond to this population’s needs.   It then worked extensively with immigrant support organizations and community groups to develop the WelcomeBC portal (welcomebc.ca).  This portal is organized by broad customer segment (temporary workers, international students, etc.) and according to specific needs (for instance, ChooseBC; Come to BC; Settle in BC; Enjoy BC; Diversity in BC; and Regions in BC) with services in several languages.

2) Engage citizens, service users and other stakeholders to define outcomes and design services

At the federal level, Canada has also taken steps to improve and enhance the level of feedback and input it receives from citizens.  Its service charter outlines the government’s commitment to its citizens and describes the services offered to them.  Nine service standards establish the level of service to be provided, as well as the protocol for an annual performance scoreboard.

The federal government has also created an Office of Client Satisfaction, a neutral and autonomous body that receives, reviews, and implements suggestions.  The government also conducts feedback studies including a Public Awareness Baseline Study, which examines the service delivery expectations of Canadians.  In addition, the government conducts a Client Satisfaction Survey, which assesses clients’ level of satisfaction with services delivered.

3) Coordinate resources across and beyond government to deliver outcomes

In 2006, the Ontario government created ServiceOntario as a means of giving Ontario’s citizens and businesses an easier, more cost-effective way to access government services.  ServiceOntario acts as a one-stop shop for government services and information.  Everything from birth, marriage and death certificates to health card registrations and driver and vehicle licensing is now delivered through this one organization.

Coordination of resources is essential to ServiceOntario’s success.  ServiceOntario provides unique and integrated services, enhanced by the migration of services from different parts of the government.   Responsibilities were transferred, for instance, from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, which oversees ServiceOntario.  The migration plan deliberately started with the highest-volume services first, moving on to lower-volume services over time. 

The integration yields greater efficiency, but also provides opportunity for outreach and interaction.  Now, customers who go in person or online to register a birth will also be asked if they wish to apply for a Social Insurance Number at the same time.

4) Focus on improving transparency and accessibility of information, so that customers can hold governments accountable, and provide mechanisms for public recourse.

Service Canada demonstrates its commitment to excellence in customer service through its approach to managing complaints via a highly transparent, three-step public recourse procedure.  All Service Canada offices have client feedback cards (both physical cards and web-based forms) which customers can fill out to pay a compliment, make a recommendation or register a complaint.  If the customer does in fact have a complaint, it is the responsibility of the office manager to handle and resolve the issue, or to bring it to a level at which it can be addressed. 

Customers who feel that they are not getting redress at the local level can make their complaint or recommendation to the Office for Client Satisfaction (OCS) which has a commitment to respond to all complaints within 24 hours and resolve them within seven working days.  To date, both of these targets have been met 100 percent of the time.

In our previous blog posting we discussed the Canadian research findings of Accenture’s latest Leadership in Customer Service study and how Canadians want to increase the dialogue with their governments – to explain to politicians and policy makers what they want and need. This week, we want to provide some insight on how government can share responsibility for outcomes with their citizens, build more productive relationships between citizens and governments, and bridge the gap between expectations and reality.

People who participated in our research told us that they want more opportunities to be involved in the process of setting government priorities, defining desired outcomes and planning public services that help improve their quality of life. They do not accept the idea that politicians and civil servants can effectively shape public services simply on the basis of their own assumptions of what is best for citizens. Instead, they want access to channels that will offer them the chance to engage with politicians and public managers, influencing public policy and shaping public services in ways that meet their personal needs and the needs of their communities.

In our research, we have identified four ‘enabling practices’ that can help governments share responsibility for outcomes with their citizens, build more productive relationships between citizens and governments, and bridge the gap between expectations and reality.

These four enabling practices are:

1) Leverage insight into customers’ needs to improve equality of outcomes

2) Engage citizens, service users and other stakeholders to define outcomes and design services

3) Coordinate resources across and beyond government to deliver outcomes

4) Focus on improving transparency and accessibility of information, so that customers can hold governments accountable, and provide mechanisms for public recourse.

In our next blog, we will examine examples of how Canadian governments align their policies and programs with these four principles.

At GTEC 2008, I presented a seminar called “Managing Corporate Memory in Public Sector”.  The well-attended session explored the pending shift in workforce demographics as the Boomer generation approaches retirement age. Sectors at most risk included government, utilities, engineering, transportation and manufacturing. I sought to explore how IT and IM professionals could play a strategic role as our workplace transforms and to minimize risk of information and knowledge loss.

Though this is no longer a new topic challenging public sector management, the situation continues to grow in urgency and awareness.  Over the weekend, I noticed that Gartner Research VP, Jeffrey Mann, had twittered about a recent spike in his customer inquiries precisely on this topic.  He “tweeted”:  “three of this morning’s 4 calls are on knowledge management (two on capturing experience of retiring employees) who says KM is dead?”. Whether we call it knowledge management, corporate memory preservation, succession planning… whether the project is led by IM/RM, Human Resources or IT…  regardless of the tools we use to capture the intrinsic knowledge held in the brains of our most senior valued employees – we know it must be done. Public Sector is a knowledge-economy enterprise. Information, policies, and programs:  services are delivered to the citizens, residents, businesses within our jurisdiction to provide a stable infrastructure for social, commercial and political activities.  To not pay attention to prospect of losing mentorship, best practices, and institutional culture is to do a disservice to the investment we’ve made in cultivating depth and breadth of public sector experience.

We all have our “keep me up at night” moments. Mine is a story told to me at the annual ARMA Conference in 2006.  I was conducting a workshop on this topic of “Managing Corporate Memory” and a woman from an academic institution came up to me, very pleased to see the research I had done on the topic. As part of her Records Management responsibility, she was tasked with capturing the legacy paper and physical records of the scientists and engineers who retired from her institution. She told me the story of a scientist who upon his departure handed to her a large box of ore samples. He said to her very intently, “make sure you hang on to these… they are very very important”. And so she took them. And put them on a shelf, documented with the date and location and name of the scientist who left them behind.  She looked at me rather sadly, and admitted that she had no idea what those rocks meant, or WHY they were so important. There was no corporate memory preservation mandate to ensure the samples got to a new researcher who could continue the work. So to this day, they sit on a dark shelf.

Was the cure for cancer in that box of rocks? Did they tell us something about our world that could make our lives better? We may never know.

To learn more about this topic of Managing Corporate Memory, click here to listen to a recorded educational seminar we hosted earlier this year. Any comments or feedback welcomed.

Recently on blog radio, I was asked about the perception of procurement today as opposed to 10 years ago when we began Summit: Canada’s magazine on public sector purchasing. It has changed.

One of the driving factors of creating the magazine in the first place, was that, as contract publishers, we found ourselves continually educating our government customers on how to do business with us in a changing technology environment. 

Web publishing, print on demand, and tools like CDs were all quite new 10 years ago (to someone over 50 that is pretty amazing). As publishers, we had to learn how to use the technology to survive as a small business and to educate our potential clients about the technology and its benefits to them. While excited about the potential of IT solutions, the procurement staff in charge of purchasing our professional services did not yet appreciate how technology would change their lives and the work they were trying to do.

Just to go back to the magazine for a moment; we felt that a magazine that would bring the innovations, best practices and challenges in various areas of the public sector to the desks of procurement professionals everywhere in Canada would help them do business better and improve the public sector market for Canadian business. We have done that and because of the pervasive role of IT, much of our content has been devoted to the development and procurement of IT tools, solutions and professional services. 

There were tons of challenges over the past 10 years in the purchasing of IT… it is no secret that many public sector IT projects did not succeed… at least not in the sense we thought they would. After all, it is pretty hard to conduct an IT project using traditional tools, processes and measurement when everything about IT changes so fast.  By change, I don’t just mean the hardware and software itself, but the clients that information technology is purchased for become very sophisticated very quickly in their private lives. Government is extremely challenged to keep up to their expectations. Most times it cannot, and so we perceive failure. This may be one of the biggest challenges still facing IT procurement today. Reining in expectations is not easy.

Most of us can purchase for ourselves a new computer, cell phone, mobile devices, TVs and the attendant software, so we get to try the newest and best fairly frequently, but consider that the public sector must look at thousands of new machines, new phones or mobile devices and software and licences and the follow on systems integration and support, to say nothing of training and possible legislation changes and organization restructuring. It becomes easier to appreciate that the public sector will continually have to scramble just to try to be anywhere close to current when it comes to technology.  To their credit, procurement staff does strive to meet the internal client demand while balancing the need against the desire.

Last week I had the very good fortune to share a panel discussion with Mr. David Tallan – one of the drivers behind the Stewardship & Web Portfolio initiative, in the Office of the Corporate Chief Strategist for the Ontario Provincial Ministry of Government Services.  The topic is was I’ve been working on for the last two years: “What Do Records and Information Managers Need to Know About Web 2.0”?  We’d collaborated in advance – I’d overview the industry trends and emerging best practices for 2.0 adoption in public sector and highlight the risks and rewards, then David would then turn the topic specifically to how the Ontario government was piloting, prototyping and exploring new forms of inter-departmental collaboration as well as new forms of 2.0-inspired citizen engagement and communication.

But what struck me as we were getting set up and settled into the conference room was the buzz in the audience.  People were already talking, debating and sharing their current projects: what was worrying them, what new approaches they wanted to explore.  I turned to David and said, “we have to talk fast, this room needs lots of time for questions and discussion at the end”…

Clearly public sector is on the leading edge of this new generation of collaboration. Tangible business problems were raised and discussed among the panelists and with other participants in the room.  How can newer, simpler forms of web-collaboration tools – such as wikis, maybe community workspaces – be used to handle knowledge management and corporate memory preservation challenges? How can we better measure the consumption rates and usage patterns of communications published through blogs?  And how to public sector information professionals walk the fine and often-changing line of using external social networks for program awareness, public relations, citizen engagement when their access to such sites are often limited from their work computers?

The topic of corporate memory preservation inside government as the demographic shift slide towards that long-projected retirement bubble is one I’ve been researching for several years.  A significant factor in how information and content management systems can be used to mitigate long term risk of the loss of electronic culture and work product.

An extremely valuable discussion with a full room of public sector professionals wanting to learn more about new social media tools to better fulfill their citizen service mandates…  looking forward to more of this type of interactive discussion in October in Ottawa.

Governments may be dismissed as inherently inefficient in some quarters, but the research heavyweights at Accenture say the public sector can more than hold its own head-to-head.

The great leveler, Accenture says in a report called Knowing Beats Guessing, is analytics – “the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions.”

The data-driven model is already sweeping the public sector, Accenture says, and that means that “many top government agencies can be classed as high performers — easily on a par with high-performance businesses in the commercial sector, such as Procter & Gamble and General Electric.”

“We have found that those high-performance agencies share a number of key attributes with their corporate counterparts. For example, they are relentlessly focused on outcomes and are not misled by measures that are means rather than ends. They are highly efficient, continually rethinking their processes to improve the delivery and maintenance of public services. They are exceptionally aware of changes in their environments and able to translate insight into action quickly and effectively. And they have a keen understanding of the value of analytics to their overall effectiveness.”

The report is available at the Accenture site – www.accenture.com; search for Knowing Beats Guessing.

Last week we discussed the concept of a “social” workplace and the value of collaboration among public sector information workers.  But where is the real return? What specific areas can benefit most from an investment in collaborative technologies and encouragement of better communication of information?

Managing Human Capital

Recruitment, attraction and cultivation of a skilled public sector workforce remain an expensive challenge, even when economic conditions expand the pool of candidates. A flexible and committed workforce who can fill critical gaps during periods of staff turnover and use collected intelligence to prioritize tasks can only exist when information is simple to find, and experts are ready to share.

Skills and learning management, expert finders, employee on boarding and mentorship, alumni networks, succession planning, and career development: these are the key functions that often determine an organization’s ability to attract, maintain, and cultivate a talented employee base.  Collaborative tools deliver in-house networks that weave the strong social fabric of trust, connection, and shared goals among colleagues.

Self-Service and Peer-to-Peer Empowerment

Time spent on repetitive tasks, struggling with email inbox overload, trying to track down the right person to answer a question – sound familiar? As departments downsize, right-size, reorganize, merge, spin-off, or decentralize, complexities compound, and productivity and a sense of accomplishment suffers.  Disengagement sets in.

Organizations that build a Social Workplace can make effective use of simple and intuitive content creation tools. Measurable productivity gains, reduced search times, efficient reuse of shared content are demonstrated with web-based authoring tools for FAQs, project knowledge bases, best practices, or meeting notes. Employees who are encouraged to share their educational background, previous work history, and expose hobbies and interests very often are called to share these formerly hidden skills on new projects. Easy location of in-house experts, regardless of level or role, becomes a natural part of internal knowledge discovery.

Transparency and Corporate Governance

Poor decisions that contribute to negative business results are often made without the benefit of internal expert consultation. One-to-one communication tools – including email – are not conducive to open, vetted discussions on risks, precedent and implications. Organizations with narrow definitions of compliance that focus only on retention rules miss the opportunity to proactively root out and shed light on risky behaviors or patterns.

2.0 technology and culture also delivers a compliance educational opportunity beyond mere publication of statements or policies. It allows rich media, peer to peer discussion, and online interaction to deliver a compelling vision of enterprise goals and expectations. Audio, video and rich graphic content forms transcend language, geography and generations to communicate acceptable practices and instill understanding. 

The Virtual Enterprise

Providing an equivalent online Social Workplace experience for employees who work away from the physical office is an important aspect of employee engagement and productivity. Geographical separation can lead to a disconnection from team or organizational shared goals.  Adoption of a Social Workplace allows distributed organizations to offer the same virtual water cooler networking experience to remote staff as the more traditional office employees.  Opening awareness to hidden skills and undervalued experience, finding common interests, and building personal trust and networks is the value of the human connection we find among our colleagues. The Social Workplace now brings this to the virtual enterprise.

Enable the Front Line

Service representatives, program managers, help desk staff, inspectors, and emergency responders are mobile professionals who require accurate timely data at their fingertips and they move quickly to execute on opportunities.  Often the most accurate intelligence on field conditions, public concerns, hazards, or safety issues will come from peers—this is the buzz, the scoop, the first-hand observational knowledge. The pressure to be in tune with issues can be impossible when individuals are left to fend for themselves.

Organizations that get better at capturing and disseminating the intrinsic knowledge in the field will find competitive advantage with the Social Workplace. Quick and easy web or mobile capture of data, images, or text notes shared with a broader team leads to timely awareness of trends and conditions on the road. This field intelligence needs to become part of mainstream corporate memory. Seeking input directly from front line services deepens collected wisdom and shows responsiveness to changing conditions.

It’s great to be back on the GTEC.CA blog as we ramp up for the main event in October 2009. What a year it has been for the world of Government 2.0 and enterprise collaboration.  Use of social media and online communities for citizen engagement are now routinely front page news. “Enterprise 2.0” has moved from the fringe of public sector priorities into the mainstream, and early adopter departments and agencies worldwide are showing tangible and measurable success.

But what are organizations really trying to accomplish with a 2.0 strategy? Why is a renewed emphasis on collaboration important to the departmental mission?  Beyond the hype, beyond the fluff – what the real objective?  Ultimately success in the knowledge economy –whether public or private sector – rests on connecting the three fundamental elements of business: People, Processes and Content.  Balancing these three elements is not as easy as it seems. As public sector workplaces became automated in the 1980s and ‘90s, this world of “1.0” meant focus on process and content – the rapid rise of email, of shared network drives, of workflow tools endlessly routing items into inbox task lists: transactional content was pushed and pulled from eyeball to eyeball.  Process and Content? Yep! Got it covered.  People? Err… not so much.

Public sector employees personify contributors to the knowledge economy:  program development, delivery of citizen services, protection of infrastructure and populace, regulation and monitoring to ensure high quality of life for residents.  Information is the lifeblood of public sector activity - and this content comes from people.

When we talk about this new generation of collaboration -  inspired by the tools and practices of the 2.0 phenomenon -  we often hear the term “social”:  social networking, social media, social computing.  Social in this context does not mean leisure, or fun and games, it means people. It means bringing the human voice back into the wired world of the electronic workplace.  Organizations wanting to adopt a 2.0 strategy are seeking a more Social Workplace.  The “Social Workplace” is an ideal expression of Web 2.0 technologies to connect people with their peers and with critical content and information. Culturally, it helps break down hierarchical and administrative barriers to innovation and idea exchange among rank and file employees. Technologically, it introduces simpler content creation and communication tools and uses the Web to bridge geographical and generational gaps.

As Web-based collaboration becomes energized by the introduction of social and rich media, sharing and maintaining quality content can accelerate employee productivity. Where individual knowledge was previously hidden, successful teams are seeing shared information and experiences becoming part of broader organizational culture. Employees who actively share their knowledge emerge as experts, and departments that encourage employees to share their knowledge build stronger peer-to-peer and community networks, accelerating internal productivity gains. Providing a variety of simple, interactive, personalized community tools accessible over the Web or smart phones can achieve measurable positive results in this Social Workplace.  In Part 2 of this discussion, we’ll explore the essential scenarios best served by the Social Workplace:

• Attraction, retention, and better use of talent as part of human capital management
• More transparency in corporate governance and communication
• Enablement of front line staff to respond and serve
• Support for a more virtual enterprise
• Respect and protection of institutional memory

Stay tuned…