System Settings Changes

A1. Clearly describe the value of a digitally-transformed government and the changes that agencies will need to make.

System settings this relates to: Governance and leadership, Capability and Capacity, Value Proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “Set a very clear picture of the future and ensure middle management understand!”
• “Everyone in government needs to understand the vision (up, down and across the stack)”
• “Operational business leaders need to understand the role of digital”

A2. Ensure Ministers explicitly understand and buy in to the implications of the vision, and support the system view.

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment

Insights:

• "Possible implications of the Vision - for example, proactive entitlement could result in a hump of additional costs"
• "Need to sell the greater benefits of system enablers like information sharing"
• “Use the opportunities we get when we want to talk about particular issues - for example, with housing and education – talk about the Vision (get savvy about using every opportunity to sell the vision and implications)”
• “Need to get all Ministers’ agreement on direction of travel. Ministers need to know how it all fits then agencies can change”
• “Regular conversations with Minister about collective system priorities instead of portfolio specific priorities”

B1. Gain buy-in from the public to provide greater social licence to experiment and take small risks to deliver better outcomes.

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “...so they know this is not a scary change”
• “The prize is being able to spend small amounts of money to achieve big things. We can be more culturally safe in taking small risks”
• “Need to give power to the customer to drive their own vision for government and how they interact with government - for example, someone needing to know what to do with his mother’s drivers licence a couple of months after she had died – doesn’t fit into the life event end to end process because only wanted one piece of information several months after the death. Customers need to be able to pick and choose when and how they interact with government rather than having a full end to end process imposed on them”
• “What is the public appetite for the potential impact of the digital future? What about those who will never use digital? Still need non-digital public services · Still need to help people navigate the system and provide assisted digital for those who need it”

C1. Co-design with customers and demonstrate good delivery to gain trust and increase public and Ministerial risk tolerance.

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment

Insights:

• Build off success to date
• Start small and iterate, demonstrate value early to increase Ministerial risk tolerance (Show don’t tell)
• “Show good delivery to gain trust”
• Co-design with the public to build trust

D1. Understand the problems we need to address and the collective outcomes we seek.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Authorising Environment, Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “In lieu of things being centralised, use aligned outcomes and incentives”
• “Need to agree the outcomes of digital government. What does success look like?”
• “Clear, joined up objectives around the customer”
• “Keep outcomes as close to customer need as possible - identification of problems and opportunities comes from those closest to them/impacted by the solution” - ensures we deliver public value
• “Strategy needs to be customer- in; not agency - out” (system customer view not agency customer view)
• “Good priorities help to address silos (for example, Better Public Services Result Areas)”
• “Need to have an alignment of interests - that will help to align Ministers”
• “Problem/issue based commitments with a public value help with getting people to pull together”

D2. Understand the digital aspects (and implications) of delivering government now and in the future.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

• “It’s about the role of government, not just about digital government”
• “Operational business leaders need to understand the role of digital”

D3. Understand what we’re already working on across the system, where we’re duplicating, where we could stop things, or where others could be involved, or take over.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

• “Clarity of what we're all working on, so we can prioritise”
• “An online problem repository for crowd solution work”
• “Everyone needs to stop being so secretive - transparency of what ideas are being considered at an early stage”
• “Trust to present the real status quo information (as bad as it is) to support investment decisions”
• “Scan the environment for duplicate projects, initiatives/opportunities to co-fund and share”
• Understand the role third parties have to play - government doesn’t always need to be the one delivering directly to the customer
• “If we don’t have to provide a service then we shouldn’t”
• “Are we doing the wrong things right? What about doing the right things?”
• “The zero Business Case should be shared early across the Partnership Framework”

D4. Prioritise outcomes and strategically sequence them in a ‘living’ implementation plan.

System settings this relates to: Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

• “Aspirational strategy 5 - 6 years and implementation plan 12-18 months (reworked annually, but treated as living document) that focuses effort on the key next steps required to achieve the vision.” Need continuous evidence gathering across the system to support this (from R&D work, user research, service performance analytics, insights, and data)
• “Strategy needs to show what’s delivered at the core, sector and citizen level”
• “Find those one or two breakthrough things, so we can start to make the change rather than try to do it all at once”

D5. Align agency strategies and approaches so they have the autonomy to deliver.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Incentives

Insights:

• “Agency needs a clear direction which supports its purpose”
• “Here is the strategy for All of Government – how does your agency strategy align? - prioritisation”
• “Articulate how digital transformation fits within the organisation’s purpose”
• “Clearly define the agency’s aims for digital transformation and its planned approach”
• Connect operations and strategy
• “Define Key Performance Indicators that help align agency to the vision not to act in conflict”

E1. Balance transformation and business as usual (including the move from legacy systems).

System settings this relates to: Capability and Capacity, Funding

• “Fund agency resilience and capability”
• Bimodal investment approach:
  • Being able to apply a disciplined investment approach to what is core and take risk around innovation:
    • Business as usual – spend needs to be joined up and efficient: core investment, in other words, Infrastructure as a Service, Telecommunications as a Service, finance, procurement, etc.
  • Innovation – savings from efficient business as usual can be invested in innovation:
    • Changing and lifting the way we deliver services
    • Early stage pilot/prototype – fail fast and scale after value proposition is clear

E2. Bring people together from across the system for focused effort.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Funding, Incentives

Insights:

• Flexibly deploy staff based on prioritised outcomes (for example, secondments)
• Need incentives for managers to give up their staff, especially due to the difficulties of backfilling
• Support collaboration through co-location

E3. Sustainably invest in system priorities, funding for outcomes and continuous delivery of value.

System settings this relates to: Funding

Insights:

• “All of Government funding for digital programmes where there are clear system benefits”
• “Fund for outcomes not structures”
• “Improve cross-agency funding pathways. Common funding for common outcomes”
• Centralise innovation funding
• Provide continuity of operational funding for prioritised system outcomes - fund for continuous delivery of value
• Make it easier to group fund and align this with priorities

E4 Change the Public Finance Act to make it easier to fund across agency accountabilities

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment

E5. Make it easier and faster to get started with a good idea while making it easy to off-ramp things that aren’t working, for example, agile budgeting.

System settings this relates to: Funding

Insights:

• Better Business Cases can take too long when all you need is seed funding to prove an idea/concept
• “Treasury needs a higher tolerance for uncertainty and to take a more venture capital approach: micro-funding”
• “Use agile continuous funding models to enable testing of assumptions and reduce risk and preventing a time lag. “Ideas don’t care when the budget comes”

E6. Change the Opex and Capex allocations to suit new ways of digital investment.

System settings this relates to: Funding

Insights:

• Agencies require ongoing operational expenditure for As a service, but “Agencies are flush with capital expenditure funding - not enough operating expenditure funding”
• “Agencies have spent their depreciation streams, so don’t have enough additional operating expenditure”

F1. Measure and track alignment against the original outcomes and expectations of quality.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• Assurance
• Benefits realisation
• “Challenge of lag in measuring outcomes”
• Better Business Cases
• should look at Return on Investment from a customer/citizen viewpoint: “Need to consider the broader wellbeing of the citizen, community, nation”

F2. Feed back into strategy, prioritisation, and incentives.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Incentives

Insights:

• Lessons learnt - contributed back into the evidence base

G1. Establish joint responsibility for system outcomes (own the strategy).

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Authorising Environment, Incentives

Insights:

• Accountability sits with the Government Chief Digital Officer, but responsibility is shared by these chief executives
• Line of sight to outcomes (incentives in chief executives’ personal development plans)
• “Seeking clear direction and inspirational leadership”
• “Must have proper governance across all groups, not separate functional groups”

G2. Establish multidisciplinary leaders groups working across the system focused on specific problems/outcomes.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• Line of sight to the outcomes
• “But need to be able to respond quickly. Don’t want to add another stove pipe”
• Must be a true interconnected network of groups that work together (not silos)
• “These problem focused groups might need to have limited lifespans” - lasting only as long as needed
• “Still need to have functional groups. Good for these leaders to meet and get collective insights on cross system work”
• “Needs to be an entity that understands the Board’s goals and coordinates a collective response”

G3. Empower inspirational leaders to drive system transformation.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership

Insights:

• “Need enthusiastic champions with track record of delivery to pull through everyone else”
• “Genuinely champion across the system”
• “First and second tiers - if it makes sense”

H1. Apply consistent governance approaches within and across agencies, complementing agile approaches and with an outcomes focus

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity

Insights:

• Make it clear what ‘alignment’ means through clear vision, strategy, standards, guidance
• “There are lots of islands with no connection. Need the governance, the traceability and outputs to achieve the outcome”
• “Needs people with the right skills and the right attitudes”
• “Internal governance structures that support new approach” - like Agile, Lean, system and design thinking, and collaboration
• “Governance consistently applied standard models for All of Government”
• Outcomes not process focused assurance: “Short, low gates to reduce compliance costs” and increase pace
• Redefine ‘risk’ for each life cycle stage

I1. Align leaders’ incentives to outcomes and reward collective impact.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Incentives

Insights:

• “Need more leaders to understand innovation and investment cycles”
• Reward collective impact
• Understand Agile approaches and how to support an Agile team
• Overcome the ‘specialness’ of the agency view by moving leaders around agencies - “we’re all the same from the back end”
• “Educate and lift line management focus - middle management often gets in the way. Need to make them aware of the wider system around them.”
• Incentivise through recognition of collective impact and further opportunities to expand their experience. “More of ‘look what we did’ and less of ‘look what I did’ – eco[system] not ego.
• “Can have management and cultural issues shut down your idea, even if subject matter experts and customers like the idea”
• “Role model behaviours we want to see across the system, especially senior leaders and chief executives”
• “Need a different kind of leader that can find the right balance to provide the right environment for teams. Core leadership capabilities: trust, stability, hope, compassion”
• “Being able to see what I do has an effect on the wide scale of things – the meaningful needs to be felt – money is not an incentive”

J1. Create a shared evidence base for decision making, user research, performance analytics, insights, data.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Funding, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• Supports user-centred design and system prioritisation
• “Customer segments across government – better view across customer segments for commonality – business and citizen”
• “Join up engagement and user research”
• “How do we suck real-time information about services to tell us where to prioritise? Use this to help leaders to understand the value. Won’t have Kiwis Count Survey anymore as we’ll have real-time performance data”
• “Establish an All of Government service analytics platform – transactional, help desk calls, social media, Integrated Data Infrastructure metadata, everything – measuring and monitoring change, prioritise investment, see what does and doesn’t work. Understand users better, have it in real time. But we also need to be able to work with incomplete data and proxy data and deal with ambiguity in making decisions”

J2.  Identify, establish and sustainably deliver key digital ecosystem foundations, for example:

• Digital identity
• Data/information exchange

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Funding, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “Need the foundation for agencies to build on. Need the GCIO and Treasury to jointly support and get funding for it”
• “Enables added value on top of common infrastructure”
• Components loosely coupled
• “Without the central foundations would need to shift/nudge all the settings along at once, which is not possible or pragmatic”

K1. Provide core capabilities and approaches that support alignment and make it easy to successfully deliver quality digital services.

System settings this relates to: Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “Build core capabilities and approaches that are more common than they are different”
• Assurance
• Standards and guidance
• Change management - culture and system change
  • “Need expertise in nutting out the change”
  • “Organisational transformation is really hard”
  • Need to look after our people through this big change
• “Support for Agile work practices”
• “API standards”
• “Framework for cross government policy and strategy development”
• Strategy and alignment
• Support for Network Leadership
• Investment prioritisation advice
• “Practices, policies and processes that smooth the flow and reduce the interference - for example, procurement processes and commercial models that align with the vision and with Agile approaches”
• “Address procurement rules that stifle public-private cooperation and funding models”

K2. Work towards cross-agency legislative alignment and seek faster ways of changing legislation to respond to change while maintaining stability.

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment

Insights:

• “Policies are broken and do not fit today’s society”
• “Faster ways of changing legislation to support change”
• “Legislative alignment: “Provide an overarching approach to how to share/use (data sharing)”
• “Use the legislative flexibility we have creatively. We often hide behind the little ‘P’ policy to say we cannot do things rather than what the act allows us to do”

• “Culture and behaviour trumps strategy”
• “Ways of working underpins everything. How we will do it rather than what we will do.”

L1. Change mindsets from process driven to outcomes focused.

System settings this relates to: Authorising Environment, Capability and Capacity, Incentives, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Officer

Insights:

• “From agency centric to customer centric and system-wide”
• “Be brave”
• “Share our ideas and the art of the possible”
• Experiment to learn and understand
• “.. work on innovation showed that the word itself causes fear - when used ‘experimentation’ instead of ‘innovation’, it made people feel like they had more permission to fail - less fear encourages more learning”
• “Share and reuse, don’t reinvent”
• “Done beats perfect”
• Be honest about failures and what we’ve learnt - this is how we make informed decisions

L2. Redesign system and agency operating models to fit new ways of working, including creating multidisciplinary teams—in other words, policy, service design, information technology, and devolving decision making to teams.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Funding, Incentives

Insights:

• Multidisciplinary teams that build shared understanding and digital mindsets (for example, combining service delivery, information techonology and policy)
• Devolve decision making to teams
  • "Teams need more authority to make decisions, rather than governance driven"
  • "Evidence based decision making: Let’s not parent people – trust them to make good decisions"
• Understand and properly implement Agile and Lean approaches
  • Funding
  • Governance
  • Procurement

L3. Align incentives to outcomes, not process or agency view.

System settings this relates to: Incentives

Insights:

• Measure the right things to encourage the right behaviours
• Incentivise and enable continuous delivery of value
• Reward demonstration of desired behaviour when it happens
• “Focus our people through instant recognition rather than annual rewards processes”

L4. Enable, support and encourage collaboration and sharing.

System settings this relates to: Capability and Capacity, Incentives

Insights:

• Collaboration essential. We cannot do this alone (silos)
• Share policies, practices and process and people
• Share what we’re working on and what we’ve learnt
• Be open and transparent
• Culture change needed
• Design across teams - use multidisciplinary teams to innovate

L5. Develop and implement an enabling workforce strategy for cross system mobility of staff and leaders.

System settings this relates to: Governance and Leadership, Capability and Capacity, Funding, Incentives

Insights:

• Flexibly deploy staff across government based on system priorities
• Cross system mobility of staff and leaders (also in and out of government) e.g. secondments - builds experiential capability and helps to change mindsets (e.g. from “every agency is special” to a system view), builds relationships and trust - consider government staff as a network
• “DPMC has been running a secondment operational model for about five years – can easily stand things up and then retire them. The issue is identifying people (need clearance, skillsets, etc.) - for example, for analytics would go to a consultancy, or to Stats NZ or the Ministry of Social Development”
• “Secondment process could be run like Uber or Airbnb. It also needs to be transparent, not reliant on your connections”

M1. Support skillset growth for practitioners and leaders.

System settings this relates to: Capability and Capacity, Value proposition for Government Chief Digital Office

Insights:

• “Build capability – not enough currently in digital”
• New skillsets needed: co-design and facilitation
• “Still nascent in government to shifting to Agile ways of working”
• “We outsource our thinking. We must stop that and build core competency that government nurtures”
• “A lot of agencies have skinnied down just to the ‘run’ capability”
• Help agencies to understand the investment system
• “Train within agencies – Train the trainer:
  • Champions within agencies
  • Pass expertise on
  • Community of practice approach
  • Bring others in to learn methods
  • Need to learn new methodologies (avoid recreating existing practices)
  • Use of time: charging 15 minutes time does not incentivise cross-agency work
  • Collaboration should be recognised as a day job”
• “Digital Apprenticeships - build in house digital government capability rather than outsourced:
  • Internships within government at all levels – need funding from state to get jobs
• Brokering capability – identify education programmes to team up with businesses – government/industry partnership”
• “Government – industry – education – joined up curriculum/engagement programmes”