An interesting read, via @paulshetler, today, covers the setting up of a new piece of governance in New South Wales. the “Delivery and Performance Committee” (DaPCo).
The best quote from the release, by Victor Dominello, NSW Customer Minister, is easily:
This reform – is cultural and it is whole-of-government – it is the hard stuff, the messy and complex innards of government that nobody likes to talk about. It’s not shiny but it’s one of the biggest enablers for digital transformation and service delivery – which is why we’re committed to getting it right.
The committee plans to ask the hard questions on delivery, drive adoption of a Netflix-like approach (“test and tweak services in short delivery cycles based on customer feedback”), improve the “tell us once” functionality.
Importantly, they say that the model will be replicated at the Federal level, with “Services Australia”, previously known was the Department of Human Service.
and then this
With our counterparts in the federal government, we’re making big advances in designing services around complex life events – we’ve already launched a prototype to help people through the end–to–end journey at pivotal moments in life, like what to do when somebody dies, so you don’t have to go to 10 different government departments
For a moment I thought it was 2001 all again and UKonline had moved down under.
It all sounds good. Just a couple of thoughts
- A committee? That sounds like a challenging way to manage an agile, fleet of foot, iterative delivery cycle based on customer feedback
- What’s the first project or policy it will start with and is it policy focused, technology focused, solution focused, delivery methodology focused or all of the above?
- What’s the lever by which the work gets done once the committee pronounces? How will they tell everyone what the new guidance is so that people don’t waste time preparing the wrong solution that the committee then reject?
Interesting stuff. Would be good to compare before and after, if it can be asssessed transparently. Lots of effort has gone into making a similar switch in the UK, of course, but the translation into real improvement for transactional services is hard to see except in a few really strong cases.