Public Sector: Cross functional Agile Government

I would like to share my experience as a citizen that has interaction with the public sector on various matters. Sometimes is really frustrating to wait for simple things to be done but still take long enough that adds another brick on the negativity wall that is built around the public sector. In this article, I will try to note down some of the pain points and based on my experience as an Agile coach, I will provide some food for thought.

We take for granted that huge organizations like the public sector, things are moving really slow. This is not only due to the culture of the organization but it really makes sense when we view it like a big ship. The bigger the ship is, the slower is the response to make a turn whilst sailing in the big seas. In addition to that, the multi-layer management structure causes more delay to any decision, as we need to document every single detail and get approval on top of every approval. Following that, we can see that in such complex environments a decision that looks simple to me as a citizen, is not so simple for the public sector as many departments may be involved. That means it will add more delay due to my observation that many departments have zero communication with other departments and the decision-taking path is vertical, which takes much longer if it was horizontal. For example a decision that involves two departments, must be initiated from the bottom of both departments and reach to the top independently and then go back to the bottom, identify any possible blockages and dependencies and then repeat again the same path, till the final decision.

Concluding the previous paragraph by identifying some of the pain points we can list them as followed:

  • (Cause) Huge traditional organizational structure (Effect) equals to slow decision taking
  • (Cause) Bureaucracy (effect) results to delay and can lead to obsolete decisions (which means big waste of money, time and opportunities)
  • (Cause) Functionally oriented departments (effect) lead to chaos on decision making to take actions that involve more than two departments
  • (Cause) Vertical communication on each department (effect) results to misalignment and desynchronization of the departments involved to take a decision, which eventually leads to further delay (increase of costs and public frustration)

The institutional framework is the first thing we need to touch and evolve it in such a way that will support the agile transformation of the public sector. Power should be decentralized and we should be able to move from a traditional management system to a flat organizational system, establishing cross functional and self-managed teams that will be able to respond fast enough to the public demand and needs. This will also transform the business/political centric environment to a customer-centric one, providing better services and products to the customer which in this case are the citizens.

The greatest challenge to achieve this is to start working on the mindset and the benefits of an agile transformation and make sure all the public sector employees understand and digest it. Of course, resistance will be there, but, by having the vision in place, the appropriate transition backlog and road-map, you can achieve it but is not an overnight process. In the meantime, note down all the impediment cases, build a department and an organizational impediment log and maintain it for a period of time and then initiate the agile transformation beginning from municipalities. Simply speaking, we could split a municipality into geographical areas, and allocate a cross functional team on each area that will be able to take decisions for that specific area on various matters. It is advised to start with the simple things, create quick wins and build on them.

We live in a very competitive environment and you need to put some great effort in order to achieve certain things. Citizens enjoy the fast-enough custom made quality provided by many organizations and companies that sell products or services and when it comes to the public sector, they experience exactly the opposite thing. Many organization invest a lot in their customer journey and experience and in such a way the public sector should face up the citizens. With the current way of working, it seems like the public sector stopped somewhere in time and did not follow the nowadays ways of working.

Konstantinos Kareklas - Agile Coach