Building a successful transformation program

Today’s government and public sector organizations have a rapidly evolving customer service relationship with the populations they serve. Canadians are used to finding and accessing information and services easily and conveniently through digital channels. When digital interactions don’t meet expectations or become obstacles to program access, service delivery innovation and other stakeholder objectives are not met.

Many public sector leaders are already prioritizing digitization to build better outcomes for customers, public service employees, and stakeholders. At the same time, the way digital transformation solutions are implemented is crucial to their success. Governments at all levels need to develop their capacity and ensure they have strong leadership over tech-enabled initiatives.

Maintaining alignment between program sponsorship and executive leadership can be challenging in public sector organizations, but it’s the first in a set of basic prerequisites for transformation success. In the course of any transformation program, difficult business and technology questions will arise, circumstances will change, and team members may circle in and out.

Priorities may clash as technology solutions necessitate changes to operating models or policy and invite shifts to long entrenched business processes. However, when leadership is present, visible, and committed from the beginning, all the other transformation questions become easier to navigate and produce better outcomes.

With any transformation initiative, careful planning precedes flawless execution. Organizations need to leverage the right capacities across departments in a balanced and sustainable way to ensure long-term service delivery improvements. To that end, we’ve been working directly with public and private sector organizations in Canada and around the world to seamlessly and effectively build and transform their tech-enabled capacities. Based on that direct experience and lessons learned, we’ve assembled a white paper that helps government executives start their own transformation programs off on the surest possible foot.

The full paper Building a Successful Transformation Program: Improving tech-enabled transformation outcomes for public sector organizations, itemizes the common obstacles transformation teams run into as they modernize their business transformation programs. We dig into what problems are encountered and explain how they threaten to pull at the seams of well-intended programs. This could be by envisioning a too-short term for the transformation initiative, by underestimating the technology upskilling needs of the program, by overtaxing employees with transformation duties, or by putting too much stock in third party Software-as-a-Service (Saas) software without understanding its demands and limitations.

Challenges demanding forethought and planning include:

• Data: It’s central to the success of every business transformation. Data profiling, migration, and security need strategy and sufficient time to execute properly.
• Software procurement in an age of proliferating options: Transformation leadership need to deeply understand the release model of SaaS software and bolster their due diligence, procurement processes, and governance frameworks to account for it.
• The technology skills gap: Despite competition from the private sector, it needs to be addressed and investment remains a priority.

Risk management is another area that transformation leadership should be looking to embrace more holistically. Today’s business transformations are part of a general shift from waterfall models to the hybrid Agile approach, which values experimentation and iteration. If different teams are adapting to Agile methods at different tempos, a deviation from the plan could appear as a solution to one group and a problem to another. Leadership – led by an in-house program director who deeply understands the needs of the organization – needs to build risk management communication and cultural change into the transformation game plan.

To help executive leadership teams plan ahead, we’ve devised a checklist that breaks down the steps to think about in the lead-up to a successful business transformation. Even if a program is underway, the checklist can serve a critical and urgent function, helping to navigate decisions and highlighting the backfilling, succession and upskilling arrangements that give your teams the best chance for success.

Canadian public service organizations are often fighting an uphill battle to serve their constituencies in a tight economy, with tight budgets, geopolitical uncertainty, and competition for talent with the private sector. At the same time, government organizations have a mandate to work creatively and proactively to deliver stability despite these circumstances.

Having a rock-solid game plan helps you do more faster and better as situations evolve. For more insights on building and implementing a successful tech-enabled business transformation, download the article. To start shaping a specific game plan for your organization, contact our team.