Many elected and appointed officials are waking up to citizen frustration with the status quo. Citizens are demanding value and quality. These demands are driving a change in what constitutes quality, both in government and the private sector, and raising expectations for service in general.
Private-sector enterprises have redefined what constitutes value. Rather than internal efficiency, many best-in-class organizations focus on effectiveness, responsiveness, customer service, convenience, and customization (efficiency is barely even mentioned in management guru Michael Porter's books on competitive advantage). This revised focus has required these same companies to eliminate old ways of thinking, and old ways of doing business.
Most government enterprises still focus on efficiency, however. Therefore, major constructs of government will have to be reinvented, and old ways of doing business dismantled in order to respond to citizen demands.
MANDATE FOR REFORM
Technological change is a major driving force in private-sector innovation, and is becoming a source of innovation in the public sector as well. IT-enabled processes and techniques are helping companies offer better, faster, cheaper service. Part of the challenge for government is to leverage IT to offer more effective service, as private-sector companies such as WalMart and Federal Express are doing.
We live in an "instant" society, with 24-hour access to money from ATMs, overnight package delivery and one-day dry cleaning. This immediacy creates higher expectations for all services, including those from government. Though expectations are generally set by private-sector suppliers, government must meet or exceed these same expectations to remain competitive.
As a result of these changes, public officials are awakening. One indication they may be ready for action is the fact that both political parties are spewing the same rhetoric. President Clinton went so far as to pronounce "the era of big government is over" in his State of the Union speech. He was addressing the notion that government needs to be smaller and focused on the customer to be effective. Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, who is helping lead his state through its own set of changes, summed-up his views on reform in a recent presentation by concluding: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."
These citizen demands, combined with technological, economic, social and political changes, represent a convergence of forces never before seen, and thus a unique opportunity that must be seized.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Once an enterprise commits to quality, it must sustain competitive advantage to retain customers. Yet perhaps the only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than the competition, and respond to new opportunities before they do. For many private-sector companies, this is more than a slogan -- it is a way of doing business that enjoys broad support.
Government enterprises need this same focus to retain customers over time. They also need the same degree of support from executives, including governors, provincial government leaders, top county executives, mayors, members of policy-setting bodies and major department directors.
These offices and functions have traditionally abdicated responsibility for reform or reinvention, especially if it involves technology. Rather, their traditional approach has been to "let the IT folks take care of it," while they concentrated on policy matters. However, reform/reinvention is often "married" to IT, and both must be aligned with business direction. Without direct support from these key executives -- who effectively run the business -- any reform/ reinvention has little chance for success.
Unlike past trends which required "one-shot-in-time" efforts, quality reform is not a one-time phenomenon. It requires continuous improvement and effort (i.e. you have to do things again and again and again), and strong management support. Like any effort to enact change, it too can be delayed.
Ian Temple is program director of GartnerGroup's Executive Program for Government
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