Literature review for North Wales ICT Collaboration Delivery Project

Transcription

1 Literature review for North Wales ICT Collaboration Delivery Project Corresponding to Chapter 7 of the interim report: Evaluation of the ESF Local Service Board Development and Priority Delivery Project May 2014 The short literature review supplements the analysis made in the ICT Collaboration case study included in ESF-LSB Project evaluation (forthcoming). It is argued that the ICT Collaborative Programme showed to be implementing activities found in the debates on the impact of IT in public sector management. The programme showed to be a case within a broader wave of innovators in the UK who are attempting to change public sector management in a collaborative way. However, the programme, like other stakeholders aiming for innovation, has fallen short in tracking its benefits and translating the latter into a benefit for citizens. Too much of its focus has been on reintegration and less about developing digitisation of processes and a needsbased approach (Dunleavy et al., 2005). The work by Patrick Dunleavy and colleagues (2005) has been well known for predicting how public management reforms have been impacted by informationtechnology changes in the 21st century. Their study is focused on national government initiatives in the US, UK, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. They argue that public management in the UK and other 'leading edge countries' which have been influenced by new public management (NPM) reforms in the past are entering an era of post-npm because of the increasing centrality that information technology has achieved in managing the public sector. Dunleavy et al. (2005) argue that in the current era the growth of the internet, and the Web and the generalization of IT systems has meant that their impact in the public sector has shifted from 'only affecting back-office processes to conditioning in important ways the whole terms of relations between government agencies and civil society' (2005:478). However, the authors warn that 'the feeding through of technological changes in government in itself has not direct effects on policy outcomes. Instead, IT changes work through indirectly in several different ways. The first are organizational and organizational culture changes inside the government 1

2 sector' (p ). These changes are encompassed by three dimensions: service reintegration, needs-based holism and digitisation of processes, all of which characterise the 'digital-era governance' (DEG). The North Wales ICT Programme is an example in which the influence of these three trends can be identified in the programme's aims and mission. In particular, based on the case study data collected during fieldwork, we argue that the aims of the programme and the nature of its six projects have tended to favour reintegration, and to a lesser extent needs-based holism and digitisation. See Table A1. Reintegration encompasses several components such as joined-up governance and departmental/organisational mergers are deemed possible due to IT convergence technology. The establishment of processes managed from a centre is another element to avoid duplication and to standardise issues such as procurement, recruitment and human relations or e-government operations. Reintegration also involves squeezing production costs which Dunleavy et al. identified in the US and UK through the cutting of government officer numbers with the aim of shifting resources to front-line staff. Cost cuts can be reduced further with the reengineering of back-office functions such as business process systematisation. The latter may be undertaken by agencies 'in-house' or by outsource contractors through a single agency-level IT contracts which replaces myriads of cross-cutting contracts for discrete systems and processes. This systematisation can generate cost savings by avoiding duplication of procurement functions across departments and agencies. Accompanying the latter, network (or partnership) simplification aims to streamline regulatory overviews which can stop the creation of multiple management teams. Needs-based holism seeks to simplify and change the entire relationship between agencies and the users of their service. This is the dimension that emphasises citizen-centred processes through the creation of one-stop provision, which may include Web-integrated services as well as interactive (call centres and online) services. Data warehousing is another element in this dimension where data of individuals are held in one or multiple compatible systems. Meanwhile, the end-toend component 'ensures that project teams focus through the whole process without artificially demarcating their analysis at existing agency boundaries' (2005: 485). In other words, integrated performance frameworks become more effective if there is the technology that facilitates project teams to overcome organisational boundaries through the sharing of information. Finally, the digitisation changes are not only about supplementing conventional administrative processes, but are also seen as transformative, moving to situations where the organisation 'becomes the Web site'. For the components in this dimension to be effective it is also required behavioural shifts by citizens or civil society more broadly towards the use of IT technology outside the public sphere. In this dimension there is a strong focus on electronic service delivery to the extent of designing mechanisms that avoid human intervention. However, this 'zero human 2

3 touch technologies' require of citizens and businesses to know their own situations very well to sift and select what they may receive from government agencies. In this dimension a shift towards 'open-book' government is also envisaged where citizens have opportunities to co-monitor and co-manage administrative processes alongside public service providers such as health-care records and tax-benefits accounts. As shown in Table A1 the ICT Collaboration Programme reflects some of the changes that the public management academic literature predicted in response to changes in information technology. Equally, the programme shows how North Wales is implementing the ideas found in policy documents such as ICT Strategy for the Public Sector in Wales (2011), the Simpson (2011) and Williams Reports (2014) and online discussions in the Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) and the Chief Information Officer news websites at both UK and regional/local levels ( As a result of the 2008 financial crisis, the impact that ICT could have on British public management operations and processes began to be highly associated with cost savings (Welsh Government, 2011; ). The argument held in these documents is that ICT is supposed to help efficiency goals through agile working, sharing information and moving customer services online. In the Channel Shift Report (Power, 2012) reference is given to successful cases of three English local authorities in saving costs by providing online services (Power, 2012: 5). The pilot-project across English local authorities ran by Price Waterhouse and Coopers for Cabinet Office also indicates cost reductions of by shifting from face-to-face to online services (cited in Power, 2012:14). SOCITM has been a champion in arguing that in this current era ICT managers are in a position to lead organisational change. The Planting the Flag Report underlines that this leadership is focused on organisational innovation and design. SOCITM claims that Technology offers the opportunity to reconstruct service delivery processes in more economic, efficient and effective forms Establishing the professional credentials of the heads of the ICT function is a critical step in delivering ICT-enabled change (Savass, 2012). This belief was found in the case study fieldwork in so far as the majority of our interviewees mentioned that ICT departments were not a support but and enabling department for the other service areas impacted by the collaborative programme. However, some organisational barriers, such as the passive corporate involvement in assessing the value of the programme, prevented head of ICT to develop the leadership role championed by SOCITM. In addition to the encouraging views that these documents portray about the potential positive change promoted by ICT, there are some warnings to bear in mind. The first is the common problem encountered by public sector organisations in tracking the benefits of the change provided by ICT (NAO, 2011). In particular, the 3

4 Table A1. The influence of DEG dimensions and components in ICT Collaboration Programme DEG dimension DEG component NW-ICT project/activity Reintegration Joined-up governance The whole programme including its six projects show collaborative working across six local authorities. Also joined working across local council departments in SSDS, WCMS and NWDS. Reinstating central processes Cost saving The management of the data centre by Flintshire on behalf of Wrexham and Denbighshire in EDT pilot-nwds. One central venue for a shared service desk and one web content platform could have been developed across the region. Cost savings achieved in SSDS and WCMS, expected in NWDS. Digitisation processes Needs-base holism Reengineering backoffice functions Procurement concentration Partnership simplification Electronic service delivery Zero human touch technologies Co-administration (with citizens) of services Moving towards openbook government Customer-based reorganisation One-stop provision Data warehousing End-to-end service Further cost reductions could have been achieved through local council mergers, through government officer redundancies in IT departments. Process systematisation replacing cross-cutting contracts in SSDS and WCMS helped to achieve cost savings. Procurement processes were shared in SSDS and WCMS. Project manager contributed in simplifying and operationalising the programme's collaborative model. Potentially to be seen via WebCMS at a single council level. Potentially to be seen via further development of the WebCMS, but at a single council level. Not envisaged in the programme's projects. Not envisaged in the programme's projects. Potentially to be developed by WebCMS and the EDT pilot-nwds. Both cases seek to respond quickly to changing needs and a volatile environment experienced by users. Potentially to be seen via further development of the WebCMS at a single council level. The EDT pilot-nwds has made a first attempt to bring together pieces of information of users into one compatible warehouse system. Potentially, this could be expanded across the nine different partners more actively involved in the programme. Not envisaged in the programme's projects. challenges of calculating the right costs is one of the main barriers found, followed by the failure of public service agencies in providing the right guidance to users in order to achieve a successful channel shift to online services. The case study fieldwork of the ICT Collaboration showed the limitation of the programme, which was based on 4

5 avoidance costs rather than on the sum cost on achieving the outcome for the customer. The emphasis on cost avoidance was in part because of the programme s design, biased towards the reintegration dimension rather than towards the needsbase holism dimension explained by Dunleavy et al. (2005). It is too early to comment on the programme s capacity to cope with the online transaction process and the communication strategy required for users to make this type of transaction successful. The policy documents in the UK and other cases in the US clearly recommend that the services which should be targeted by channel shift are those related to bin collection, parking, school closures and library inquiries (Norris and Reddick, 2012; Power, 2012) these services were the type that Denbighshire Council had in mind. Emergency services are another policy field which has stressed coupling collaboration and ICT changes to allow shared information across different service providers (Brassett and Vaughan-Williams, 2013). More recently, the Williams Report (2014) emphasises the importance of both in the delivery of health and social care. Stakeholders of the ICT Collaboration Programme identified these two policy fields as areas that could be developed further, but little was actually done in terms of design, let alone implementation. Some American scholars, who are less optimistic about what ICT can actually achieve within public management (Norris and Reddick, 2012), contend that in American municipalities e-government (understood as delivering information and services online) has been developed incrementally rather than being transformative of government-citizen relations. This approach has marginalised debates on e- democracy and e-governance by putting emphasis on issues about selfadministration instead of citizen co-production (also see Pratchett, 2007). The latter means that e-government is primarily about providing information with an increasing offer of transaction-based services (e.g. requests of services or bill payments). Despite of the narrower vision that e-government entails, American local governments have not been able to extend the range of e-services because the more transaction-oriented the service the less likely is that local governments will adopt them because of barriers to adoption (Norris and Reddick, 2012). The most common being, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, lack of financial resources, lack of Web staff in the ICT departments and the management of information security. There is some indication that the lack of cooperation among departments within one local government was a greater barrier for those larger (in population size) cities or municipalities. This last observation indicates the potential advantages of promoting joined-up governance both across departments and on a regional scale as pursued by ICT Collaboration Programme. Finally, it has to be said that since 2010 an increasing debate on measuring and evaluating activities encompassing e-government began to develop. Amongst the different approaches to evaluation the balanced scorecard method (Kaplan and Norton, 1996) has been considered a useful way for evaluating a programme such 5

6 as ICT Collaboration given that it encompasses a contextual approach through assessing the relationship amongst the modernisation of e-government, the customer s perspective, the internal processes and learning and the financial metrics (Alhyari et al., Wright et al., 1999; Ying, 2010). The importance of local context is also underlined by those scholars interested in building a comparable benchmarking which moves beyond simplistic metrics of identifying online sophistication per service (Jansen et al., 2010). These evaluation debates are worth considering for the ICT Collaboration Programme if an interest prevails in assessing this type of project beyond the cost saving strand. The ICT Collaboration Programme has shown to be implementing the debates found on the impact of ICT in public sector management. It shows that it is one case within a broader wave of innovators in the UK who are attempting to change public sector management in a collaborative way. However the programme, like other innovative players, has fallen short in tracking its benefits and translating the latter into benefits for citizens. If the stakeholders of the programme have an interest in developing it further, efforts and resources should focus on developing the three dimensions identified by Dunleavy et al. (2005), alongside ways of assessing the impact that the investment on ICT and costs savings achieved have had on other services beyond ICT. Not developing the programme further will show that all the efforts made and outputs achieved during have been insignificant, when in reality there have been valuable lessons that could contribute in developing the modern and efficient public sector envisaged by the recommendations in the Simpson (2011) and Williams (2014) Reports. 6

7 References Alhyari, S., M. Alazab, S. Venkatraman, M. Alazab, and A. Alazab, (2013) Performance evaluation of e-government services using balanced scorecard: an empirical study in Jordan, Benchmarking, 20(4), pp Besset J. and N. Vaughan-Williams (2013) The politics of resilience from a practitioner s perspective: an interview with Helen Braithwaite OBE, Politics, 33(4), pp CBS/IFF Research/Shared Intelligence (2014) Evaluation of the ESF-LSB Development and Delivery Project: interim report, Cardiff: Welsh Government Dunleavy, P. and H. Margetts, S. Bastow and J. Tinkler (2005) New public management is dead long live digital-era governance, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 16, pp Jensen, J., de Vries, S. and P. van Schaik (2010) The contextual benchmark method : benchmarking e-government services, Government Information Quarterly, 27, Kaplan, R.S. and D.P. Norton (1993) Putting the balanced scorecard to work, Harvard Business Review, September/October, pp NAO (2011) Digital Britain One: Shared infrastructure and services for government online, London: National Audit Office. Norris, D.F. and C.G. Reddick (2012) Local e-government in the United States: transformation or incremental change, Public Administration Review, 73(1) pp Power, G. (2012) Channel Shift: Realising the benefits White Paper, GovDelivery, govdelivery.co.uk Pratchett, L. (2007) Comparing e-democracy in Europe: a preliminary report, in E- participation and e-government: Understanding the present and creating the future, Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (UNDESA), New York: United Nations, pp Savvas, A. (2012) Council IT managers should lead organisational change, CIO News, 6 August 2012, accessed 7 January Simpson, J. (2011) Local, Regional, National: What services are best delivered where? A Report to Carl Sargeant AM, Minister for Social Justice and Local Government, Cardiff: Welsh Government. Williams, P. (2014) Commission on Public Service Governance and Delivery, Cardiff: Welsh Government. 7

8 Wright, W., R. Smith, R. Jesser and M. Stupeck (1999), Information technology, process reengineering and performance measurement: a balanced scorecard analysis of Compaq computer corporation, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 8 (1), pp Welsh Government (2011) ICT Strategy for the public sector in Wales, Cardiff: Welsh Govenrment. Ying, J. (2010), The application of BSC in China s e-government performance evaluation, Symposium on Reform and Transition in Public Administration Theory and Practice in Greater China, pp