Innovation by putting purpose into practice Megatrend or Metatrend in eGovernment? Key words: Regulatory policy, policy making and policy execution, policy management, eGovernment innovation; sustainability of public services, knowledge worker productivity Author: Thei Geurts Wapenrustlaan 11-31 7321 DL Apeldoorn The Netherlands [email protected]T + 31 (0)55 - 368 14 20 M + 31 (0)6 - 11 62 40 04 Summary: Policies expressed in legislation are the basis upon which public services are built. Therefore one would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in eGovernment initiatives. However, it almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel universe of the eGovernment universe. eGovernment initiatives usually don’t make a direct connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (operations and outcome). This affects the overall ability of governments to execute policies and the sustainability of eGovernment initiatives. We conclude that innovation by putting purpose into practice is a game changing Megatrend, a trend that has already started, as research and case studies proof. The ‘alternative’ for not engaging in this trend is unacceptable long cycle times, eroded agility, affected governance and compliance, high costs which are multiplied by doing the same in multiple places, evitable administrative burdens and red tape, decreased productivity gains of rare resources, and various forms of sub-optimization. Putting purpose into practice by synthesizing policy making and policy execution yields considerable economic and social benefits, as initiatives in The Netherlands proof.
Policies expressed in legislation are the basis upon which public services are built. Therefore one would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in eGovernment initiatives. However, it almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel universe of the eGovernment universe. eGovernment initiatives usually don’t make a direct connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (operations and outcome). This affects the overall ability of governments to execute policies and the sustainability of eGovernment initiatives. We conclude that innovation by putting purpose into practice is a game changing Megatrend, a trend that has already started, as research and case studies proof. The ‘alternative’ for not engaging in this trend is unacceptable long cycle times, eroded agility, affected governance and compliance, high costs which are multiplied by doing the same in multiple places, evitable administrative burdens and red tape, decreased productivity gains of rare resources, and various forms of sub-optimization. Putting purpose into practice by synthesizing policy making and policy execution yields considerable economic and social benefits, as initiatives in The Netherlands proof.
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Innovation by putting purpose into practice
Megatrend or Metatrend in eGovernment?
Key words:
Regulatory policy, policy making and policy execution, policy management, eGovernment
innovation; sustainability of public services, knowledge worker productivity
Policies expressed in legislation are the basis upon which public services are built. Therefore one
would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in eGovernment
initiatives. However, it almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel
universe of the eGovernment universe. eGovernment initiatives usually don’t make a direct
connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (operations and outcome). This affects
the overall ability of governments to execute policies and the sustainability of eGovernment
initiatives. We conclude that innovation by putting purpose into practice is a game changing
Megatrend, a trend that has already started, as research and case studies proof. The ‘alternative’ for
not engaging in this trend is unacceptable long cycle times, eroded agility, affected governance and
compliance, high costs which are multiplied by doing the same in multiple places, evitable
administrative burdens and red tape, decreased productivity gains of rare resources, and various
forms of sub-optimization.
Putting purpose into practice by synthesizing policy making and policy execution yields considerable
economic and social benefits, as initiatives in The Netherlands proof.
Introduction Concepts like megatrend and paradigm shift are frequently used in presentations and articles.
Especially megatrends seem to be very popular1. A real Megatrend is a game changer that affects
more than one domain and initiates cultural, societal, technical, product and market change.
Ubiquitous computing or the Silver society are examples of such Megatrends. These are trends that
will last and have a severe impact on their environment. Of course do these Megatrends also have an
impact on eGovernment. It is from this perspective that we started to look for fundamental game
changers in eGovernment. In this search we focused on potential proof, looking for the presence of
early indicators of a potential Megatrend.
In this quest we were not looking for the obvious. Therefore we did not focus on trends like Citizen
Centric Government, Empowerment of knowledge workers, Open innovation and Co-creation or
Cloud and Ubiquitous computing. All these trends are basically broader societal trends with an own
exponent in the domain of eGovernment. We were also not looking for obvious statements like
“Change is the new Normal”, which is in essence a revitalization of the ancient Greek concept “Panta
rhei”2 or “Change is the new Equilibrium” (Forum, 2007). Our intention was to discover whether
there is a hidden trend, below the surface, that has a game changing impact on (e)Government.
Based upon real life cases we may have found such a trend that either can be described as
Megatrend or as Metatrend. The readers are invited to follow our quest and to comment on the
findings.
eGovernment initiatives In this article we assume that the readers are familiar to the complex, uncertain and unpredictable
world in which public administrations try to meet new societal demands with reduced budgets. We
also assume that they know at least a variety of innovative eGovernment initiatives that have been
started, or are already in operation. These are all part of the multitude of projects and initiatives, all
over Europe, dealing with various aspects of eGovernment. They address technical and
infrastructural aspects, as well as aspects of public services and citizen interaction. The drivers
behind these initiatives are broadly accepted and supported principles like transparency,
inclusiveness, efficiency and effectiveness. In fact all the elements of the Good Governance definition
of the United Nations (Unescap, 2011) can be regarded as such principles. According to this
definition governments have to be: transparent, responsive, consensus oriented, equitable and
inclusive, effective and efficient, participatory, accountable and follow the rule of law. A good
example of initiatives that are based upon such principles can be found in The European
eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 (European Commission, 2010). The action plan focuses on user
empowerment, internal market (seamless services across Europe), efficiency and effectiveness and
preconditions. The subtitle of this action plan “Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable &
innovative Government” illustrates the goals that are to be achieved and the means that are to be
used.
One could be tempted to argue that these goals equal a trend for Government to transform from an
apparently not smart, not sustainable and not innovative state to a state of quasi enlightened
1 See e.fg: http://www.epractice.eu/en/journal/volume/13
2 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panta_rhei
Government. This would not do justice to the efforts, intentions, dedication and achieved results of
government employees during the last decades. There is however at least in this subtitle the
indication of a shift from a traditional way of working towards a new, and different, way of working.
This evokes the question whether we are dealing here with an indication of a game changing trend.
Let’s take a closer look at this indication of a shift. What could this shift be then? Is it an
organizational and cultural issue? A change from splendid isolation towards open collaboration? A
change from command and control management towards empowered self organizing knowledge
workers? A change from ad hoc learning towards continuous learning? A change from inside out
thinking towards outside in thinking and from push to pull? Certainly, it cannot be denied that these
aspects are playing a major role in the transformation organizations are going through to cope with
the demands of the increased complex society. In this sense they are, like the afore mentioned
trends, general trends and not specific for eGovernment. The same argumentation can be applied to
‘technical’ changes, like the transformation from a paper based process towards a digital process or
from local client facing silo-like public services towards the plug & play composite public services
provided by a Government in the Cloud. The desire to harness IT to cope in an innovative way with
every days challenges is quite common in government and business environments. All these trends
are certainly worth closer consideration and discussion, but they are not the goal of our quest.
Remember, we are not looking for the obvious.
Back to the roots
So the question is “What is specific for Government, and are there signs of a paradigm shift?” It all
boils down towards the reason to be for Government. The essence of Government, including other
manifestations of public administration, is power and the right to impose coercion on others
(Auberon, 1978). The rules of the game vary whether it is e.g. a Representative Government or an
Autocratic Government. In a Representative Government for instance is the government exercising
public legitimated powers. Constitutional rules determine the boundaries within its power can be
exercised.
A major instrument that is used by Government is legislation. Legislation specifies not only the role
and tasks of e.g. a government agency, it is also the form in which formulated policy intentions are
expressed and formalized. Legislation is at the heart of every public administration and every public
service. It is the reason to be for governments and for the services government agencies offer. It is
therefore the major discriminator between public and private organizations. Initiatives, like one stop
services to constituents, reducing red tape, enabling cross border services, supporting evidence
based policy, e.g. by involving citizens and businesses in decision making, are all based upon policy
making and legislative process. Therefore one could state that policies expressed in legislation are
the basis upon which public services are built. Policy making defines the intention and course of
action. The formalized results of this activity are e.g. laws, regulations and procedures. These results
are input for the process of policy execution. Policy execution takes care of fine tuning political
programs and bringing about their intended effects in everyday reality (Lenk, 1998). In other words:
policy execution is about putting purpose into practice. Public services and the therefore used
instruments are vehicles to make this possible.
Figure 1 From purpose to outcome (Geurts, 2011)
The whole system is characterized by an accountability and a scrutiny process. Both processes
contain several decision points. Every actor in the chain should be accountable. Public
administrations create procedures and proof for this based upon formal rules, and interpretations
thereof. In practice it is not uncommon that there are tensions between the factual application of
procedural rules and the their ‘paper base’. The scrutiny process deals with consultation, mediation,
arbitration, evaluation and auditing of policies and legislation, its application and outcome. The
political and juridical system are major actors in this process. Opposite values and beliefs make the
scrutiny process a very sensitive process.
There is an additional challenge, since both citizens and administrations face the complication that
policies do not exist in isolation. Policies are linked to other policies, thus creating a complex
interdependent legislative system which is implemented in and enforced by a complex government.
An increasingly complex society requires increasingly complex legislation, leading to more and more
complex applications and business processes to execute these laws (Rensen et al, 2010).
So, we may conclude that creating public services, that are based upon a constellation of continuous
changing and interwoven legislation, is not an easy endeavor. Keeping such public services
sustainable is a real challenge. The pace of change of legislation for instance is completely different
from the pace of change of processes or IT-systems. The dependency of various autonomous
organizations, the lack of standardization in legislation, multilingualism and unpredictability of
change are aspects that add to the challenge.
Therefore one would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in
eGovernment initiatives and that this innovation cover the whole process from policy making, to
execution, enforcement and evaluation.
Parallel universe If we take a look at the role of legislation in eGovernment initiatives we observe something
interesting. In many initiatives it seems to be almost non-existent or at least less relevant, even if
applications are developed that aim to smoothen the use of multi domain or multinational
legislation. The same applies to initiatives that aim to increase citizen involvement in the legislative
decision making process. It is taken for granted that legislation exists, that it somehow is maintained
and updated and that policies can cause a change. The connection between legislative rules and
norms and the way they are implemented or used in an application or service remains unclear. The
same applies to the change cycle of legislation and its impact on the application or initiative and its
sustainability thereof.
It would be tempting to argument that e.g. ICT-related programs and projects are aiming to achieve
another goal and therefore can be developed independent from the policy and legislation on which
their intended services are based. This could apply if the rules were managed separate from the
applications. The rules upon which the services are based and the rules of a service itself however,
are usually coded in some form in the IT-application. Changing these rules will cause IT-changes.
There are indeed initiatives in which the existence of legislation is recognized and addressed. For
instance as object of either innovation of a specific process step, like impact analysis (e.g. smart
regulation), or it is object of some form of codification3 in order to be used in e.g. a cross border
service. Legislation is seldom the subject of an initiative, and if so, then it is mainly in the field of
harmonization or providing access to fulfill transparency demands (e.g. Public Sector Information and
eParticipation).
It almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel universe of the
eGovernment universe. At the same time are many eGovernment initiatives striving to provide
solutions for policy intentions and for the effects that are caused by a complex legal system. They do
this without looking at the root cause of the (perceived) problems and without making a direct
connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (outcome). This affects the overall ability
of governments to execute policies.
In a research study on Canadian government policy execution effectiveness (Macmillan & Cain,
2008), public sector leaders were asked to share their views on the ability of governments across
Canada to successfully execute major policy agendas based on their unique understanding of how
government works. The research indicates that there is declining confidence in the ability of
government to execute on major policy initiatives. It is clear that government policy agendas have
become exceedingly intricate with the involvement of multiple levels of government and numerous
stakeholders. Added to the mix is the fact that governments must address issues of increasing
complexity and deal with the rising costs of program failures, all the while public servants are subject
to heightened levels of accountability and scrutiny. The biggest disconnect seems to be between
those who design policy and those who execute it. According to 61% of Canadian respondents,
policies are often designed with little or no input from the people expected to implement them. As
the gap between policy design and execution widens, program failures are only set to rise, putting
even greater pressure on all levels of government.
3 Codification in this context refers to the process of forming a policy (or legal) code by normalizing and formalizing rules and
principles into a structured system.
The survey4 indicates that effective policy execution is a critical component of good government and
a major potential contributor to Canada’s overall economic prosperity and quality of life. It also
concludes that as governments across Canada and around the world try to overcome those failures,
they will need to step outside their traditional comfort zones. To close the gap between design and
execution, public sector leaders must foster greater agility to execute.
One may wonder whether there are signs of such an approach. We are looking for approaches that
enable agility within the complex public administration domain and that empower its execution
capability. Approaches that embrace the complexity of legislation in a way that it is possible to build
sustainable, interconnected, public services that adhere to the frequent, unpredictable and possible
disruptive changes of policies and legislation. The answer to the above question is, Yes. Beneath we
briefly describe three examples of innovative public administrations that migrated from a traditional
execution approach towards a process and rule driven approach.
Examples of agile rule based organizations The first example is the Dutch IND (Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst)5. As the immigration and
naturalization service of the Netherlands, the IND implements immigration policy. The agency’s 3,500
employees focus on four major processes: asylum, naturalization, managed migration and court case
representation. Immigration law gives the IND decision-making authority on whether to allow a
person into the country. To do its job, IND must navigate thousands of process rules and internal
order rules, incorporating 50 major changes to the rules annually. At the same time, national
legislation and international treaties must be followed. Aside from having to deal with the sheer
magnitude of the rules, IND was under pressure to provide better customer service, increase
decision-making efficiency and respond more rapidly to policy and legislative changes. In the past it
could take nine months to implement legislative changes (McDonald & Aron, 2011). The IND started
an ambitious innovation program, called INDIGO, to create the conditions to become an agile, rule
and process driven organization. By the INDIGO program IND is now able to shorten the legislative
change cycle, if necessary, to only one day. If required, they can release a rule change on the day
policymakers decide upon it.
This transformation was achieved by placing the rules at the heart of the system6. By separating “the
Know from the Flow”, IND was able to store the legal and procedural rules of immigration and
naturalization in one part of the solution and the activities in another part. The know includes all
rules, laws and regulations. The flow encompasses activities required to process applications,
including data entry. The know and the flow are in constant dialogue. Together they support and
enable adaptive processes and the dynamic treatment of a case. When applicant data such as age,
nationality and date of application are entered, it goes into a dialogue with the knowledge
management system, which produces a decision-making plan that outlines the activities to perform,
the business services involved and the criteria to meet. There are no exceptions any more. Every case
gets its own treatment based upon the context of the requester and the request. By making the rules
operable and re-usable it is now possible to generate information, advice and transaction services
4 The survey is conducted by Deloitte over the summer of 2008, with support from the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX), Canadian Government Executive magazine and the Schulich School of Business. 5 See: http://english.ind.nl/ 6 See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5uQTKirRSA. Simone Dobbelaar of Dutch Immigration Service discusses the INDiGO project.