In the increasingly common situation of
governments being expected to deliver better and more services for less cost
whilst maintaining high-level oversight and governance, the Transformational
Government Framework provides a framework for designing and delivering an
effective program of technology-enabled change at all levels of government.
The Transformational Government Framework
can be seen schematically below, made up of four high-level components:
Figure 1: The overall framework
Each of these components is described in more
detail below.
Component 1:
Guiding Principles
The TGF Guiding Principles are set out
below, and must be used by any Transformational Government program conforming
to the TGF.
·
Own the customer at the whole-of-government
level
·
Don't assume you know what users of your
services think - research, research, research
·
Invest in developing a real-time, event-level
understanding of citizen and business interactions with government
·
Provide people with one place to access
government, built around their needs (such as accessibility)
·
Don't try to restructure‑Government to do
this - build "customer franchises" which sit within the existing
structure of government and act as change agents
·
Deliver services across multiple channels - but
use Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles to join it all up, reduce
infrastructure duplication, and to encourage customers into lower cost channels where possible
·
Don't spend money on technology before
addressing organisational and business change
·
Don't reinvent wheels - build a
cross-government strategy for common citizen data sets (e.g. name, address) and
common citizen applications (e.g. authentication, payments, notifications)
·
Engage citizens directly in service design and
delivery
·
Give citizens the technology tools that enable
them to create public value themselves
·
Give citizens ownership and control of their
personal data - and make all non-personal government data freely open for reuse
and innovation by citizens and third parties
·
Ensure that your service transformation plans
are integrated with an effective digital inclusion strategy to build access to
and demand for e-services across society
·
Recognise that other market players (in the
private, voluntary and community sectors) will have a significant influence on
citizen attitudes and behaviour - so build partnerships which enable the market
and others to work with you to deliver jointly-owned objectives.
Figure 2: The nine Critical Success Factors
These nine factors are covered in Component
2 of the TGF.
Component 2: Critical Success Factors
Conformant
Transformational Government programs manage and measure these Critical Success
Factors throughout the life of the program.
·
All-of-Government view: Transformational government cannot be pursued on a
project-by-project or agency-specific basis but requires a whole-of-government
view, connecting up relevant activities in different agencies at different
levels of government within and between countries.
·
Clear vision:
all program stakeholders have a common, agreed and comprehensive view of what
the program is seeking to achieve. In particular, we do not spend money on
technology before identifying the key organizational and business changes
needed to deliver our vision.
·
Strong business case: we know what outcomes we want to achieve, have base-lined where we
are now, and know how we will measure success.
·
Focus on results: although we have a vision of where we want to go, and a set of
principles by which we will move forwards, we do not over-plan. Instead, our
strategy focuses on taking concrete, practical steps in the short to medium
term, rather than continually describing the long-term vision.
·
Sustained support: political leaders and senior management are committed to the
program for the long term. This is particularly relevant given the realities of
changing political leadership and underlines the need for continuity across
those changes.
·
Leadership skills: our program leaders have the skills needed to drive ICT-enabled business
transformation, and have access to external support
·
Collaborative governance: leaders from all parts of our and other organizations involved in
the program are motivated for it to succeed, and are engaged in clear and
collaborative governance mechanisms to manage any risks and issues.
·
A holistic view of the customer: we understand who the customers for our services are - not just
for individual services - but across the Government as a whole. We know our
customers, both internal and external, are different - and understand their
needs on a segmented basis.
·
Citizen-centric delivery: citizens can access all our services through a
"one-stop" service. This is available over multiple channels and that
respond to different needs, but we use web-based services to join it all up and
reduce infrastructure duplication, and we encourage customers into lower cost
channels where possible and compatible with citizen needs (such as
accessibility).
·
Citizen empowerment: we engage citizens directly in service design and delivery, and
provide them with technology tools that enable them to create public value
themselves.
·
Stakeholder communication: all our stakeholders - users, suppliers, delivery partners
elsewhere in the public, private and voluntary sector, politicians, the media,
etc. - have a clear understanding of our program and how they can engage with
it.
·
Cross-sectoral partnership: other market players (in the private, voluntary and community
sectors) often have much greater influence on citizen attitudes and behaviour
than government - so our strategy aims to build partnerships which enable the
market to deliver our objectives.
·
Skills mapping:
we know that the mix of business change, product and marketing management,
program management, and technology skills needed to deliver transformational
change does not already exist in our organisation. We have mapped out the
skills we need, and have a clear strategy for acquiring and maintaining them.
·
Skills integration: we have effective mechanisms in place to maximize value from the
skills available in all parts of our delivery team, bringing together internal
and external skills into an integrated team.
·
Smart supplier selection: we select suppliers based on long-term value for money rather than
price, and in particular based on our degree of confidence that the chosen
suppliers will secure delivery of the expected business benefits.
·
Supplier integration: we will manage the relationship with strategic suppliers at top
management level, and ensure effective client/supplier integration into an
effective program delivery team with shared management information systems.
·
Interoperability: Wherever possible we will use interoperable, open standards which are
well supported in the market-place.
·
Web-centric delivery: we will use SOA principles in order to support all of our customer
interactions, from face-to-face interactions by frontline staff to online
self-service interactions
·
Agility: we
will deploy technology using common building blocks which can be re-used to
enable flexible and adaptive use of technology to react quickly to changing
customer needs and demands.
·
Shared services: key building blocks will be managed as government-wide resources -
in particular common data sets (e.g. name, address); common citizen
applications (e.g. authentication, payments, notifications); and core ICT
infrastructure.
·
Phased implementation: we will avoid a "big bang" approach to implementation,
reliant on significant levels of simultaneous technological and organizational
change. Instead, we will develop a phased delivery roadmap which:
-
works with citizens and businesses to identify
a set of services which will bring quick user value, in order to start building
a user base
-
prioritise those services which can be
delivered quickly, at low cost, and low risk using standard (rather than
bespoke) solutions
-
works first with early adopters within the
Government organisation to create exemplars and internal champions for change
-
learns from experience, and then drives forward
longer term transformations.
·
Continuous improvement: we expect not to get everything right first time, but have systems
which enable us to understand the current position, plan, move quickly, and
learn from experience
·
Risk management: we need clarity and insight into the consequences of
transformation and mechanisms to assess risk and handle monitoring, recovery
and roll-back
·
Benefit realisation strategy: we have a clear strategy to ensure that all the intended benefits
from our Transformation Program are delivered in practice, built around the
three pillars of benefit mapping, benefit tracking and benefit delivery.
Component 3: Delivery Processes
Delivering the principles outlined in Component 1,
in line with the Critical Success Factors detailed in Component 2, involves
re-inventing every stage of the service delivery process. The Transformational
Government Framework identifies four main delivery processes, each of
which must be managed in a government-wide and citizen-centric way in order to
deliver effective transformation:
·
Business Management
·
Customer Management
·
Channel Management
·
Technology Management
A high-level map of these delivery
processes and how their constituent elements interact is illustrated in summary
below. The following sections then look in more detail at each of the four
delivery processes, setting out the best practices which should be followed in
order to ensure conformance with the Transformational Government Framework.
Figure 3: Relationships
between the four Delivery Processes for Transformational Government
Business
Management Framework
The Transformational Government Framework identifies six key aspects of
business management which must be tackled at the whole-of-government level:
Figure 4: Overview of the Business Management Framework
·
Transformational Government leadership: the key people and governance structures needed to develop and
implement a Transformational Government program;
·
A collaborative Stakeholder Governance Model:
the process by which all key stakeholders are identified, engaged and
buy-in to the transformation program;
·
A common terminology and Reference Model:
ensuring that all stakeholders have a clear, consistent and common understanding
of the key concepts involved in Transformational Government; how these concepts
relate to each other; how they can be formally modelled; and how such models
can be leveraged and integrated into new and existing information
architectures;
·
A Transformation Business Model: a new
virtual business layer within government, focused round the needs of citizens
and businesses (the “Franchise Marketplace”), which enables the existing
silo-based structure of government to collaborate effectively in understanding
and meeting user needs;
·
The development and management of Policy
Products: these documents formally define government-wide goals for
achieving government transformation and thus constitute the documented
commitment of any conformant agency to the transformational process;
·
A Transformation Delivery Roadmap:
giving a four to five year view of how the program will be delivered, with
explicit recognition of priorities and trade-offs between different elements of
the program.
|
Any conformant implementation of the TGF
Business Management Framework:
|
|
MUST have Leadership which
involves:
|
|
-
Clear accountability at both the political and
administrative levels
|
|
-
Deployment of formal program management
disciplines
|
|
-
A clearly identified mix of leadership skills
|
|
-
Engagement of a broad-based leadership team
across the wider government.
|
|
MUST have a Collaborative
Stakeholder Governance Model
|
|
MUST have an agreed and shared
terminology and reference model
|
|
MUST have a Transformation Business
Model
|
|
SHOULD use the Franchise
Marketplace Model
|
|
MUST use the Policy Product Map
to identify all necessary Policy Products
|
|
MUST have a phased Transformation
Roadmap
|
Further guidance on how
to implement this process is given in Part III (a) of the Primer.
There are three key parts to the TGF Customer
Management Framework:
·
Brand-led Service Delivery: a user-focused framework for ensuring that:
-
Detailed insight is gathered into
citizen and business needs
-
This insight informs a brand-led product
management process covering all stages of government service design and
delivery
-
The brand values for Transformational
Government then drive all aspects of marketing and communications for
government services;
·
Identity Management: the business architecture, technical
architecture, and citizen-centric identity model needed to enable secure and
joined-up services which citizens and businesses will trust and engage with;
and
·
Citizen Empowerment: the internal cultural changes and external market-enabling actions
which enable governments to engage with citizens and businesses as active
co-creators of public services, rather than their passive recipients.
Figure 5: Overview
of the Customer Management Framework
|
Any conformant implementation of the TGF
Customer Management Framework:
|
|
MUST have a Brand-led Service
Delivery Strategy, which is agreed and managed at a whole-of-government
level and which addresses:
|
|
-
Customer Insight;
|
|
-
Product Management;
|
|
-
Marketing and communication;
|
|
MUST have a Citizen Identity
Management Framework, which:
|
|
-
uses a federated business model;
|
|
-
uses a service-oriented IT architecture;
|
|
-
is citizen-centric, giving citizens control,
choice and transparency over personal data;
|
|
MUST have a Citizen Empowerment
Framework, which encourages and enables service innovation in the
Citizen-to-Citizen, Business-to-Citizen, and Citizen-to-Government sectors.
|
Further guidance
on how to implement this process is given in Part III (b) of this TGF Primer.
The two key parts of the Channel Management
Framework are:
·
Channel Mapping: a clear audit of what channels are currently used to deliver
government services. The TGF Channel Mapping approach includes an analysis of
these channels across two key dimensions: which delivery channels are being
used (‘channel mix’) and who owns them (‘channel ownership’).
·
Channel Transformation Strategy: building a new channel management approach centred around the
needs and behaviour of citizens and businesses. The key concerns of such an
approach include:
-
Channel Optimization;
-
Channel Shift;
-
Cross-Channel Management; and
-
development of a “Mixed Economy” in service
provision through private and voluntary sector intermediaries.
Figure 6: Overview of the
Channel Management Framework
|
Any conformant implementation of the Channel
Management Framework:
|
|
MUST have a clear mapping
of existing channels, and their cost structures
|
|
MUST have a Channel
Transformation Strategy which addresses the following elements:
|
|
-
Shifting service users into lower cost,
digital channels;
|
|
-
Optimising the cost and performance of each
channel, including through use of benchmarking;
|
|
-
Improving cross-channel management, with the
aim of providing a seamless user experience across different channels;
|
|
-
Developing a thriving mixed economy in the
delivery of government services by private and voluntary sector
intermediaries.
|
Further guidance on how to
implement this process is given in Part III (c) of this TGF Primer.
The elements of the TGF Technology Management
Framework are as follows:
·
Resources Management: the explicit
identification and management of all information and technology resources;
·
Ecosystem Participation: a clear model and
understanding of the stakeholders, actors and systems that comprise the overall
service ecosystem and their relationships to each other;
·
Realisation and governance of ICT systems based
on SOA principles
Figure 7: Overview
of the Technology Management Framework
|
Any conformant implementation of the Technology
Management Framework:
|
|
MUST manage
information and ICT system resources as distinct, valued assets including
issues related to the Identification, ownership, stewardship and usage
policies for each asset type;
|
|
MUST explicitly model the stakeholders, actors and systems that comprise the overall
service ecosystem and their relationships to each other
|
|
SHOULD maintain and
update the stakeholder model on a regular basis
|
|
MUST use the OASIS
‘Reference Model for SOA’ as the primary source for core concepts and
definitions of the SOA paradigm, including
|
|
-
A clear understanding of the goals,
motivations and requirements that any SOA-based system is intended to
address;
|
|
-
Identifiable boundaries of ownership of all
components (and identity of the components themselves) in any SOA ecosystem;
|
|
-
Discrete service realisation and re-use that
provides a capability to perform some work on behalf of another party;
|
|
-
The specification of any capability that is
offered for use by another party with clear service descriptions and
contracts
|
|
SHOULD consider the
OASIS ‘SOA Reference Architecture Framework’ when designing specific
SOA-based systems
|
Further guidance on how to
implement this process is given in Part III (d) of this TGF Primer.
Component 4:
Benefit Realisation Strategy
The three parts of the TGF Benefit Realisation
Strategy are:
·
Benefit Mapping: which sets out all the intended outcomes from the transformation
program and gives visibility of how the outputs from specific activities and
investments in the program flow through to deliver those outcomes;
·
Benefit Tracking: which takes this a step further by baselining current performance
against the target output and outcomes, defining “smart” success criteria for
future performance, and tracking progress against planned delivery trajectories
aimed at achieving these success criteria; and
·
Benefit Delivery: which ensures that governance arrangements are in place to ensure
continued benefits after the initial transformation program is implemented.
The relationship between these parts and
conformance criteria for this element of the TGF are shown below.
Figure 8: Overview of the Benefit Realisation Strategy
|
Any conformant implementation of the Benefit
Realisation Strategy:
|
|
MUST clearly identify and quantify the impacts and outcomes that
implementation of the TGF aims to achieve
|
|
SHOULD ensure clear line-of-sight between every investment and
activity in the programme, the immediate outputs these produce, and the final
targeted outcomes
|
|
MUST establish clear and quantified baselines for the current performance
of target outputs and outcomes
|
|
MUST set measurable success criteria
|
|
SHOULD track progress against planned delivery trajectories for
each of the targeted outputs and outcomes
|
|
MUST establish clear accountability and governance structures to
manage benefit delivery
|
The Business Management Framework of the
TGF includes formal terminology and a reference model in order to ensure that
all stakeholders have a clear, consistent and common understanding of the key
concepts involved in Transformational Government; how these concepts relate to
each other; how they can be formally modelled; and how such models can be
leveraged and integrated into new and existing information architectures.
This enables any conformant agency to use a
common terminology without ambiguity and be sure that these terms are used
consistently throughout all work.
Some key concepts are already introduced
below. Further guidance on how the terminology is composed and how a reference
model may be used is given in Part III (a) of this Primer.
TGF Leadership, Stakeholders, Administrations and
Agencies
Leadership
Key people and governance structures needed to develop and implement
a Transformational Government program
Stakeholder
Any claimant inside or outside an organisation who have a vested
interest in any problem and/or its solution
Stakeholder Governance Model
Model and process in which key stakeholders are identified, engaged
and buy-in to the transformation program
Transformation Business Model
Delivery Roadmap
A detailed multi-year plan for the delivery of an overall
cross-government vision for service transformation
Transformational Government
A managed, citizen-centred, process of ICT-enabled change in the
public sector
Policy formulation and Policy Products
Goal
A broadly stated, unmeasured but desired outcome. Not to be confused
with an Objective
Need
A general statement expressed by a stakeholder of something that is
required. Not to be confused with a Requirement
Objective
A specific, measurable and achievable outcome that a participant
seeks to achieve
Policy Product
A document that has been formally adopted
on a government-wide basis and aimed at helping achieve one or other goal of
citizen service transformation
Requirement
A formal statement of a desired result
that, if achieved, will satisfy a need
Service delivery and the Franchise Marketplace Model
Accessibility
A policy prescription that aims at ensuring that people with
disabilities and the elderly can use public services with the same service
levels as all other citizens.
Channel
A particular means and/or path of delivery of a service to a
customer
Customer Franchise
A collaborative organisation created by
the government with the purpose of: understanding the needs of a specific
customer segment for government services (such as, for example, parents,
motorists, disabled people, land and property); championing the needs of that
segment within government; aggregating content and transactions for that
segment from across government and beyond; and delivering that content and
services as part of the wider Franchise Marketplace.
Franchise Marketplace
The virtual business infrastructure within which Customer Franchises
collaborate with each other and other stakeholders to deliver user-centric,
trusted and interoperable content and transactions to citizens and businesses.
The Franchise Marketplace is the business model recommended by the TGF for best
delivering the TGF Guiding Principle of “Build services around customer needs,
not organisational structure”.
Delegate
Some person or agent acting with authority on behalf of another
person.
Inclusion
A policy prescription that aims at allowing everyone to take full
advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies to overcome social
and economic disadvantages and exclusion.
SOA and Technology Infrastructure
Ecosystem
A set of ICT systems and stakeholders together with the environment
and context within which they all operate
Interoperability
The ability of disparate and diverse organisations to interact
towards mutually beneficial and agreed common goals, involving the sharing of
information and knowledge between the organisations, through the business
processes they support, by means of the exchange of data between their respective
ICT systems.
Security
The set of mechanisms for ensuring and enhancing trust and
confidence in a system.
Service-Orientation, Service-Oriented
A paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities
that may be under the control of different ownership domains.
System
A collection of components organized to
accomplish a specific function or set of functions
A consolidated view of the conformance
criteria described in the TGF is given below. Any conformant implementation of
this Framework:
1.
MUST use the Guiding
Principles set out in Component 1 of the TGF
2.
MUST have delivery processes for business
management, customer management, channel management and technology management which address the best practices described in Component 2 of the
TGF. Specifically, this means:
a) A
Business Management Framework which:
·
MUST have Leadership which involves:
Clear
accountability at both the political and administrative levels;
-
Deployment of formal program management
disciplines;
-
A clearly identified mix of leadership skills;
-
Engagement of a broad-based leadership team
across the wider government.
·
MUST have a Collaborative
Stakeholder Governance Model
·
MUST have an
agreed and common terminology and reference model
·
MUST have a Transformation
Business Model
·
SHOULD use the Franchise
Marketplace Model
·
MUST use the Policy
Product Map as a tool to help identify Policy Products needed within the
relevant government
·
MUST have a phased Transformation Roadmap
b) A
Customer Management Framework which:
·
MUST have a
Brand-led Service Delivery Strategy, which is agreed and managed at a
whole-of-government level and which addresses:
Customer
Insight
Product
Management
-
Marketing and communication
·
MUST have a Citizen
Identity Management Framework, which:
Uses a
federated business model
Uses a
service-oriented architecture (as part of the wider SOA described in the TGF
Technology Management Framework)
-
Is citizen-centric, giving citizens control,
choice and transparency over personal data
·
MUST have a Citizen
Empowerment Framework, which encourages and enables service innovation in
the Citizen-to-Citizen, Business-to-Citizen, Citizen-to-Government, and
Business-to-Government sectors
c) A
Channel Management Framework which:
·
MUST have a
clear mapping of existing channels, and their cost structures
·
MUST have a Channel Transformation Strategy
which addresses the following elements:
Shifting
service users into lower cost, digital channels
Optimising
the cost and performance of each channel, including through use of benchmarking
Improving
cross-channel management, with the aim of providing a seamless user experience
across different channels
-
Developing a thriving mixed economy in the
delivery of government services by private and voluntary sector intermediaries.
d) A
Technology Management Framework which:
·
MUST manage
information and ICT system resources as distinct, valued assets including
issues related to the Identification, ownership, stewardship and usage policies
for each asset type;
·
MUST explicitly
model the stakeholders, actors and systems that
comprise the overall service ecosystem and their relationships to each other
·
SHOULD maintain
and update the stakeholder model on a regular basis
·
MUST use the
OASIS ‘Reference Model for SOA’ as the primary source for core concepts and
definitions of the SOA paradigm, including
-
A clear understanding of the goals, motivations
and requirements that any SOA-based system is intended to address;
-
Identifiable boundaries of ownership of all
components (and identity of the components themselves) in any SOA ecosystem;
-
Discrete service realisation and re-use that
provides a capability to perform some work on behalf of another party;
-
The specification of any capability that is
offered for use by another party with clear service
descriptions and contracts
3.
MUST measure and manage the Critical
Success Factors outlined in Component 3 of the TGF
4.
SHOULD seek regular, independent review
of performance against these Critical Success
Factors
5.
MUST have a Benefit Realisation Strategy which addresses the areas of benefit mapping, benefit tracking and
benefit delivery as described in Component 4 of the TGF
In terms of the primary users identified for the
TGF in Part I:
·
A conformant government will be able to
demonstrate and document that it is engaged in a Transformation Program which
complies with all these criteria.
·
A conformant private-sector organisation will
be able to demonstrate and document that it provides products and services
which help governments to comply with all these criteria.
This part of the TGF Primer sets out some initial
guidance to help TGF users understand and implement the TGF, focusing in
particular on:
·
The TGF Business Management Framework
·
The TGF Customer Management Framework
·
The TGF Channel Management Framework
·
The TGF Technology Management Framework
·
TGF Terminology.
We envisage issuing further guidance over
time, but this initial set of guidance notes is intended to give a deeper view
of the context for these major elements of the TGF, and to highlight best
practice approaches to its implementation.
The TGF Business
Management Framework is in four main sections:
·
Context
·
Overview of key components in the TGF Business
Management Framework
·
Detailed description of and guidance on the key
components
For largely historical
reasons, governments are generally organised around individually accountable
vertical silos (for example, tax, health, transport) with clear demarcations
between central, regional, and local government. Even within a particular tier
of government, several organisations can have responsibility for different
aspects of the same person, same asset or same process. Yet citizen and
business needs cut across these demarcations. In moving to a customer-centric
approach, it is vital to redress this fragmented approach to business
management, and to put in place business management processes which operate at
the whole-of-government level.
The Transformational
Government Framework identifies six key aspects of business management which
need to be tackled in this way:
·
Transformational Government leadership: the key people and governance structures needed to develop and implement
a Transformational Government program
·
A collaborative Stakeholder Governance
Model: the process by which all key stakeholders are identified, engaged
and buy-in to the transformation program, including to the Guiding Principles
described in Component 1 of the TGF
·
A common terminology and reference
architecture: ensuring that all stakeholders have a clear, consistent and
common understanding of the key concepts involved in Transformational
Government and how these inter-relate
·
A Transformation Business Model: a new
virtual business layer within government, focused round the needs of citizens
and businesses, which enables the existing silo-based structure of government
to collaborate effectively in understanding and meeting user needs
·
The development and management of Policy
Products that constitute the documented commitment to the transformational
process of any conformant agency
·
A Transformation Delivery Roadmap:
giving a four to five year view of how the program will be delivered, with
explicit recognition of priorities and trade-offs between different elements of
the program.
A high level view of the logical
relationships between these components is illustrated below.
Figure 9: Key components of the Business Management Framework
Transformation programs require sustained
leadership over a period of years.
There is no “ideal” leadership structure for a
transformation program: the optimal positioning of the leadership team will
depend on the context of each specific government. However, global experience
suggests the following factors are vital to address in whichever way is most
appropriate for the specific context:
·
A clear focus of accountability: at both the political and administrative levels there should be an
explicit functional responsibility for the Transformation Program. These
functions should be occupied by individuals with sufficient authority to
command the resources and mobilise the support necessary to fulfil this
mission.
·
Deployment of formal program management
disciplines: to deliver effective‑Government-wide transformation, it
is vital to use a formalised program management approach, such as PRINCE 2.
·
Ensuring the right skills mix in the
leadership team. Effective leadership of a Transformation Program requires
the senior accountable leaders to have access to a mix of key skills in the
leadership team which they build around them, including: strategy development
skills, stakeholder engagement skills, marketing skills, commercial skills and
technology management skills. Deployment of a formal competency framework such
as SFIA can be helpful in identifying and building the right skill sets.
·
Building a broad-based leadership team
across the wider government. It is not essential that all Ministers and senior
management are committed to the transformation program from the outset. Indeed,
a key feature of an effective roadmap for transformation is that it nurtures
and grows support for the strategy through the implementation process. However,
it is important that the program is seen not simply as a centralised or
top-down initiative. Sharing leadership roles with senior colleagues across the
Government organisation is therefore important. Further detail on this is set
out in the section below on a collaborative stakeholder model.
Development and delivery of an effective Transformational
Government program requires engagement with a very wide range of stakeholders,
not only across the whole of government but also with the private sector,
voluntary and community sectors as well as with business and citizen users of
public services. A significant effort is needed to include all stakeholders in
the governance of the Transformational Government program at an appropriate and
effective level.
Key elements are set out below that a
conformant TGF program will need to address in developing its Collaborative
Stakeholder Governance Model, if it is to engage successfully with stakeholders
and align them effectively behind shared objectives. Each of these elements is
then discussed in more detail.
Figure 10: Overview
of Collaborative Stakeholder Governance
Stakeholder Mapping
It is vital to describe and map the
complete landscape of relevant stakeholders. The
Transformational Government Framework puts the individual – whether as a
citizen or as someone acting within a business or other role – at the centre:
Figure 11: Landscape of some key stakeholders
This view deliberately and completely avoids the
rather generic concept of ‘User’ that is dominant in traditional IT stakeholder
engagement models, preferring rather to identify the different interests and
concerns that are at stake (the mauve labels) and the key groups of
stakeholders (the different people icons) in the development of any service.
The figure is by no means complete nor the
only ‘valid’ view. It seeks instead to illustrate that the process of
transformation requires reappraisal of the current set-up and assessment of
what needs to change.
By clearly separating out key stakeholder groups
and starting to understand and articulate their specific concerns as
stakeholders (any individual’s role may vary according to context:
in one situation, a person is a parent; in another, a policy-maker; or another,
a service provider), we can start to understand how stakeholders relate (in
different roles): to each other; to various administrations and services
involved; to policy drivers and constraints; and how these all come together in
a coherent ecosystem supported by a Transformational Government Framework. In
this view,
·
A service (or ICT capability made
available as a service) is understood as responding to a set of requirements
and policy goals (some of which overlap) – stakeholders concerned at this level
include, for example, case workers in a public administration or developers who
have worked with them in delivering a specific service;
·
Requirements
encapsulate and formalise vaguely stated goals and needs of citizens and
businesses and take on board the policy goals of the political sponsor or
champion – stakeholders at this level include, for example, managers of public
service who can articulate the needs of their respective services, the
information and systems architects who capture those needs as formal
requirements that engineers can work with to develop services;
·
Policy Goals
capture the high-level concerns and priorities of the political authorities and
continually assess how these goals reflect key citizen and business concerns –
stakeholders include policy makers and senior management as well as consultants
and analysts involved in helping identify technology and administrative trends
that can be used to leverage those goals; and finally;
·
Citizen and Business Needs that,
ultimately, can only be fully understood by the people concerned themselves –
nonetheless stakeholders at this level can also include citizen or business
associations, consumer and other interest groups who engage with policy makers
to advance the interests of certain groups with distinct needs and are able to
articulate those needs in ways that can be used by analysts and consultants.
The various ellipses in the diagram above
are deliberately not concentric circles. This is to underline that the process
of establishing a service or capability is not a linear one going from needs,
goals and requirements. In reality stages are often inter-related.
The mapping of stakeholders and their
principal concerns at a generic level is used as a key input to the TGF
reference model outlined in the next section and that needs to be validated
within any TGF program. It is valuable as a tool for encouraging collaborative
governance as it renders explicit many of the relationships and concerns that
are often left implicit but nonetheless impact on an organisation’s ability to
reflect stakeholders’ concerns.
The Stakeholder Engagement Model
However, it is not enough simply to map and
understand stakeholder relationships and concerns. An effective TGF program
will also address the three other dimensions of the model illustrated above:
·
Stakeholder Engagement Structures: the organisational arrangements put in place to lead the
transformation programme, e.g.:
central unit(s)
governance boards
-
industry partnership board
·
Stakeholder Engagement Processes: the processes and work flows through which the TGF Leadership and
the different TGF Stakeholders interact, e.g.:
reporting and accountability
processes
risk management processes
issue escalation processes
consultation processes
-
collaborative product development processes.
·
Stakeholder Incentives: the set of levers available to drive change through these
governance structures and processes. These will vary by government, but
typical levers being deployed include:
central mandates
political leadership
administrative championship
personal performance incentives for
government officials
-
alignment between public policy objectives and
the commercial objectives of private sector partners.
There is no one right model for doing this
successfully, but any conformant TGF program needs to make sure that it has
used the framework above to define its own Collaborative Stakeholder Engagement
Model which explicitly articulates all of these elements: a comprehensive
stakeholder map, coupled with the structures, processes and incentives needed
to deliver full understanding and buy-in to the program, plus effective
stakeholder action in support of it.
Collaboration between TGF Programs
The model clearly focuses attention within
any specific TGF program. However (and increasingly) collaboration is required
also between governments and, by implication, between TGF programs.
In the figure below, we see that
collaboration between TGF programs is favoured at the political, legal and
organisational levels and only later, if and when necessary, at the more
‘tightly-coupled’ semantic and technical levels.
Figure 12: Collaboration
between TGF programs through different levels of Interoperability
This approach is also consistent with the
SOA paradigm for service development – not only are requirements defined and
services offered independently of any underlying technology or infrastructure
but also one TGF program can be seen (and may need to be seen) as a ‘service
provider’ to another TGF program’s ‘service request’. For example, a business
wishing to establish itself in a second country may need to provide
authenticated information and credentials managed by government or business in
the first country.
A further advantage of this approach is
that it becomes easier to identify and manage high level government
requirements for services: whether in the choice of ICT standards that may need
to be used to address a particular technology issue or determining the criteria
for awarding public procurement contracts, this approach allows a
‘loose-coupling’ at the level of clearly defined high-level policy needs rather
than the more tightly-coupled and often brittle approach of specifying
particular technologies, software or systems.
In any change program of this breadth and complexity,
it is vital that all stakeholders have a common understanding of the key
concepts involved and how they interrelate, and have a common language to
describe these in.
We therefore recommend that a
TGF-conformant transformation program should seek to agree with stakeholders a
common Terminology and Transformation Reference Model.
Why have a terminology and reference model?
In everyday life, we use terms
– ‘citizen’, ‘need’, ‘service’ – as common, often implicitly accepted labels
for concepts. The concept is the abstract mental idea (which
should be universal and language independent) to which the term gives a
material expression in a specific language. Particularly in an international
environment such as global standardization initiatives, the distinction is
important as it is common concepts that we wish to work with, not common terms.
This distinction also helps avoid common
modelling pitfalls. Terms that may seem similar or the same across two or more
languages may actually refer to different concepts; or a single term in one
language could be understood to refer to more than one concept which another
language expresses with discrete terms: For example, the
English term ‘service’ can refer to different concepts - an
organisational unit (such as ‘Passport Service’) or something that is performed
by one for another (such as ‘a dry cleaning service’), whereas discrete terms
are used for the discrete concepts in German (‘Dienst’ or ‘Dienstleistung’). As
the TGF is intended for use anywhere in the world, it is important to ensure
that (ideally) global concepts can be transposed and translated and thus
understood in other languages: we therefore need to associate an explicit
definition with each concept as we do in a dictionary. The TGF uses the structure
and methodology of an existing international standard to create its terminology
Concepts do not exist in isolation,
however. It is the broader understanding of the relationships between concepts
that give those concepts fuller meaning and allow us to model our world, our
business activities, our stakeholders, etc. in a way that increases the chance
that our digital systems are an accurate reflection of our work. In information science, an ontology is a formal representation of
knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between
those concepts. It can be used to describe the domain (the coverage should be
sufficiently comprehensive to include all concepts relevant to the domain) and
to reason about the domain.
The TGF does not include a formal ontology
but is sufficiently clear in its concepts, definitions and relationships
between concepts that the Framework will use consistently as an internally
coherent set. It does include however a “reference model” that is clear enough
that subsequent ontology development is possible if so desired.
The TGF Primer already includes formal
definitions of key concepts used throughout the Framework and a complete
terminology and reference model – that formalizes the concepts and the
relationships between them – is prepared as a separate deliverable.
Weaknesses of current models
A central task of the TGF leadership and
collaborative stakeholder model is to develop a new and effective business
model which enables the machinery of government to deliver citizen-centric
services in practice.
It is failure to address this requirement
for a new business model which, arguably, has been the greatest weakness of
most traditional e‑Government programmes. For the most part, the transition
to e‑Government has involved overlaying technology onto the existing
business model of government: a business model based around unconnected silos -
in which policy-making, budgets, accountability, decision-making and service
delivery are all embedded within a vertically-integrated delivery chain based
around specific government functions. The experience of governments around the
world over the last two decades is that this simply does not work.
So what is the new business model which is
required to deliver citizen service transformation? Many attempts have been
made by governments to introduce greater cross-government coordination, but
largely these have been "bolted on" to the underlying business model,
and hence experience only limited success.
The Franchise Marketplace Model
This Framework recommends implementation of a business model which
permits the joining-up of services from all parts of government and external
stakeholders in a way that makes sense to citizens and businesses, yet without
attempting to restructure the participating parts of government. Conceptually,
this leads to a model where the existing structure of government continues to
act as a supplier of services, but intermediated by a "virtual"
business infrastructure based around customer needs. A top-level view of such a
virtual, market-based approach to citizen service transformation is set out in
the figure below:
Figure 13: Overview of the Franchise Marketplace
Key features of this business model are:
·
The model puts into place a number of agile
cross-government virtual "franchise businesses" based around customer
segments (such as, for example, parents, motorists, disabled people). These
franchises are responsible for gaining full understanding of their customers'
needs so that they can deliver quickly and adapt to changing requirements over
time in order to deliver more customer centric services - which in turn, is
proven to drive higher service take-up and greater customer satisfaction.
·
Franchises provide a risk-averse operational
structure that enables functionally-organised government agencies at national,
regional and local to work together in a customer-focused "Delivery
Community". They do this by :
-
Enabling government to create a
"virtual" delivery structure focused on customer needs
-
Operating across the existing structure of
Government (because they are led by one of the existing "silos") and
resourced by organisations that have close links with the relevant customer
segment including, possibly, some outside of government
-
Dividing the task into manageable chunks
-
Removing a single point of failure
-
Working to a new and precisely-defined
operating model so as to ensure consistency
-
Working across and beyond government to manage
the key risks to citizen-centric service delivery
-
Acting as change agents inside‑Government
departments / agencies.
·
The model enables a "mixed economy"
of service provision:
-
firstly, by providing a clear market framework
within which private and voluntary sector service providers can repackage
public sector content and services; and
-
secondly by deploying ‘Web 2.0’ type approaches
across government that promote re-use and ‘mash-ups’ of existing content and
services, to make this simpler and cheaper at a technical level.
·
The whole model is capable of being delivered
using Cloud Computing
This Franchise model represents an
important break-through in the shift from a traditional e‑Government
approach towards citizen service transformation. Certainly, the model as a
whole or key elements of it has been adopted successfully in governments as
diverse as the UK, Hong Kong, Croatia, Abu Dhabi and Australia (where it has
been adopted by both the South Australia and Queensland governments).
It is clearly possible that alternate
models may develop in future. But however the Transformational Government
agenda develops, every government will need to find some sort of new business
model along these lines, rather than continue simply to overlay technology onto
an old silo-based business model built for an un-networked world.
A number of relationships need to be managed by a
franchise to enable it to develop, maintain and deliver transformational
citizen-centric services. These represent different viewpoints that can be
broadly classified as:
·
Customers:
Those citizens and businesses to whom the franchise delivers content and
services, plus those internal stakeholders to whom the franchise provides a
service within the government.
·
Partners:
Those who are actors in the normal operation and delivery of the service, both
internally and externally to the government.
·
Influencers: those
who have a political, business or altruistic interest in the service and the
part that it plays in broader government, business and social scenarios.
·
Internal Customers: Those who work with the franchise to develop and maintain the
service.
Figure 14: Relationships in the Franchise Marketplace
The Franchise
The franchise is based around a customer
segment. It may contain bodies drawn from central, regional, and state
government and others that contribute to serving that segment.
It MUST have a lead organisation that
ensures its interests are represented to other franchises and bodies. It MUST
also have sponsoring organisations that with a responsibility for the full
range of service perspectives across the segment.
The franchise is responsible for ensuring
that all relationships with external bodies are managed and for the provision
of supporting assets necessary to allow organisations within the franchise and
working with it to discharge their responsibilities in an open, consultative
and transparent manner.
Despite the importance of the franchise
concept, it is not intended to add unnecessary bureaucracy – rather, it is
intended to provide a lightweight framework within which participants can work
naturally and cooperatively.
Customers
Customers are the most important actors in
operational services as the services MUST address their needs and those of the
people that they represent.
Thus, as well as being users, it is
essential that they are consulted during the proposal stage for all services.
Once operational, this group SHOULD to be involved in customer satisfaction
exercises and the development of any service enhancements to ensure that their
needs continue to be met.
It is vital that Franchises identify their
internal government customers and apply similar customer research and customer
satisfaction measurement to these internal customer relationships as well as to
external ones.
Partners
Many partners will be involved in helping the
Franchise effectively to deliver the requirements of its customer segment. The
partnership may involve:
·
working with the franchise to develop and
maintain the service
·
providing the supporting assets which give a
technical underpinning for this and other services.
The supporting assets provide the technical
underpinning for project delivery. Where they are publically owned, it is
intended that they will provide light-touch governance and facilities
(primarily technical) to support franchises and inter-working between them and
with standards bodies.
It is essential that they ensure the
provision and availability of assets that are universal (i.e. fundamental items
that are required by all public sector organisations) or common (i.e. assets
used across multiple franchises).
Tooling SHOULD to be provided with the aim
of supporting all stakeholders and facilitating their collaboration.
Influencers
The influencers are those who identify, and
possibly mandate, the need for a service. Accordingly, it is vital that they
are able to steer developments within and across franchises. They also have a
responsibility to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned and are
organisationally capable of discharging their responsibilities.
We define a "Policy Product" as:
any document which has been formally adopted on a government-wide basis in
order to help achieve the goals of citizen service transformation. These
documents vary in nature (from statutory documents with legal force, through
mandated policies, to informal guidance and best practice) and in length (some
may be very lengthy documents; others just a few paragraphs of text). Policy
Products are important drivers of change within government: first because the
process of producing them, if managed effectively, can help ensure strategic
clarity and stakeholder buy-in; and second because they then become vital
communication and management tools.
Over recent years, several governments have
published a wide range of Policy Products as part of their work on
Interoperability Frameworks and Enterprise Architectures, and other governments
are therefore able to draw on these as reference models when developing their
own Policy Products. However, we believe that the set of Policy Products
required to ensure that a holistic, government -wide vision for transformation
can be delivered is much broader than is currently being addressed in most
Interoperability Frameworks and Enterprise Architectures.
A TGF-conformant transformation program will use the matrix shown
below to create a map of the Policy Products that are needed to deliver the
program effectively. This matrix maps the four delivery processes described in
Component 2 of the TGF (Business Management, Customer Management, Channel Management
and service-oriented Technology Management) against the five interoperability
domains identified in what is currently the broadest of Interoperability
Frameworks - the European Interoperability Framework (EIF): technical,
semantic, organisational, legal and policy interoperability. While the EIF
framework is conceptually complete, by mapping it against these core delivery
processes, a much clearer sense can be gained of the actions which are needed.
|
The TGF
Policy Product Map
|
Political Interoperability
|
Legal Interoperability
|
Organisational
Interoperability
|
Semantic Interoperability
|
Technical
Interoperability
|
|
Business Management
|
Strategic Business Case for
overall Programme
|
Legal vires for inter-agency
collaboration
|
Benefits Realisation Plan
|
Business Process Model
|
Technology roadmap
|
|
Customer Management
|
Identity Management Strategy
|
Privacy, data protection and data
security legislation
|
Federated trust model for cross-agency
identity management
|
Common data standards
|
Single sign-on architecture
|
|
Channel Management
|
Intermediaries Policy
|
Pro-competitive regulatory framework
for the telecoms sector
|
Channel Management guidelines
|
Web accessibility guidelines
|
Presentation architecture
|
|
Technology Management
|
Information Security policy
|
Procurement legislation
|
Service level agreements
|
Physical data model
|
Interoperability Framework
|
Figure 15: A Policy Product Map completed with examples of individual policy
products. Each cell in the matrix may contain one or more policy products
depending on the outcome of relevant analysis
A full analysis of the Policy Products which we recommend are
typically needed to deliver an effective and holistic transformation program
will be included in a separate Committee Note “Tools and Models for the
Business Management Framework”. Although the detailed Policy Products in that
note are advisory and not all of them may be needed, any conformant
transformation program MUST use the overall framework and matrix of the Policy
Product Map in order to conduct at minimum a gap analysis aimed at identifying
the key Policy Products needed for that government, taking the Committee Note
into account as guidance.
Finally, it is essential that the vision,
strategy, business model and policies for citizen service transformation are
translated into an effective Transformation Roadmap.
Since everything can clearly not be done at
once, it is vital to map out which elements of the transformation programme
need to be started immediately, which can be done later, and in what order.
There is no one-size-fits all strategy which governments can use, since
strategy needs to be tailored to the unique circumstances of each government's
situation.
However, all governments face the same
strategic trade-offs: needing to ensure clear line-of-sight between all aspects
of programme activity and the end outcomes which the Government is seeking to
achieve, and to balance quick wins with the key steps needed to drive longer
term transformation.
In the early days of the Transformational
Government program, we recommend that the major strategic focus should be on safe
delivery - that is, prioritising high benefit actions which help to
accelerate belief and confidence across the Government and the wider
stakeholder community that ICT-enabled change is possible and beneficial - but
which can be delivered with very low levels of risk. As the programme develops,
and an increasing number of services become available, the strategic focus can
move towards building take-up: that is, building demand for online
services and creating a critical mass of users. Once that critical mass starts
to appear, the strategic focus can start to shift towards fuller transformation:
in other words, to start driving out some of the more significant
transformational benefits that high levels of service take-up enables, for
example in terms of reducing the cost of government service delivery.
|
|
 |
As the diagram below makes clear, these strategic foci are
not mutually exclusive, but overlap. Crucially, in the Safe Delivery phase
there will also be some vital steps needed in order to pave the way for longer
term transformation, particularly in respect of establishing the business case
for transformation, and embedding the strategy in effective governance
processes. But the diagram shows how the strategic weight between each
consideration should shift over time.
Figure 16: Roadmap priorities over
time
Guided by the strategic trade-off framework
described above, experience shows that a phased approach is the most
successful. Typically, an effective Delivery Roadmap will cover five main
phases.
The preparation and planning needed to develop a
tailored Delivery Roadmap for the Government, to ensure that the business case
for transformation is fully articulated, and that all key stakeholders are
on-board. Key outputs from this phase should include:
·
Transformation vision: a high level document
setting out the agreed future model for transformation of our client
organisation and its re-engineered business processes
·
Strategic business case: the key costs and
benefits associated with the transformation programme
·
Delivery roadmap: a multi-year transformation
plan, covering, among other things:
-
A change management plan (including
communication and training plans)
-
Central capability building and governance
processes
-
A sourcing strategy
-
A strategy for moving towards a service
oriented ICT architecture
-
A risk management strategy
-
A high level benefit realisation plan, setting
out the actions needed to ensure full downstream delivery of the intended benefits
from the transformation programme.
In this first phase of delivery, the focus is on
building the maximum of momentum behind the Roadmap for the minimum of delivery
risk. This means focusing in particular on three things:
·
some early quick wins to demonstrate progress
and early benefits, for a minimum of delivery risk and using little or no
technology expenditure
·
embedding the Roadmap in governance structures
and processes which will be needed to inform all future investments, notably
the frameworks of enterprise architecture, customer service standards and
issue/risk management that will be required
·
selecting effective delivery partners.
In this
phase, some of the more significant investments start coming on stream - for
example, the first version of the major "one-stop" citizen-facing
delivery platforms, and the first wave of transformation projects from
"champion" or "early adopter" agencies within the
Government
In this phase, the focus shifts towards
driving take-up of the initial services, expanding the initial one-stop service
over more channels, learning from user feedback, and using that feedback to
specify changes to the business and technology architectures being developed as
longer term, strategic solutions
Finally, the program looks to build out the broader range of
e-transformation projects, drive forward the migration of all major
citizen-facing services towards the new one-stop channels, and complete the
transition to the full strategic IT platform needed to guarantee future agility
as business and customer priorities change.
The TGF Customer
Management Framework is in three main sections:
·
Context
·
Overview of key components in the TGF Customer
Management Framework
·
Detailed description of and guidance on the key
components
The first of the Guiding
Principles identified in Component 1 of the TGF is:
“Develop
a detailed and segmented understanding of your citizen and business customers:
·
Own the
customer at the whole-of-government level;
·
Don't
assume you know what users of your services think - research, research,
research;
·
Invest
in developing a real-time, event-level understanding of citizen and business
interactions with government”
Putting these principles into practice involves
taking a holistic, market-driven approach to every step of the service design
and delivery process. This in turn often requires new skills and management
practices to be brought into government. The TGF Customer Management Framework
draws together best practice on how to do this.
There are three key
components of the TGF Customer Management Framework:
·
Brand-led Service Delivery
·
Identity Management
·
Citizen Empowerment
A high level view of the logical
relationships between these components is illustrated below.
Figure 17: Overview
of the Customer Management Framework
Marketing is critical to effective citizen
service transformation, yet is something at which government traditionally does
not excel. Often, marketing is fundamentally misunderstood within government -
as being equivalent to advertising or perhaps, more broadly, as being
equivalent to communication.
Properly understood, however, marketing is the
process of:
·
Understanding the target market for government
services in all its breadth and complexity
·
Learning what is needed in order to meet
citizen needs
·
Developing an offer for citizens and businesses
that they will engage with
·
Establishing a clear set of brand values for
that offer - a set of underpinning statements that adequately describe what the
product or service will deliver and how
·
Delivering that offer though appropriate
channels, in a way which fully delivers on the brand values
·
Generating awareness about the offer
·
Creating desire/demand for the offer
·
Reminding people
·
Changing the offer in the light of experience
This is the process that a brand-led
consumer product company such as Proctor and Gamble or Virgin would go through
when developing a new product. However, it is not typically how governments
manage their own service development, and governments generally lack the skills
to do it. Moreover, the challenge faced by governments is significantly more
complex than any private sector company, given the greater range and complexity
of services and governments need to provide a universal service rather than
pick and choose its customers. Yet if governments are to succeed in the
ambition of shifting service delivery decisively away from traditional channels
to lower-cost digital channels, then these marketing challenges have to be met.
And given the fact that a) citizen needs
cut across organisational boundaries in government and b) the skills for
delivering an effective brand-led marketing approach to service transformation
will inevitably be in short supply, it is important that these challenges are
addressed at a government-wide level.
A TGF-conformant Transformation Program
will establish government-wide processes for managing the three core elements
of the TGF Brand-led Service Delivery Framework illustrated below:
Figure 18: Brand-led Service Delivery Framework
·
Citizen insight
·
Brand-led product management
·
Marketing communications
Citizen insight must inform all aspects of
the process, and involves a comprehensive programme of qualitative and
quantitative research to understand and segment the customer base for
government services. The learnings from this need to be fed into a brand-led product
management process - not as a one-off input of initial research, but through a
continuous process of iterative design and customer testing. A key output from
this will be a set of brand values for the service, which then need to drive
all aspects of service delivery, and marketing communications for the service.
This is an iterative process of continuous
improvement, not a linear one. Continuous citizen insight research is needed to
ensure that both the service delivery experience and the marcoms activity
remain aligned with the brand values, through successive phases of release
deployment. As the service is implemented, across a range of channels, best
practice management information systems can be deployed to ensure that the
Government now has real-time, event-level management information about the
experience of all customers - which in turn provides a powerful feedback loop
into further innovation in the service design.
Often, this will require the Government to
bring in specialist resources, because typically it may face significant gaps
in terms of the people and skills needed to manage brand-led product
development and marketing cycles of this nature.
Identity management is a key enabler, yet
something with which most governments struggle. At the heart of that struggle
is often a failure to put the citizen at the centre of government's thinking
about identity.
A wide range of agencies, standards bodies
and advocacy groups are deeply involved in many aspects of this work, from technical
models for privacy management (such as the OASIS PMRM technical committee) through to the
business, legal and social issues around online identity assurance (such as
promoted by Open Identity Exchange, OIX). It is not the purpose of the Transformational Government
Framework to address the details of identity management or recommend specific
policies or approaches but rather to give high-level guidance on the main
issues that a conformant program should seek to address.
Identity is a complex, and by definition
deeply personal, concept. As the following figure illustrates, a single citizen
in fact has multiple, overlapping "identities".
Figure 19: Complexity of identities
Each identity may be associated with
different rights and permissions, even different addresses. These identities
overlap, but in some cases the citizen may want to keep them separate in order
to protect his or her privacy. At other times, the citizen may want them to be
joined up, and be frustrated at constantly having to furnish government with
the same information over and over again.
Governments have often struggled to manage
this complexity. Typically, identity is defined separately in relation to each
silo-based government service. Even countries which have traditionally had the
simplicity of a single citizen identifier (such as Finland, where there has
been a single population register since 1634), have tended to build up separate
and inconsistent business processes for identity verification. Although the
advent of e‑Government held out the promise of significant simplification
of identity management - bringing service improvement gains for the citizen and
efficiency savings for the Government - significant barriers remain. These
include legal barriers that have grown up over centuries of piecemeal
approaches taken by public administrations (as well as, more recently, also by
the private sector) and put in place often to protect individuals from the
effects of equally piecemeal processes. As such the impact of any changes must
be considered very carefully.
Many of the tools which governments have
put in place to guarantee security in the online world (passwords, PINs,
digital signatures etc), have in practice acted as barriers to take-up of
online services. And attempts to join up databases to enable cross-government
efficiencies and service improvements have often been met with mistrust and
suspicion by citizens.
Increasingly, however, a set of best
practices is emerging around the world which we believe represents a way
forward for citizen service transformation, which is broadly applicable across
a very wide range of governments.
Key aspects of this are:
Firstly, a business architecture for
identity management which is based on federation between a wide range of
trusted organisations (the Government, banks, employers etc), and a clear model
for cross-trust between these organisations.
Secondly, a technology architecture to
support this which does not rely on monolithic and potentially vulnerable large
databases, but which, in line with the SOA paradigm, uses Internet-based
gateway services to act as a broker between the different databases and IT
systems of participants in the federated trust model.
Thirdly - and perhaps most importantly - a
citizen service model for identity management which places citizens themselves
directly in control of their own data, able to manage their own relationship
with government – whether on their own behalf as citizens or in another
identity relationship or intermediated role – and with clearly visible controls
to reassure them that this is the case. This citizen-centric approach to
identity management is illustrated in the figure below.
Figure 20: Overview of Citizen-Centric Identity Model
No one‑Government has implemented all
features of this approach, but all are being successfully deployed around the
world, and together they represent our view of the approach to identity
management which will best help deliver Transformational Government.
We argued in Part I of the TGF that a
defining feature of Transformational Government programs is that they focus on
the "citizen" not the "customer" - that is, they seek to
engage with citizens and businesses as owners of and participants in the
creation of public services, not as passive recipients of services.
What does this mean in practice?
Citizen empowerment involves a set of
changes which are much more fundamental than the online consultations and
"e-participation" initiatives which characterised the first wave of e‑Government
programmes. It is also more fundamental than the application of the latest
generation of technologies to government - although such technologies do have a
role to play.
The key shift is to think of service
delivery not as something which is done by government to citizens and
businesses but as something in which they are active co-creators of services -
or even where public services are delivered directly citizen-to-citizen with no
or minimal government involvement. Innovators in government who are making that
shift are starting to develop a wide range of new ways to create public value
and enhance services, as illustrated:
Figure 21: Overview of Citizen Empowerment Framework
This figure also highlights two important enablers
of this innovation, which we believe are important to address as part of a
Transformational Government program:
•
Action on the supply side within government, to
help create a culture of open innovation within the public sector. Such a
culture change - which reflects an increasing trend in the private sector to
see external ideas and collaborations as being the key to successful innovation
- is particularly challenging in the public sector given the strong tradition
of internal control over decision-making and policy development. So pro-active
change management is essential.
•
Action to enable demand-side pull by citizens
and third party organisations outside‑Government. Particularly important
here is the principle that all non-personal data held by government should be
open, public, easily reusable, and available at marginal cost - which for
digital information means free. By opening up government data, content and
services for reuse and repurposing by others, government can enable a level of
service innovation and market reach that it could not hope to achieve on its
own. Most governments also find that simply making data and content available
in theory is not sufficient: in practice they also need to facilitate market-based
public service delivery by:
-
building a business model of rules and
processes which enable a level-playing field for new market entrants (see the
“Wholesale Intermediary Market” component of Part III (b))
-
establishing a service-oriented technology architecture
based around open standards and technologies which makes it easier in practical
terms for third parties to re-purpose and repackage‑Government content
(see Part III (d)).
The TGF Channel Management
Framework is in two main sections:
•
Context
•
Overview of key components in the TGF Channel
Management Framework
Detailed
description of and guidance on the key components
Channel management is
often a weak spot in government service delivery, with widespread duplication,
inefficiency and lack of user-focus. Experience has shown the common pitfalls
to include:
·
Managing new, digital channels as
"bolt-ons", with business and technical architectures which are
entirely separate from traditional face-to-face or paper-based channels
·
No common view of citizen service across
multiple channels
·
Operational practices, unit costs and service
standards for many channels which fall well below standards set for those
channels in the private sector
·
A reliance on government-owned channels, with
insufficient understanding of how to partner with private and voluntary sector
organisations who have existing trusted channels to government customers
·
Unproductive and costly competition among
service delivery channels
Transformational Government programs seek
to avoid these pitfalls, by building a channel management approach centred
around the needs and behaviour of citizens and businesses.
The two key elements of
the approach recommended in the Transformational Government Framework are:
·
Channel Mapping: a clear audit of what existing channels are currently used to
deliver government services. The TGF Channel Mapping approach includes an
analysis of these channels across two key dimensions: which delivery channels
are being used (‘channel mix’) and who owns them (‘channel ownership’).
·
Channel Transformation Strategy: the TGF helps build a new channel management approach centred
around the needs and behaviour of citizens and businesses. The key components
of such an approach include:
-
Channel Optimization
-
Channel Shift
-
Cross-Channel Management
-
Development of a “mixed economy” in service
provision through private and voluntary sector intermediaries.
A high level view of the logical
relationships between these components is illustrated below.
Figure 22: Overview of Channel Management Framework
A vital first step in developing a
citizen-centric channel management strategy is to carry out a mapping of
existing delivery channels across government, and to put a cost to each
transaction delivered through these channels based on standard industry
assumptions. This will highlight duplication across government (for example,
having multiple high-street locations in the same town serving different
government departments or agencies), and the savings that can be achieved by
joining government services together and using the most efficient delivery
channel in each case.
A common finding in channel audits of this
type is that much customer contact between governments and citizens is
unnecessary, hidden and uncosted. For example, many governments have literally
thousands of public service telephone contact numbers.
Much of the contact that results between citizen or
business users and the Government is therefore:
·
unnecessary - because the user is struggling to
find the right place to get the service they need, resulting in multiple
contacts before their need is finally resolved
·
hidden and uncosted - because only some of
these customer contacts are caught by existing management information systems.
The rest are just lost within the broader operational structure and budget of
government.
A clear map of customer interactions by
channel, and the true costs of these, therefore provides essential data in
building the business case for service transformation.
In undertaking this mapping, we recommend that a
holistic approach is taken to understanding the range of channels through which
government services are and could be delivered. Government services can be
delivered through a wide range of different channels. It can be helpful to
think of that range as varying across two key dimensions, as illustrated below:
·
Channel mix:
that is, the physical type of channel being used. Traditionally, channels for
government service delivery have included the face-to-face channel (through
high-street and other locations), traditional mail and the traditional
telephone. More recently, interactive voice recognition (IVR) and the Internet
have become important channels. A key distinction is the extent to which the
channel is based around self-service by the citizen, or requires some form of
intermediation - either in person (e.g. the citizen visiting a government office
or an official visiting the citizens in the community) or remotely (e.g. by
telephone or email).
·
Channel ownership: it is important to understand, too, the variety of "channel
ownership" options which are available. Traditionally, channels for
government services have been branded as belonging to a specific government
agency. Increasingly, governments looking to develop a citizen-centric approach
have also started to badge these on a government-wide basis: either covering a
single channel (such as a national government portal), or multiple channels
(such as Service Canada, which spans walk-in offices, contact centres, and the
web).
Figure 23: Overview
of Channel Mapping
Once a full Channel
Mapping has captured the current channel mix and cost base, it is important to
map out a strategy for the future desired channel mix, and the future customer
experience over different channels.
The key elements of
this Channel Transformation Strategy are discussed below.
Successful
private-sector businesses are more effective at this than government. They
understand that each channel opens up different ways to create value for
customers, so they differentiate services across channels. They also take a
hard-nosed approach to channel management, with customers being incentivised to
use the channels that are most efficient from a business point of view. And
they realise that channel shift is a complicated process, which needs planning
over a multi-year period.
Transformational Government programs adopt a
similar approach, setting out clear strategies for channel shift7.
Typically though they recognise two distinct differences between the public and
private sector:
·
First, government has an obligation to provide
services on a universal basis, so is not able to pick and choose which
customers it will engage with through different channels. "Directed
choice" towards cheaper channels is therefore the strategy selected for
most citizen-facing services (although a number of governments are increasingly
looking to make Internet-only services the norm for businesses).
·
Second, in terms of the online channel,
government is in a unique position compared with any other online service
provider. Whereas an online bank or retailer is limited by the size of the
online population in the market, a government can take action significantly to
increase that online population. "Digital inclusion" policies, aimed
at increasing the proportion of citizens who have access to and confidence in
using online channels, are therefore an important part of government channel
strategies which would not normally be seen in their private-sector
counterparts.
As well as seeking to
shift future service delivery to an optimal channel mix, Transformational
Government programs seek to optimise the performance of each individual
channel. In the UK for example, a government-wide review of customer contact found that contact centre
performance lagged significantly behind private sector benchmarks, and that on average
operational savings of 25% could be achieved in public centre contact centres
over a 3 year period by adopting best practices.
However, it is vital not to think about channel
optimisation solely on a channel-by-channel basis. There are two imperatives
for taking a cross-channel approach to service delivery:
·
First, to improve service to citizens. Citizens
do not want simply want services to be available through a choice of channels.
Rather they want services to be delivered in an integrated way across channels.
Transformational Government programs therefore focus on achieving an integrated
view of customer interactions across all channels.
·
Second, to reduce costs. A shared service
approach to channel management can deliver significant efficiency savings. By
building channel support services around a common, web-based infrastructure,
governments can both reduce costs while also facilitating joined-up services.
Finally, it is essential to recognise that
a citizen-centric approach involves delivering services where citizens want to
receive them - and this may often mean that it is important to deliver services
through private or voluntary sector intermediaries.
This is particularly important as services
become digitised, potentially reducing the marginal costs of delivery to near
zero and hence making it easier for third party organisations to bundle public
sector services with their own service offerings. This can be challenging for
governments, however, since for the first time it means that they are
"competing" for customers with other organisations. Establishing
clear ground rules for how this sort of mixed economy of service provision
should work, on a basis that will encourage private and voluntary sector
organisations to become actively involved, is therefore an important task for
government in creating the policy framework for Transformational Government and
SHOULD be addressed using the Franchise Marketplace Model outlined above.
The TGF Technology
Management Framework is in three main sections:
·
Context
·
Overview of key components in the TGF Technology
Management Framework
·
Detailed description of and guidance on the key
components
The transformations to business, customer
and channel management described above require a new approach to technology and
in particular a commitment to the paradigm and principles of Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) and SOA-based infrastructure, as defined in the OASIS
‘Reference Model for Service-Oriented Architecture [SOA-RM].
Transformational Government demands a
single view of the citizen or business, delivered inside an integrated business
and channels architecture. In terms of ICT, all of this requires governments to
learn from private-sector best practice. Industry is moving towards a model of
company-wide, service-orientated enterprise architecture, where common building
blocks using open standards can be re-used to enable flexible and adaptive use
of technology to react quickly to changing customer needs and demands.
Increasingly, companies are gaining even greater efficiency benefits by
managing these building blocks as a service, provided not only from within their
own ICT architecture but also from within "the Cloud" - the
dynamically-scalable set of private and public computing resources now being
offered as a service over the Internet.
Governments are increasingly taking this
'building block' approach to technology development. Key building blocks such
as ICT infrastructure, common data sets, and identity verification need to be
co-ordinated effectively. While much can be learned from the private sector,
simply importing industry practices will not solve this coordination problem
within government.
Governments are taking different approaches
to the co-ordination function: some build central infrastructure for use by all
departments and agencies; others identify lead departments to build and
implement common solutions; others have a more decentralised approach, allowing
departments to develop their own solutions according to a common architecture
and standard set. However, finding an effective approach which works within a
specific government is vital, since without this sort of technology
flexibility, then Transformational Government becomes impossible - or possible
only at great expense and with significant wasteful and duplicated ICT
expenditure.
The Technology Management Framework is
modelled as one of the four TGF delivery processes, but it is concerned with
more than “just” the delivery of services using ICT. Its focus on the SOA
paradigm is key to an approach that puts citizens and businesses as customers
at the centre of a service ecosystem with many stakeholders, roles and systems
involved.
The three key elements of
the approach recommended in the Transformational Government Framework are:
·
Resources Management which underpins ecosystem
governance
·
Ecosystem Participation
·
Realisation and governance of SOA-based ICT
systems
A high level view of the logical
relationships between these components is illustrated below.
Figure 24: Overview of Technology Management Framework
This entails the explicit identification
and management of resources as valued assets, whether information resources
(data sets, documents, models, processes, etc.) and technology ‘soft products’
(systems, applications and services.
Best practice technology management requires a clear model and
understanding of the stakeholders, actors and systems that comprise the overall
service ecosystem and their relationships to each other. The model must be
maintained and updated as stakeholders change over time and over the course of
any development effort thus ensuring that requirements are continually
evaluated and revised.
Citizens and businesses, as potential
customers, must be understood as stakeholders in the ecosystem with ‘needs’
(often imprecisely formulated) that they seek to satisfy through use of a
service; but citizens and businesspeople are also human actors interacting with
pieces of technology in precisely-defined interactions. These system-focussed
interactions are a result of accurately modelling the processes required of
both system and user in order to deliver a particular service capability
conforming to explicit ‘requirements’. Requirements in turn are revised and
updated to reflect changes in stakeholder composition and concerns.
Stakeholders are clearly distinguished and
modelled – including the fact that they play different roles in different
contexts (and which therefore has implications for role-based authentication).
Stakeholder composition is also a good predictor of project risk – understand
and modelling stakeholder types helps identify and mitigate risk. Stakeholder
modelling underlines that every participant in an ICT development project is
implicitly an intermediary representing diverse stakeholder interests in the
deployed service.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) must be
understood in its broadest sense – as a paradigm for organising and using
capabilities distributed and managed across different ownership domains. In
this sense, SOA is technology and platform agnostic and thus provides an
appropriate foundation for the technology management framework.
Disparate systems are weaved together as
part of a coherent ecosystem while specific ‘services’, broken down into
functional components, are identifiable as distinct from the underlying
technologies that deliver them. This encourages ecosystem agility, allowing
services to be mixed and matched, composed and re-used – it remains agile and
flexible without being brittle, as with many systems where service
functionality is tailored and tightly-coupled to addressing a specific problem.
Ownership and governance – of information resources as well as ICT products –
is federated across ownership boundaries and explicit service descriptions and
contracts ensure that everyone knows the ‘rules of engagement and use’ when
using any service.
Key concerns of such an approach include:
-
SOA technical architecture and component
service (“building block”) realisation and re-use;
-
Service policies;
-
Identity Management;
-
Cloud Computing (Service and Infrastructure
Virtualisation);
-
Interaction Design, based on end-user needs
The following individuals have participated
in the creation of this specification and are gratefully acknowledged:
Participants:
Hans Aanesen, Individual Member
Oliver Bell, Microsoft
Corporation
John Borras, Individual Member
Peter F Brown, Individual
Member
Bill Edwards, CS Transform Ltd
Chet Ensign, Individual Member
Nig Greenaway, Fujitsu Ltd
Ted Haas, GS1
Andy Hopkirk, Individual
Member
Gershon Janssen, Individual
Member
Arnaud Martens, Belgian SPF
Finances
Steve Mutkoski, Microsoft
Corporation
Monica Palmirani, University
of Bologna
Chris Parker, CS Transform Ltd
John Ross, Individual Member
Pothiraj Selvaraj, GCE
Trond Arne Undheim, Oracle
Corporation
Colin Wallis, New Zealand
Government
David Webber, Oracle
Corporation
Joe Wheeler, MTG Management
Consultants, LLC
Takao Yamasaki, Nomura Research
Institute
17-03-2011: (compared to Working Draft 02)
Finalised remaining edits agreed by TC at adoption; Update of ToC; Numbering of
Figures
