Page 34 - FCW, Jan/Feb 2018

FCWPerspectives
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January/February 2018 FCW.COM
at ourselves and say, ‘If I can get 80 percent through a standard process, do I really need that extra 20 percent? Can I just buy that part by the drink?’”
That might be easier said than done. “We have systems in whatever area — whether it’s HR, nance, pro- curement — where we have grown our own unique processes that become cemented in,” the execu- tive said. “We need to bring people in who are willing to break that mold and challenge the expectation and do things a little bit differently.”
Many participants cited the work of the Uni ed Shared Services Man- agement of ce in developing exible baselines in the form of the Federal Integrated Business Framework, which is a default governmentwide service catalog “developed by the agencies, for the agencies,” as one participant put it.
“When the government gets out of the business of giving industry 700 IT requirements, we can let the vendors worry about infrastructure, platform and software,” another participant said. “All we do is start measuring suc- cess based on the expected services vendors are supposed to be delivering. There’s no reason we can’t standard- ize a service catalog across support-
ing functions in the governmentwide value chain.”
Another executive added that “agencies should be enabled to focus on their core competencies. We should be getting out of the infra- structure business. We should be get- ting out of the platform business. We should be getting out of the software business and purely focus on being a consumer or customer of said ser- vices. The question is how do we do that without releasing the reins?”
Other participants expressed similar concerns, with one saying, “The operating governance is the long pole in the tent that’s a new line of business. The question is: Can someone from the federal govern- ment come to the table as a cen- ter of excellence to do operational change management for a shared- services environment?”
Allowing ‘procedural chaos’
In addition, some participants cau- tioned that technology is moving so quickly that agencies might end up automating a process regardless of whether it is well designed or adheres to agreed-upon standards.
“In my experience, we automate poorly designed processes all the
time,” one participant said. “My fear is that at some point, when that process gets stressed, the process breaks.”
Another executive had a different take on the issue. “There’s no such thing as a perfect process. Things change. Two years in, that process will not be perfect. If you get it fun- damentally right, then you could move forward.”
Furthermore, emphasizing perfec- tion and avoiding criticism at all costs can be counterproductive. “I’ve been personally blasted for rolling out stuff that doesn’t meet every single key per- formance parameter,” the executive said. “Instead of blasting the 10 per- cent shortfall, why don’t you celebrate the 90 percent success? Even if you got to 100 percent, by then the rules have changed. You’re already behind somewhere else.”
Others agreed, but one executive advocated letting go of the focus on processes altogether. “The reality is that for effective shared services and effective service delivery to become institutionalized, we’ve got to allow a little bit of procedural chaos to ensue based on the baseline. Transforma- tion is driven by chaos. If we get to a point where we’re no longer focused on process, we can tell vendors, ‘Pro-