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26 May 2006

Re-engineering government

The next phase of the ICT revolution will centre on (tele)communications and will enable or even force a significant reshaping of all value chains in the economy, particularly in the service sector.

Whole layers of intermediary activities will be reshaped or even removed altogether. This will apply to the public sector as much or even more than in the private sector, given that the business of government is fundamentally about services and relies almost entirely on information and communications.

The effective and comprehensive use of ICT tools will increasingly make it possible to re-engineer business processes so as to focus business processes on delivering end products (or services), rather than intermediate outcomes. At present, each government agency (or "silo") has its own objectives and strategy, which do not always align with those of other agencies that contribute to the eventual achievement of a government outcome.

For example, in Australia as many as seven different government agencies (and some private sector organisations) are part of the process of enabling an unemployed person to remain a viable member of society and of the economy - this is typical in any complex economy. Yet, while they share responsibility for producing a common outcome, their business processes remain separate, sometimes overlapping, sometimes duplicating, sometimes leaving gaps that ought not to exist.

Similarly, when it comes to policy, the process ought to be common across agencies, including gathering data, analysing data, understanding the present and future environment, identifying and quantifying risks and opportunities and generating options that are more likely than not to bring about a desired future position.

Yet, while a common process would deliver greater quality, reliability, and efficiency, each department labours to create its own way of doing it, inventing the wheel over and over again and creating artificial barriers to the transfer of ideas, resources and people.

The public service of the future could be much smaller and more effective. It should retain control of strategy and of the network of data and information it needs, as well as over security of data, information, installations and intellectual capital. It should source externally the hardware and applications it needs to support its activities and programs and most direct service delivery.

It should be focused on outcomes, rather than outputs. It should bring together the best people from within and without its ranks to work on projects to deliver agreed outputs, growing and expanding in size and scope to reflect shifting government priorities. It could be as small as 65% to 70% of its present size in Australia, given current responsibilities - the reduction in other countries may be proportionally greater still.

Government infrastructure has been used for nation building in different ways, with varying success.

Government activities are often of such a scale that they can generate successful patterns of activity or facilitate the emergence of clusters of positive activity. The problem is that there is no direct causal connection that can be mapped and deployed ahead of time. Wisdom comes only after the event and a pattern that has succeeded once may not be amenable to replication later or elsewhere.

The inescapable conclusion is that the infrastructure of government must be made more flexible, more amenable to constant reshaping that is driven by need, rather than by prior intent. The infrastructure of government and the operational infrastructure of business and of our civil society must be made to simultaneously complement and challenge each other, to the benefit of the future.

The boundaries between public and private economic and social activity must become even more blurred than they are now, even at the risk of losing their separate identities. In this convergent world, government would have a very great responsibility, charged with the task of engendering an ideal vision of the future and with fostering cohesive values in a diverse culture.

Business would be responsible for generating wealth for all, within that diverse culture and those cohesive values, and civil society would continue to act as the engine for altruism, the guardian of individuality and the repository of our moral and spiritual values.

This would form a web of accountabilities within which each party, under the rule of law, keeps the others in check while remaining free to pursue its own interests in the way and by the means it considers best.

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