Digital transformation to drive better governance
In recent years, leaders in the public sector have been faced with significant changes to how they must govern and run their organisations. Pressure is increasing to be more accountable, deliver on performance targets, and widen governance scope to include environmental and social impacts.
At the same time, significant external risks such as the global pandemic, cyber-crime and shifting macro-economic and political forces all need to be identified, controlled, and managed.
Across Ireland, organisations are finding new ways to meet these challenges and new tools to support them. Digital transformation is changing the way we govern. By implementing modern risk management, decision-making, and performance frameworks, organisations are remodelling how they operate, becoming more flexible, more resilient, and improving their performance. They are also finding new ways to demonstrate compliance and their level of control to stakeholders and regulators.
As a quality improvement agency and the independent regulator of health and social care services in the Republic of Ireland, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is an organisation with a wide range of diverse and expanding functions. Supporting those functions is a busy, growing workforce, and this workforce, like many others, is undergoing transformative changes to the way they work. Meeting objectives in this complex environment requires detailed planning and delivery under increasing scrutiny.
HIQA implements Decision Time
Alongside significant reviews of their organisational structure, changes to oversight arrangements and a drive towards formal quality management systems, HIQA decided to implement a new set of digital tools to support its governance. They chose Decision Time to help track the delivery of their objectives, the management of risks, the implementation of audit recommendations and the facilitation of compliance with key statutory requirements.
HIQA found that carefully selecting the right tool was significant in managing their risks and objectives successfully. Kathleen Lombard, Board Secretary at HIQA, said: “Because Decision Time is easy to use, it has helped to embed risk management at different levels in the organisation. In addition, it facilitates the tracking of internal audit recommendations and ensures that the relevant statutory requirements are recorded and reviewed regularly. The system also provides a more efficient way of running our board and committee meetings.”
Solution meets council needs on security, data hosting and ease of use
Monaghan County Council implemented Decision Time for their meetings and risk management and was impressed by the direct benefits and how the solution fits their vision. As a progressive council, Monaghan aims to adopt digital technologies. In June 2021, they launched a five-year digital strategy in partnership with Enterprise Ireland and leaders in education, the community and business. To monitor and deliver these ambitious strategic goals, complete actions, and drive digital transformation across the county, the steering committee needed to embrace an easy-to-use digital platform.
Carmel O’Hare, Information Systems and Innovation Lead for the Council said: “Decision Time provides us with an easy-to-use platform that facilitates the smooth running of our board and committee meetings, embeds risk management and encourages collaboration. The solution meets our key requirements on security, data hosting and ease of use.”
Both of these examples combine the right tools and a solid framework to improve the organisation’s governance significantly.
Building a flexible, resilient organisation with solid controls, a clear vision, and a well-defined set of objectives should be the primary task for any leader. While the core of good governance shouldn’t be complicated, it is time-consuming and needs to be embedded across your whole organisation, so choosing the right tools is essential.
Over-engineering solutions to governance problems is a real danger
To succeed, organisations need new digital solutions and governance frameworks that are more appropriate to the modern world. These solutions must be easy to use, clear, reliable, secure, and available anywhere and at any time of the day. They do not need to be complex, in fact, over-engineering solutions to governance problems is a real danger leading to a false sense of security and over-burdening teams with additional work just to feed the system.
“Decision Time provides us with an easy-to-use platform that facilitates the smooth running of our board and committee meetings, embeds risk management and facilitates collaboration.”
— Carmel O’Hare, Information Systems and Innovation Lead, Monaghan County Council
Decision Time’s straightforward approach is based on three pillars:
- Enabling you to see at a glance, the health of your organisation, your risks and progress towards your goals.
- Making decision-making more efficient so that you know what needs to be done.
- Building a culture of accountability in your teams so they can do what is necessary to meet their objectives.
Moving from flat reports, either printed or distributed as PDFs, is the first step. Using a well-designed, visual, digital dashboard instead gives you a clear view of your risks, objectives, and results from the highest level down to specific departments and teams. A good dashboard will let you see an overview of the current status, spot any warning signs or problems and then drill down into the details when you need to.
Build an effective culture of accountability
You will also need a well-structured, embedded approach to risk management with easy capture, assessment and categorisation of risks supported by automatic reminders and prompts to review and test your controls. An embedded approach means that risk management is no longer the sole responsibility of an individual or team within the organisation but is on everyone’s agenda. This is difficult when using a centralised spreadsheet or word document to track risks but becomes easier when you deploy a proper digital system that all leaders can access and update in a controlled way.
We all attend so many meetings now and often feel that they could be more focused, shorter, and more effective. A straightforward digital meeting tool gives you a way to manage meetings, create agendas, add documents, and track outcomes, decisions, and actions in context without piles of paper or complex email threads and drop-boxes.
Finally, you need a way to capture all of the actions that emerge from your governance activities, those for mitigating risk, repairing controls, addressing performance issues or implementing decisions from meetings. These actions need to be owned and given clear deadlines, which the system can then use to issue email prompts and reminders until the action is complete. By making these actions visible and by enabling the prompts and status updates, you can build an effective culture of accountability across your organisation.
Choosing the right tool is essential
The days of managing risks and objectives on a set of spreadsheets or word documents are over. Modern digital governance tools provide an integrated, easy-to-use interface with all the controls and alerts you need to deliver outstanding performance. Choosing the right tool is essential but selecting the right partner to work with is also vital.
Decision Time has a unique software platform, but, just as importantly, it has the experience and skills honed from deploying solutions in many public sector organisations across Ireland and the UK. Talk to Decision Time today about how it can help you to drive better governance in your organisation:
T: +44 28 9448 7753
E: info@decisiontime.co.uk
W: www.decisiontime.co.uk
