From all stitched-up to seamless – How public service needs to reinvent itself

Richard Pope, in his latest book Platformland An anatomy of next-generation public services, explains the anatomy of the next-generation public services. Pope writes about the relationship between citizen and state as a bidirectional relationship, how they are co-producers of real-world outcomes.

To co-produce, they need to communicate; digitalization has changed this relationship, its management of time, space and dynamics. What used to take a long time is now practically instantaneous (Uber, Amazon, etc.), both in service delivery and payment.

For employees, from private or public sectors, there is often a clash between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ digital way. To provide you with some insight into this clash, we will take you through project, programme (also spelt program) and portfolio management and bring you back to Platformland.

What you need to know

Source: We are using the UK government’s standards glossary for the definition of the following terms and as a point of reference.

Project

A project is a unique temporary management environment, undertaken in stages, created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products or outcomes.

Programme

A programme is a unique, temporary, flexible organisation created to co-ordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of projects and other related work components to deliver outcomes and benefits related to a set of strategic objectives.

Portfolio

A portfolio comprises part, or all, of an organisation’s investment required to achieve its objectives. Governed through its portfolio (or business) plan, a portfolio comprises work components, such as other portfolios, programmes, projects, other related work and work packages.

So, imagine a Sven diagram: The projects would be in the middle, then the programmes, and the portfolio on the external periphery of the cycle... This provides us with the full cycle of ‘portfolio management’.

Portfolio management

Is ‘a co-ordinated collection of strategic practices and decisions that together enable the most effective balance of organisational change and business as usual.’ (ibid)

Portfolio strategy

Is ‘a collection of top-level strategic information that provides total clarity to all stakeholders regarding the content and long-term objectives of the portfolio.’ (ibid)

This is where it gets confusing from a stakeholder engagement perspective (but we will clarify it for you before confusing you again…), as:

Portfolio delivery

Is ‘collectively, portfolio, programme and project management are referred to in government as ‘project delivery’.

Governance

‘Governance defines relationships and the distribution of rights and responsibilities among those who work with and in the organisation. It determines the rules and procedures through which the organisation’s objectives are set and provides the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance.’ (ibid)

So, one could wonder how a full governance cycle could be within this environment. Well… through a…

Governance and management framework

Is ‘a governance and management framework (which) sets out the authority limits, decision making roles and rules, degrees of autonomy, assurance needs, reporting structure, accountabilities and roles, and the appropriate management practices and associated documentation needed to meet this standard.’ (ibid)

Confused yet?

That is quite understandable because we have you thinking the public service structures currently in place can meet the challenges. Whereas it can’t.

It only leads to confusing relationships amongst governance members, external stakeholders and employees. All these span between programmes, projects and portfolios. Not to mention the conflicting objectives, mandates, policies, visions, benefits or outcomes that drive engagement messaging going out to stakeholders. Or value and benefits…

Meanwhile, new (not so new) approaches such as Agile help lessen the confusion with users, it only put more pressure on policy makers who get caught between what design-thinking teams develop as pilots and the traditional internal/external existing policies.

However, do not fret!

Richard Pope’s Platformland An anatomy of next-generation public services explains.

Acclaimed by the industry as the ‘missing piece’ in digital transformation in the public service, this book provides solutions on how to move forward in the public service. We will not bring forward the nuts and bolts of the implementation (and let you buy the book for that) but restrict ourselves to what is related to our story.

As Pope quotes, ‘Conway’s law says that any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communications structure.’ (ibid p. 53) If public service communications reflect its system structure, it is evident that there is a structural problem, and that society is at odds with its processes.

To be able to engage with its stakeholders, which includes governance at all portfolio management levels, business process owners, policy makers and implementers… and users the message needs to be on point. To facilitate the communications, the structure needs to reflect the need of users.

‘In digital services, the complexities of time, location and organizational boundaries become materials to be designed with – things that can be dialled up or dialled down in service of the needs of users.’ (ibid p. 35) And communication, designed along with the users and users in mind will make better sense for all.

‘A new design philosophy for the public sector needs to be forged, and with it a new design coalition that includes legal and policy professionals. Digitizing public service in the absence of those things points us towards a future that is, frankly, not very democratic.’ (ibid p. 185) ‘…get this stuff right and public service can work much harder for users while also allowing users to be effective co-producers of those public services… putting transparency at the point of use (…) can get better for everyone.’ (ibid p. 185)

As Richard Pope says: we should be designing the seams, not do seamless design. It is an enticement to find out more which we leave to the experts, whose prose you will find in SelFou.digital.

Enjoy, as always,

Your SelFou Team