Powered Government

Achieve efficiency and decisiveness by deploying smart processes and resources.

01 October 2024

We see the government of tomorrow as not only connected but also efficient and decisive in fulfilling its core missions, enabling it to serve citizens, associations, and businesses in an appropriate, swift, and user-friendly manner. We call this Powered Government.

Centralization and the use of modern technologies can significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and service delivery of the government

To begin with, the government has been moving towards greater centralization and overarching organization in recent years, utilizing modern tools to streamline various support services, thereby freeing up more capacity for core services. However, equal attention has not always been given to the organization of these core tasks or services themselves, and consequently, to the way resources are utilized in their entirety.

Effective technological solutions, both for standardizing and automating processes and for ensuring secure and smooth data flow and sharing, can play a key role in accelerating the achievement of targeted results in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, both in back-office and front-office processes. Concrete application areas might look as follows:

Geert Criel

Partner, Head of Public Sector | Advisory

KPMG in Belgium

Profile | | Phone

Technology and connected data
Cloud computing
ERP technology
Digital, shared user platforms

Technology and connected data

Today, many service delivery processes remain labor-intensive, manual, and thus time-consuming and prone to errors. Technology to create workflows within “case management systems”, built on top of connected data sources, can be used to support employees and free up time for higher-value work, ultimately leading to better service delivery. Moreover, the use of AI applications will further enhance this service, making service-delivery more efficient, tailored, and proactive.

Cloud computing

An examination of the current landscape of applications and systems within the government reveals significant potential for improvement and rationalization. Years of building upon and extending systems have led to performance and integration issues, difficulties in scaling up, and an inadequate response to the changing and increasing needs of users. Government agencies are increasingly relying on cloud technologies to replace their old “legacy” systems. Cloud computing offers a range of benefits for the government, including cost savings, scalability, faster access to information, and improved collaboration between departments. It is expected that these benefits will only grow in the future, with the addition of increasingly advanced capabilities. The security and privacy of government data must remain a key focus and essential consideration.

ERP technology

Specifically concerning support services such as HR or personnel management, procurement, finance, and budgeting, significant organizational and system support improvements have been made in the past to professionalize these areas. However, ERP technology has since advanced to a level where further investments to scale up and streamline processes will generate direct and substantial benefits across policy areas, departments and agencies. The work is not yet complete, especially since old “legacy” systems will also need to be replaced in the coming years.

Digital, shared user platforms

In our complex government structure, it is not unusual to find similar tasks or services duplicated across multiple locations over the years. For example, various inspection and enforcement services are often carried out at different government levels. By developing digital, shared user platforms and connecting all users (performers) to these platforms, these services could be organized and delivered in a much more efficient manner. The widespread distribution of premiums and/or subsidies across different administrations is also not always “user-friendly” or efficient. Clustering and digitization could ensure that citizens and organizations are proactively and automatically served with the premiums or subsidies to which they are entitled.

Flexible, strategic workforce planning, accurate information, and new forms of collaboration - such as framework contracts and managed services - are crucial for effectively addressing workforce challenges within the government

Additionally, the quality of service delivery is largely determined by people, even more so in an increasingly standardized and digital context. However, the labor market is clearly changing, and having sufficiently fast and flexible access to personnel with the right skills and attitude is more challenging than ever, both for private organizations and government entities. Employees also need to continually upskill and have higher and different expectations regarding “work”, such as work-life balance, job content variation, and lifelong learning. Furthermore, there is a shift towards a gig economy with an increasing number of freelancers offering specific expertise to organizations temporarily, including government, instead of opting for a “permanent” job. To address these staffing challenges, insight into future personnel needs is essential, followed by direct and efficient access to the internal and external labor market, as we elaborate further:

Strategic workforce planning is a crucial skill that governments will need to develop or enhance. This is the only way they will be able to maintain an accurate view of their current skills and capacity and gain insight into future (quantitative and qualitative) needs, allowing them to respond quickly and appropriately to attract the right profiles and/or develop skills in time.

Successfully addressing these needs requires accurate information about requirements, as well as transparency and trust from all actors within the ecosystem to share that information. Only then can efforts be scaled sufficiently so that the internal labor market is opened up and all entities have access to available expertise. This results in greater employee mobility, smoother profile exchanges, and increased organizational agility in acquiring the right skills.

In addition to the engagement and mobility of internal staff, governments are increasingly relying on external labor to temporarily hire capacity or obtain specialized advice for specific projects or services. These two traditional methods of collaborating with external parties are increasingly being supplemented with “new” or hybrid forms of collaboration to attract and utilize specific expertise more structurally:

Multi-year framework contracts, government-wide or otherwise, for one or more well-defined profiles, allow government organizations to flexibly utilize the expertise and services of external personnel over the long term with guaranteed quality.

Managed Services: Another example is “managed services”, which involve agreements where services with result-oriented commitments are provided over the long term, a form of “outsourcing” that places operational tasks in the hands of specialized external organizations. This is also a cost-efficient way to free up capacity for the core missions of governments.

A government that aims to organize itself optimally should examine the different building blocks of the organization—people, processes, and systems—and make intelligent use of available internal and external technological and human resources to fulfill its core missions efficiently and effectively.

Towards a "Connected, Powered, and Trusted" government

The government of tomorrow: integrated, efficient, and trustworthy

Download PDF (1.3 MB) ⤓

Return to top

References

Organization-wide transformation of PersoPoint

Started by vetting the operation in collaboration with customers. After identifying bottlenecks and optimization opportunities in terms of service model and customer orientation, architecture, organizational structure, governance and financing model, a multi-year realization plan was successfully implemented.

Process management

Provision of services to support the identification and registration process of mixed migration flows in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo* and Serbia to facilitate the transition to the use of EURODAC after the beneficiaries' accession to the EU.

Supporting the Walloon Region in optimizing its human resources

Support to various Walloon public institutions in optimizing their personnel deployment through an integrated analysis in function of administrative and regulatory simplification, digitalization, sustainable development, management of activities and control, as well as organization and human resource management.

Status of HR processes and tools within the regional public institutions

Conducting an inventory and maturity analysis of current HR practices, processes and tools, with the goal of identifying more efficient and modernized processes and evaluating economies of scale and opportunities for collaboration to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the regional public service.

Energy grants

Support in providing energy premiums to companies located in the region in terms of process management, optimization of IT processes, support for communication, and implementation of a PowerBi dashboard.

PCS framework contract

Support to administrations in their optimization and transformation projects throughout the deployment of experienced profiles in project or program management, business and functional analysts, and Agile team coaches.

Streamlining enforcement

The development of a common and supported vision across the Welfare and Public Health policy area regarding the future enforcement policy in terms of sanctioning institutions, intermediaries, and individuals.

PCS framework contract

Support of internal change programs in the field of change management for junior/medior/senior profiles.

Return to top

Powered Enterprise

KPMG Powered Enterprise is KPMG’s suite of services to transform your back-office functions. We bring future proof target operating models using KPMG best practices, processes and pre-configured SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms, along with advanced technology assets, for optimized processes, governance, KPIs (key performance indicators), people skills and data.