Glyn Evans looks at what "Transforming Government" should mean
Transformation seems to be something of a slippery concept. Is it about services joined up around citizens’ needs? Is it about delivering increased efficiency? Or is the focus on shared services? Depending on who is asked, the answer could be “yes” to any or all of these, and there are a host of other initiatives to which the transformational label can be attached.
Of course they are not mutually exclusive and it is reasonable to ask whether having such a wide range of developments branded as transformational should be a concern. I think it should, for several reasons. First, there is the issuing of managing customer expectations. For most people, “transformation” implies change that is both radical and visible. Much of what we are doing under the transformational government umbrella is certainly not visible and is debateable whether it is particularly radical. For example, the development of back-office shared services (finance, HR, etc.) may improve efficiency, but it is unlikely that the citizen will notice any change whatsoever. Indeed, apart from those directly affected even the people who work for the organisations that are sharing back offices are unlikely to notice the change. More radical approaches do exist – several local authorities are looking into partnerships which envisage a full merger of functions below the political level, for example – but most shared service developments are simply mergers of a few functions that are justified by economies of scale. Are these really transformational?
The second issue is that initiatives which focus on incremental improvements are now being branded as transformational. The problem here is that local government has generally been very good at incremental change; a positive outcome of the plethora of performance indicators is that they have demonstrated steady improvement. Unfortunately, this has not been matched by a corresponding increase in the satisfaction levels of those who use our services, which remain stuck in the 50-60% range, more or less where they were ten years ago. If transformation is simply more of the same, the evidence suggests that it will not be worth the effort.
A third issue is that I detect an increasing tendency to focus transformational activity on technological developments, for example, increasing the take-up of web channels. Leaving aside why this should necessarily be seen as a “good thing”, we risk failing to learn the lessons of the e-government programme. One of the objectives of e-government – one which was stressed in the policy papers – was transformation. Much of what was done appears to have believed that the e-government investments would automatically result in transformation. Though I would not decry the benefits of those investments – the technical infrastructure of government is now far more robust – it is also clear that transformation is not that easy.
So, what should we mean when we talk of transformation? There are three things I would like to see included. First, transformational change should be something that sits alongside continuous improvement; it does not replace it nor, worse, is it the same thing. It should be seen as making more radical changes in service delivery and/or efficiency than can be delivered by day-to-day management good practice, changes that are obvious to both service providers and users.
Second, we should move away from seeing transformational government as an objective in its own right. Transformation should be concerned with achieving organisational objectives. By definition therefore, and particularly true of local government, there is not one size to fit all. What is important for my authority is determined by local context, history and political priorities and it is on these that we should focus our transformational activity. Our neighbouring authorities may quite legitimately have different requirements. In other words, transformation should be the “how” of change, not the “what”.
Third, we need greater understanding that transformation has to be concerned as much with people and process as it is with technology, and that if we are to gain the greatest benefit we must minimise the number of organisational “sacred cows”. Transformation will – indeed, perhaps should – challenge professional silos and traditional organisational structures, for example. It will be difficult but essential to work through these issues, to face the challenges, if the benefits that transformation is capable of realising are to be delivered.
I believe that we are only just scratching the surface of transformational change in government. Over the next decade or two we will see new models of service delivery emerge that will be fundamentally different than those that exist now. Whilst no doubt it will be bumpy on occasions, this is a journey in which it is tremendously exciting to be participating.
