We see a lot of traction for digital delivery in Government agencies. This document aims to explain how a typical Government works, what is driving it towards an aggressive digital strategy, and looks at some important guidelines to set up customer centric Digital Delivery Centers.
A democratic Government operates within the framework of the Federal law and constitution. The Government operates through its key functions such as legislative, executive and judicial. These functions are empowered to exercise their powers based on specific bills passed by the legislature.
The Government functions through various agencies such as Department of Finance, Department of Human Services, Department of Education and Training, Department of Defence, Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Department of Industry & Science, Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Department of Social Services, Department of Environment etc.
In a well administered Government, all the mentioned agencies report their program and their outcomes providing the bridge between the Government policies, schemes and their actual outcomes. Federal reforms are being introduced with the specific aim of making it more efficient, accountable, responsive and transparent, with reduced TCO. Data is captured and analyzed, benchmarked against similar Government agencies globally. Public opinion and feedback regarding the services rendered is recorded to embody principles of a responsive and good governance.
Government agencies are aggressively moving towards a Digital agenda to improve citizen services. These digital technologies empower federal agencies to work more effectively and efficiently. Government agencies are adopting digital technologies into their core processes to achieve reliable and responsive citizen services.
Global trends in the Government agencies are available and showcase the disruption caused by digital technologies to the way public services are being delivered. The central focus of such a digital transformation is to provide value and deliver citizen centric services. To succeed in this endeavor, the Digital Delivery Centers (DDC) need to develop an atmosphere and culture, that is collaborative and focused on continuous improvement across the value chain. To operate such a DDC successfully, an organization needs to understand and follow certain fundamental guidelines outlined below:
- Create Value: A Digital Delivery Center must exist to provide citizen centric services focused on creating value. For eg.
the DDC is not required to change a hand written board to a digital board. Instead, digitalization has to be designed based on real needs of citizens. - Simplify: All non-performing and cumbersome activities should be eliminated or minimized. The philosophy of developing a SAP Fiori App needs to be adopted here. The inputs required from the citizen utilizing the service should be limited to the minimum possible. This calls for insights into the citizen needs and the intended purpose of the service which feed the design of the delivery process.
- Adopt to changing needs: Citizen needs keep evolving and a mechanism to ascertain citizen feedback and enhance the service needs to be in place. An active communication channel between citizens and government agencies give scope for the Government to change its policies to deliver customer focused services. It is imperative to delivery such value fast and as an ongoing process.
- Start small: Agencies need not look for a well-oiled and full-fledged DDC operation to start. Instead, they can focus to start with a basic service and add more features subsequently.
- Leverage automation: Creating automated tools and reuse artifacts to accelerate development, automate testing, will go a long way to reduce the SDLC cycle and deploy faster enhancements. This way the DDC increases the number of releases to citizens, each release delivering additional value.
- A passionate team to drive change: Selecting the right team who are self-driven and can conceptualize across SAP technology and domain is critical. The skills required, team size and roles would vary according to the scope of individual projects. A core team on shared services mode needs to be formed across such projects, and dedicated consultants with niche skills can be on boarded for specific projects. This might result in diverse people
with different skills, working from multiple locations on the same project. Developing such a cohesive team, up skilling them and motivating them to deliver will be a key DDC component. - Consistent citizen experience across services: This requires change to be driven throughout the agency and not limited to a few services / processes. To achieve this, all the services on the critical digital path need to be identified, business case has to be created and prioritized in line with available budgets. The approved critical services have to be put on the digital roadmap.
Above key guidelines for an effective Digital Delivery Center demands highly flexible practices and approaches, to meet each Department requirements. This is not a comprehensive list of guidelines but has to be understood as evolving. Working on similar lines, the guidelines that would work throughout the life cycle of a DDC for a specific agency must be identified and put in place for implementing a digital agenda effectively.
