Modernizing government

The global pandemic’s disruptive impact has catapulted governments everywhere into a new world marked by bold – and remarkably fast – advances in remote working, agile policy making and rapid service design.

The pandemic has unexpectedly revealed what’s possible and forward-looking governments are now wisely leveraging their momentum to seize a ‘golden opportunity’ for historic innovation. In our view, the future of government – agile, responsive, customer centric and more closely aligned to the needs of business – has arrived.

Governments are already pivoting their focus to include a much deeper role as ‘economic stewards’ – working in closer partnership with private industry to enhance future prosperity. Such alliances with business are among the fundamentals of a modern, agile government. 

We invite you to explore what the future holds in KPMG’s timely and comprehensive new report – Modernizing government: Global trends – and we encourage you to contact us to learn more.

In the wake of a historic global health and economic emergency — one that has demonstrated governments’ ability to act decisively and with unprecedented speed — can we expect publics to abide governments that maintain their traditional approaches to service delivery?

It appears unlikely, in the view of this report’s author and contributors. The playing field has shifted, and the high expectations of today’s digital consumer society will likely be applied increasingly to governments for smart, secure use of technology and data, trusted and personalized services, faster response times, heightened transparency and greater accountability.

The pandemic has cut across the status quo and unlocked vastly different ways of working that have been relatively successful and subject to ongoing improvements. In effect, the pandemic has precipitated a new way of “incubating” innovation at an unheard-of pace — and one that governments traditionally have been averse to pursuing.

The pandemic has thereby shown a change in governments’ risk appetite regarding its processes, delivering in the current environment digital technology implementation, real-time results tracking, smart data use and electronic prescribing — all of which have been on government to-do lists for years without substantial progress.

This dramatic change in risk appetite has of course been driven by necessity. Governments have been forced to accept a higher risk posture in the face of the pandemic’s massive impact and the need for vastly accelerated decision making and reaction times.

In many instances, government responses to the pandemic have been effective but have come at the expense of the usual rigor and diligence expected and required of governments. To support people and economies, governments have had to relax spending rules, implement changes rapidly and take shortcuts that may expose them to risk.

The risk landscape in the post-pandemic new reality will likely be one that has emerged through each phase of the crisis, for instance:

• Many of the actions taken in the initial crisis reaction phase may need to be safely wound down over time, such as support payments, or they will need to be strengthened and moved to a sustainable footing.
• Resilience measures, such as new supply chains, may need to be tested and amended to ensure alignment, and reduced risk, to government outcomes and mission.

In managing risk, leaders should ensure that the control environment accelerates, rather than forcing the business of government to slow down. Having assurance frameworks in place to accurately measure the impact of government actions and programs will also emerge to reinforce agility and enhance future responses.

We expect governments will recognize the wisdom of staying the course rather than slipping back to a traditional approach. Governments have no doubt learned that, unlike past reliance on high levels of preparedness, due process and fully baked programs deemed optimal for delivery, the future will likely be more about heightened responsiveness that leverages the power and reliability of digital technology, data use and self-service capabilities.

“Governments are pretty well attuned to the risk issues they face — the true challenge lies in government’s ability to execute and implement,” says Liz Forsyth, KPMG Global Head, Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare. “Government can consider risk very competently but its most-significant risk today lies in its response. Governments struggle with that. Execution and implementation represent significant challenges, particularly in a very time- constrained environment such as we’ve seen during the pandemic.”

Reshaping approaches and processes in order to accept a higher level of ambiguity concerning risk — as seen everywhere during the pandemic — is the way forward to achieving desired outcomes.

Dynamic risk approaches will ideally include real- time visibility of program implementation and transparency. Risks can be quickly identified and mitigated, and the performance of programs and services can be both sustained and demonstrated by a strong evidence base.