GovernmentExecutive.com

I think both my friend and former colleague, John Sindelar, and Schoop are on the right trail. What I believe holds us back or keeps kicking us back to square one is the siloed or stove-piped organizational sub-cultures in which virtually all of the disciplines and occupational groupings
operate.

Over the past decade or so, government at all levels has begun requiring short- and long-term plans, including strategic goals, measurable objectives, a system for assessing outcomes, and periodic reporting on results. More recently, decision makers have attempted to tie budget and other resource decisions to agency performance.

Ironically, this shift to a more results-oriented management system hasn’t yet made a noticeable dent in public sector organizational culture. This observation is warranted because, for such a transformation to have occurred would have surely nudged most culture-bearers out of their bureaucratic silos and stovepipes – where this transformed behavior would be highly demonstrable.

For example, in a post-silo organizational culture, CIOs would be fully involved in the organization’s strategic planning and management systems. Moreover, these activities would be part of an integrated, transparent, 360° process aimed at harnessing all “agency” assets to meet priority challenges. Equally heretically, technologists would be collaborating with non-tech, agency planners (e.g., CLOs and other HR counterparts, acquisition officials, budget and financial management analysts, program operations and policy development officials, RD&E leaders, etc.) to assure that 1) IT strategic plans fully accommodate co-lateral organization priorities and 2) collateral strategies anticipate and support IT requirements.

Similarly, each of the heretofore cloistered, vertically-integrated bureaucratic sub-cultures would be expected to collaborate fully with all other members of the organization to address agency priorities as an integrated team.

A few examples might help explicate the bureaucratic culture challenge in the public sector:

Starting with the performance imperative, to what extent have various team elements (including the IT community) planned, resourced and orchestrated initiatives to foster a performance culture? How have they assured that all contributors – across the organization, staff and line managers and at different levels – understand the link between the procurement process and vendor performance? Between setting budget priorities that help guide agency investment decisions and justifying and reporting on the measurable outcomes of agency training efforts? Have training and development investments been made to compare performance against common standards – learning how other public sector organizations make use of benchmarking, leading indicators and other methods to improve and evaluate performance in a comparative context? And with respect to fostering an organization-wide performance culture, what effort is being made to pass along lessons learned from other federal, state and local efforts to improve organization performance? To set standards, hold organizations accountable and consider changes to law, policies and systems, and other innovative ideas in pursuit of a performance-based culture? And how do these innovations cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

Moving to accountability challenges – stewardship, ethics and new financial rules and realities – as agency responsibilities, resources and sourcing relationships have grown in size and complexity, how have agency strategic emphases shifted to address priority oversight needs? Performance measurement aside, what pressing demands need to be addressed in the area of ethics – particularly in terms of deeply-entrenched assumptions and organizational behavior – and how are organizations responding to the challenge? What is being planned to assure basic performance measurement acumen and achieve mastery of distributing responsibility appropriately in a multi-sector workforce? Also, in recent years, government organizations have been required to address a wide range of administrative and programmatic risks in the management of their mission responsibilities. How have new technologies made this job more difficult and at the same time given agencies even more effective tools and techniques to assess and mitigate such risks and assure proper internal controls? Moreover, given the increased emphasis on performance measurement and the attempt to tie budget and other resource decisions to agency performance, how have organizations raised the bar on managing and sharing costs and employing more results-oriented budgeting techniques? And how do these plans and innovations cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

As for human capital, much of this challenge is framed by new demographics and the need to recruit, engage and retain young professionals. Considering the anticipated departure of a high percentage of Baby Boomers over the next 3-5 years – including many from the senior-most ranks of government’s career leadership – and the difficulty in attracting younger generations to public service, what are team members doing to address this challenge in each occupational segment of the workforce? How have workplace learning efforts focused on measuring performance and linking pay and performance (where applicable)? Given the complex, wide variety and pressing nature of the transformative challenges facing today’s government organizations, what are agencies doing to prepare their current and future leaders and managers to drive this change over the next several decades? And how do these strategies cut across entrenched organization sub-cultures?

Much of the technology challenge – for IT professionals and non-technologists alike – will revolve around keeping pace with expanding E-expectations. How do agency strategies assure that the organization will keep pace with new technologies and rising expectations among all relevant users – citizens, the business community AND a younger more Web-savvy workforce? In a related area, not only has virtual office technology come of age in the past decade, but the private sector has surged ahead in its application. How are government agencies taking advantage of these technologies to meet similar bottom-line concerns, cyber-security issues and other emerging public sector challenges? During the same period, the public sector has slowly made increasing use of telework and other flexible workplace arrangements to respond to a variety of societal problems: metropolitan area traffic congestion, air pollution, inadequate or unaffordable child care arrangements, etc. Recently, it has become abundantly clear to many that a more compelling reason for public agencies to become “telework-ready” is to ensure continuity of government operations in the event of a significant work stoppage. What are agencies doing to move in this direction, and how can these efforts be integrated into a larger initiative to evolve the workplace of the future? Also, both opportunities and threats stem from the need to manage knowledge across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. How will agency initiatives pave the way in this regard – helping transcend boundaries of federal, state and local governments and fostering collaboration among public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Moreover, how do these plans cut across entrenched, internal organization sub-cultures?

To a large extent, the communication challenge is less readily apparent yet poses a significant threat to achieving organization missions. For example, making transparency an organization-wide value is critical to achieving openness and candor in public bureaucracies – within and among different levels and branches of government and with the public and the media has become increasingly problematic. How are government organizations balancing the need for internal controls and confidentiality with the demand for increased freedom of information? Given the volume, pace and complexity of policy formulation activities, how are government agencies engaging citizens today – particularly in the context of new communication technologies? Given the inter-dependent nature of today’s public sector challenges and solutions, government agencies and occupational groupings will need to go outside their own vertically integrated comfort zones and interact with other bureaucratic sub-cultures to achieve priority outcomes. How are agencies reaching out across traditional boundaries, and how are basic organization assumptions and behaviors changing with respect to sharing information and collaboration in planning, sourcing and managing efforts of common importance? And what is the public sector doing to prepare practitioners for leadership and managerial roles aimed at communicating a more global perspective among career government officials around the world?

Going beyond inter-institutional communication, how have bureaucratic cultures evolved to share responsibility for achieving results – with other governmental levels, internationally and the private sector? What are different levels of government doing to prepare for and respond more collaboratively to catastrophic disasters and how are lessons learned and new techniques in one setting institutionally shared with others? Also, finding common purpose in international collaborations is almost always problematic. How have government and public nonprofit organizations worked together successfully and with alacrity internationally and in other cross-cultural environments? Moreover, more and more government work requirements have been sourced to private contractors. Given the need to measure and report on the performance of all parties, how are organizations communicating oversight and accountability roles and responsibilities in such a demanding, resource-stretched environment? In this regard, how have government organizations successfully engaged the private sector, achieving high performance while remaining faithful to their missions and code of ethics and protecting the proprietary needs of their business community counterparts?

For further insights on these challenges and solutions already underway in a government culture near you, check out the Public Manager/ASPA 2008 Practitioner Conference - Baltimore MD, July 28-29 at: www.thepublicmanager.org/2008conference
or contact me at wciwmaster@aol.com

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