Deeper reform

The Government’s reform programme must “go deeper” than previous change initiatives. Accountability and buy-in from secretaries general is essential, Trinity College academic Joe McDonagh tells Meadhbh Monahan.

In order to examine the current reform programme as outlined in the November 2011 Public Service Reform Plan, one must look at the outcomes of historical reform programmes, Associate Professor of Business and Information Technology at Trinity College, Joe McDonagh tells eolas.

The modernisation unit in the Department of the Taoiseach drove the reform agenda in the 1990s, culminating in the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) in 1994, followed by Delivering Better Government (DGB) in 1996.

“Under SMI and DGB, all government departments, agencies and offices were required to engage in good strategy-making in order to reform their internal organisations i.e. support structures and functions such as HR, finance, IT and procurement,” McDonagh recalls.
Two initiatives stand out as “salutary lessons” on the importance of ensuring efficient and co-ordinated reform delivery.

In 1996, the Government decided to modernise the HR function across the 11 health boards. This was to involve a transition to standardised processes and its central feature was an IT system: PPARS (personnel, payroll and related systems). PPARS was abandoned in 2007 after an estimated cost of €176 million; it had been projected to cost €9 million. McDonagh, who was tasked by the HSE to write a report on the matter in 2006, looked at it from his perspective as an expert in implementing organisational change.

He concluded that the key weaknesses were that ICT was viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ rather than a strategic capability and that senior executives throughout autonomous health service organisations were not sufficiently ‘in tune’ with ICT matters to effectively guide both technological and associated organisational change.

McDonagh tells eolas: “An attempt to modernise the HR function across the 11 autonomous health boards [with technology in a supporting role] started out with a great vision, but within 18 months had given way to a rather siloed initiative on reforming technical systems and solutions in support of HR.”

Similarly, in 1999, the Government announced the Public Service Broker (PSB) which was to “pave the way” for modernisation of services within government, co-ordinate their delivery of services and integrate them at the point of use or consumption.

While that reform initiative was informed by radical changes in the global financial services sector (i.e. the advent of telephone and internet banking), the impetus for the current reform initiative is the economic crisis and the need to save money.

The current reform plan echoes the intention of the Public Service Broker, McDonagh contends.

“If you listened to politicians today, you’d think they’d just got out of bed and had a Damascus-like conversion … There’s nothing new in the most recent reform programme,” he comments.

Politicians engage in soundbites, he contends, adding: “The challenge is, if you engage in the rhetoric of change and the rhetoric is empty, you’re in a very difficult place.”

Technology was key to the Public Service Broker and the Reach agency was formed to help in the transition but both were wound up in 2008. McDonagh was tasked with writing a report on the programme in 2004.

“If you have a vision for integrated service delivery and reform, the onus is on all departments, agencies and offices to take hold of that vision and to work out for themselves the nature of that reform agenda,” he says.

He expected that “at a minimum, all the organisations would have had a head of service delivery with a clear mandate to shape the manner in which services are delivered.” Instead, he found “absolutely nobody responsible for this.” Staff thought that modernisation would be implemented by the Reach agency but it was staffed by technologists rather than strategists or change professionals.

“Essentially, the grand vision to reform public services had again been whittled down to a technology-based initiative,” he laments.

Dig deep

The central themes of the current reform initiative are:
•    placing customer service at the core of everything the public sector does;
•    maximising new and innovative service delivery channels;
•    radically reducing costs;
•    leading, organising and working in new ways; and
•    a strong focus on implementation and delivery.

McDonagh urges the current reform-makers not to make the same mistakes as the past.

“Earlier reform initiatives under SMI and DBG failed to dig deeper into the strategy domain whilst also regularly failing to make the connections with subsequent management practices in the areas of planning change, intervention, and evaluation,” he surmises.

Central government had “regularly nurtured the reform agenda at a high-level”, but had offered no “practical tools, techniques or methods to practicing managers.” He warns: “The new reform agenda will struggle like the last one if this deficit at the level of departments, agencies and offices is not addressed.”

Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin has said that previous reform initiatives did not have the same “burning platform” that now exists i.e. the economic crisis. Howlin also believes that past administrations did not have the correct focus on implementation.

That is a “naive” view, McDonagh argues. “It wasn’t implementation; it was a matter of depth.”

He adds: “The issue is how do you effect complex change in autonomous organisations? All of the ground work was good. Now is the time to go deeper: demand more from strategy-makers, from senior executives in government.”

The economic imperative to reform (modelled on the Spending Review in the UK) is not enough to encourage lasting and meaningful organisational reform, according to McDonagh: “The economic logic may help you balance your books, but it provides no level of confidence that, essentially, you’re good at modernising and reforming.”

McDonagh concedes that forming a dedicated reform department is “superb”. However, he warns that “they then have to make sure that the resources dedicated to the reform agenda within DPER have teeth.”  The reform agenda must be treated as equal to the expenditure agenda, McDonagh states. “That remains to be seen.”

The formation of DPER and of the reform oversight groups “in and of themselves” are “insufficient to guarantee effective change outcomes,” the professor states.

For change to be delivered effectively, secretaries general and their senior management teams must “focus on enhancing organisational performance through an integrated approach to both organisational and technological change,” McDonagh insists. They are the accounting officers for their departments, therefore central government must ensure that all secretaries general are singing from the same hymn sheet.

If proper, lasting change is to be implemented, secretaries general must “reform management practice in the areas of strategy-making, planning change, intervention (both social and technical), and evaluation,” McDonagh advises.

The Public Service Reform Plan is “doable”, he concludes. “The key is to learn from the past. Often, the reform agenda was not owned by senior management, nor middle management at a business level for that matter. They became equated with technology, culminating with the view that it belongs to the technologists. Therein lie the seeds of failure.”

He cites the founder of applied psychology, Kurt Lewin, who said: “If you want to understand any organisation, try and change it. The minute you try to change it, its most obstinate features will emerge.”

It’s time for the Civil and Public Service to “get deep, roll the sleeves up and get into this.”