Page 60 - FCW, March/April 2018

FCWPerspectives
56
March/April 2018 FCW.COM
how we do our projects. We have to rethink how we do our acquisitions to support these outcomes. There are a lot of structural things that have caused people to bang their heads on the table. And I worry that if we’re not honest with ourselves to say, ‘Hero or not, the structure needs some change, we need to move in a different direc- tion,’ we’re setting ourselves and them up for failure.”
Another executive noted that agen- cies often don’t have a clear-cut incen- tive to enhance their services. “One of the structural barriers to improvement in government is the fact that, for a lot of services, we are a monopoly. We are the only people who do this thing, so if you want to use it, you’ve got to jump through whatever crazy hoops we come up with. It’s very hard to measure and explain the value of changing it. It’s not an immediate one- to-one improvement. It’s a much lon- ger tail in terms of seeing how the value of your investment plays out.”
A colleague agreed, saying: “You’re right, we are a monopoly. But what if you weren’t? I think one of the things that we don’t ask ourselves enough is: If this was privatized or if a competi- tor was allowed to enter the market, what would make you different?”
One executive said there is anoth- er way to frame the discussion. “In terms of investment, we started talk- ing about the cost of doing nothing. What is this legacy system costing you? We’ll put together an end-to-end map that shows our customer jour- ney across the organizational silos. We won’t show who’s responsible for what, but we’ll say customers had a really poor experience trying to do this in their journey.”
“We haven’t been shy about telling our entire leadership team, ‘A custom- er once said working with \\\[our agen- cy\\\] is like working in Dante’s Inferno,” the executive continued. “Everybody in the agency can see this quote. What are we going to do about this?’”
Likewise, another participant said, “most people will respond to some- thing that is data-driven or puts a human face on it.”
The need for ‘audacious’ leaders
The group discussed the pressure to adapt to the kind of services and user experience that Amazon and Apple offer, but one participant pointed out that “both of the companies we just mentioned have incredible clarity from the top about the fact that their busi- ness model is X.”
The government, by comparison, can struggle to nd that mission clarity. “It’s really interesting to step back and say, ‘Today, what business can I be in that is actually useful in a value propo- sition versus what I’ve been doing?’” the executive said. “That’s a really scary question because I can look at a lot of our work and say, ‘I’m not sure we should be doing that anymore.’”
That’s why the cultural aspects of change cannot be overlooked, the participant added. “When you’re try- ing to change structure, you’re tell- ing someone they’re irrelevant or that they need to shift or whatever. The question is: Do we have commanders, if you will — in whatever shape that takes — who are audacious enough to say, ‘We’ve been in this business. We have an amazing history, but the business we need to be in now to be relevant is X’?”
One agency representative explained how a user-centric focus can spread through an organization. “Our innovation design group started to creep into the territory of our pol- icy shop and started to think, ‘Hey, you’re really talking about how we do business.’ And the family got big- ger because the policy shop realized, ‘If we integrate this into our learning