It is often difficult to define, never mind embrace, a
silver lining from occurrences that are so profoundly negative. However, government
can, or more pointedly should, greatly benefit from our current, prolonged economic
downturn.
In short, government at all levels (Federal, State and
Local) is required to change its overall operational model – some entities
already have or are well down the path. Operations, processes, and most
importantly stakeholder/citizen interactions must change to accommodate current
and future budget constraints. All of these changes must occur while providing
citizens with enhanced customer services.
This is not a novel transformation – private industry made
these changes years ago for the primary goal of running organizations more profitably
by permanently decreasing their bottom-line cost structures. The positive outcome is that it not only
created more efficient operations but also created a much happier consumer of
services and in some cases increased top-line revenue. You don’t need an MBA
from a top-tier school to quantify the value.
Our citizens/stakeholders are demanding that government
provide robust citizen centric, self-service models as well – think online
banking. The complaint by government is that they don’t have capital to invest
– but there is no choice because they cannot continue to operate as a disparate
bureaucracy. Government modernization needs to be focused on doing the job of
government more efficiently. From issuing drivers licenses and benefit allocation
to supporting private industry, government must run these organizations by
harnessing clean, structured data and rules driven operations not by pushing
paper in disparately connected bureaucratic organizations.
How does government make the change?
Enterprise
Data Sharing / Enterprise Services
- Securely share data across the enterprise to
have one view into citizen and business stakeholders
- Turn commodity operations into common services
that are cost effectively offered to the enterprise
Efficient
& Accurate Operations
- Focus the transmission and display of data
electronically and continue eliminating paper from operational processes
- Structure data that can be mined and is
actionable
- Let rules and automated decisioning drive the
organization to only deal with outliers
Customer
Service
- Make it easy for citizens and businesses to access
services and information via self service channels (e.g., web, mobile devices)
- Decrease citizen / access points (citizen and business
one stop shopping & support)
Proactively
target fraud & non-compliance
- Use data to decrease fraudulent activities
- Use data to validate program eligibility
Further, government does not have the time or more
importantly the investment capital to modernize thru the traditional means. Modernization
for government should not take the shape of previous multi-year, multi-million
dollar programs but should capitalize on a high-value agile approach that
provide achievable results within quick sprints. These changes will not only
decrease cost but they may actually support healthy economic development.
