Innovating government: Breaking the spiral of mediocrity
Don Blersch
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As many know, the government sector is traditionally slower and often culturally resistant to embrace cutting-edge technologies, challenge long held bureaucratic assumptions, and outright hesitant to adopt new methods of doing business, even when faced with existential threats in their ability to deliver the products, support, and services core to their public service mission. As we look to the future, government leaders must break this long-standing spiral of mediocrity plaguing their organizations and actively defy these traditional norms to instead prioritize innovation, acknowledging the critical role it plays in the long term success and prosperity of the nation. Anyone who has worked in government organizations will know the barriers to change - insufficient funding, public scrutiny, complex and drawn out contract processes, lack of IT capacity/modernization, lack of compatibility between legacy and new IT systems, and fragmented and stovepiped approaches across and within agencies - but these needn’t stifle innovation. Innovation is possible, and can come from within through incremental yet impactful changes. By streamlining and reforming existing processes, promoting a culture of employee and team creativity, and development focused on rewarding improved outcomes, adopting agile methodologies, and enhancing internal communication and process improvement feedback loops, agency leaders can in fact set themselves up for success as they continue to serve, protect, and defend the needs of the nation and its citizenry.
By reimagining legacy approaches – and the bureaucracy that surrounds them – government organizations can better position themselves for change, future challenges, and remain relevant to the needs of the nation. Only in this way can we hope to strengthen and provision our public servants with the latest methodologies, best practices, technologies, and integrated systems for them to be successful in facing the risks of today and to be prepared to successfully execute core mission responsibilities well into the future.
That said, while many legacy solutions may not have the capacity, scale, or speed to handle the workloads and requirements of today’s world, simply ripping and replacing them doesn’t solve the problem either. Instead, as we move towards a truly digital-first economy, our government services must become more agile, data-driven, and backed by strategic thinking that reimagines old ways of accomplishing tasks to make better use of today’s art of the possible.
A case in point (Passport Adjudication): A real life example of where this line of thinking could be tremendously helpful is with the processing of passport applications for Americans traveling overseas. Assuming that there was a point in the past where the State Department had enough resources and technology to handle the load, the challenge of late is how best to adapt to an ever increasing processing workload. And the classic institutional response to this particular challenge has been a large infusion of money (from Congress) for the primary purpose of dramatically increasing staffing levels within the passport adjudication ecosystem in a brute force approach to driving down processing latency. Unfortunately, simply increasing the number of employees working these cases does not scale particularly well, nor does continued reliance on antiquated process flows and outmoded technology to handle the substantial increased demand from the public.
Although the State Department has set out to hire and train thousands of additional people to adjudicate passports, this is at best a short-term solution that will have only a marginal impact because it doesn’t get to the root of the issue, which is an ever-increasing workload coupled with the public's growing frustration with respect to timeliness and the opaque nature of where one’s passport application stands in the processing flow. And while a complete technological overhaul may not be necessary - or feasible - a process overhaul is, and by reexamining existing processes and integrating changes throughout the organization, associated workflows, and consideration of targeted technology insertions, agency leaders can better position passport services for success from the very outset. In tandem, by injecting automation strategically into key parts of the process flow to minimize repetitive manual processing steps, reducing and seeking to eliminate non-value added duplication of effort, the introduction of smart forms (as one example), and spiral development of modern case management tracking technology, would help expedite the processing of passport applications, as well as allow for greater transparency and a more seamless applicant experience.
As it currently stands, and according to the Government Accountability Office, 80% of the government’s $100 billion in annual IT spending goes to operating and maintaining existing systems. Modernization and implementing technological advancements could help agencies realize significant cost reductions as they’re able to sunset legacy systems that no longer suit the mission-critical goals of our nation. But that will be a bandaid on the larger issue if agencies are not able to streamline their operations and shift their focus to upskilling or reskilling government employees, equipping them with the tools and skills to work smarter with this next generation of technology. The increase in rates of productivity and efficiency will allow personnel to invest their time where warranted, allow for on-the-job training and development, and foster a continued culture of innovation.
At the highest level though, this modernization and technological upkeep is critical for our country’s ability to maintain our superiority on a global stage, enhance our global influence, and at its core, better support the American public.
Before launching a specific innovation campaign and bringing in new technology, it’s imperative to fundamentally understand the current workflow process at issue and what can be improved. Innovation and change making efforts will fail if agencies don’t bear in mind the longer-term implications of not understanding in detail their existing processes to identify and eliminate outmoded, redundant, and non-value added steps embedded within their current business processes. Many of these aspects exist simply due to the passage of time, or as a result of incremental layering of additional process steps that were situationally expedient, but never assessed as to their overall system level impact. At the end of the day, we can’t simply apply new technology to an antiquated way of doing business and expect revolutionary results or dramatic improvements in mission execution. Beyond masking broken processes or outdated systems, we need to address the issues at their root and update how we accomplish the tasks at issue in order to tackle the issues of tomorrow and reimagine new ways of delivering services that are free of past technology or data processing constraints.
In tandem, continued investment in innovation through trusted public-private partnerships will be key in ensuring this process and technological shift is a success. As we continue to move towards modernization, governments must remain committed to addressing the threat of legacy IT systems, siloed operations, and a lack of skilled talent. This will not be possible without the commitment and support of the private sector and the cutting-edge technology they have at the ready. All of this will foster new ideas, new ways of working, and ultimately, prepare our country for a stronger tomorrow.
This article is the first in a series about innovation in government agencies, drawing on real examples from my lived experience of transformative change management.
