Don’t forget to bring your trusted workforce on the road to digital transformation

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Government agencies have been praised and criticised in almost equal measure for their adoption of digital technologies while wrestling with the problem of replacing antiquated mainframe computers.

Optimistically, tax commissioner Chris Jordan wants ATO to be fully digital by 2030. Meanwhile, there’s still much kludging of modern interfaces onto legacy systems to be done. 

Pessimistically, Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil recently blasted her department’s tech capability, which she described as “virtually paper-based” because previous governments had failed to invest in workable tech upgrades.

Avoid dehumanising technology

Rohan Lane, founder of Project Recovery and a business transformation consultant to Home Affairs, recalls the failed Department of Immigration and Border Protection technology upgrade outsourced to a big tech vendor a decade ago. Brought in to write an implementation review, Lane was told to conservatively describe the outsourced work as multimillion-dollar wastage.

But another huge issue he found was frontline staff often couldn’t access the data they needed for decision-making. “It’s just one of several inefficient system upgrades that caused data-access issues,” he says. 

“Unfortunately, if decision-support systems are siloed and there are data-retrieval issues, the wrong decisions can be made, which can have severe consequences for some people – including locking up Australian citizens in detention.”

Lane has also consulted to Defence, PM&C, Health and Finance, among other APS agencies. In his experience, the better tech upgrades tend to focus on making interfaces more ‘human’.

“Technology by itself really isn’t the solution,” he says. “We need to find simple, elegant fixes to help humans solve business problems. It’s not just about automating lots of processes and saying, ‘Let’s put another layer on top, how hard can it be?’, because in the race to automation you risk dehumanising decision-making. 

“You can’t ignore there’s a lot of corporate knowledge held by people who have been doing the job for many years, yet that’s what happens when you add layers that take away their decision-making ability.”  

Lane suggests the ‘easy wins’ for automation tend to be in streamlining standard processes that don’t need complex rulings. For example, one of his teams saved the equivalent of 40 business days of call centre hours with a self-service tool to handle password reset requests for public servants.

Similarly, he adds that self-service interfaces that only require basic data entry should speed up standard requests from citizens and free up APS officers to respond to more complex requests.

Tap into ‘legacy’ knowledge

Sam Bartone, chief consultant at Eccoi, a Canberra-based IT consultancy and recruitment firm mainly working with government agencies, says tech renewal projects in the APS shouldn’t just focus on replacing one-for-one legacy systems – they also need to tap into ‘legacy’ knowledge.

He advises looking for opportunities to rationalise, consolidate and retire some systems and functions that no longer fit strategic requirements. Technology transformation projects need to start with a strategic analysis of future capabilities for customer services, and then build business cases for upgrade paths.

“Don’t worry about redeveloping everything for the sake of a tech upgrade; agree on target state, analyse dependencies and prioritise pathways for the services most needed,” he says. 

“Draw on the expertise of people who have a deep understanding of the organisation’s business systems and how they’ve evolved. The longer agencies leave these transitions, the harder it is to draw on experts in legacy systems because they’re a diminishing resource.”

Bartone recommends a smart way to draw on the talent pool of ex-agency and other experienced consultants is to engage them in short-term assignments. That’s partly because many of these experts are approaching retirement and may prefer engagements that take months, not years, and because their mentorship of project teams offers the best bang for buck.

“I think agencies will need to craft pieces of work with these experts in mind, who can bring their experience of transitions in the past and strategic expertise in the risks and opportunities of upgrade projects,” he says. “A good approach is a collaboration between vendors’ experts in legacy technologies, staff with deep corporate knowledge and experienced consultants who have done similar transitions.”

Bartone suggests experts with legacy knowledge of an agency’s business systems can be more easily incorporated into short on-site assignments to augment the technology teams without those capabilities.

For the most part, he recommends subject-matter experts are especially valuable for strategic advice and mentoring agencies’ on-site staff on the best pathways to follow.

“Experienced architects and project managers bring valuable knowledge to an agency’s transition,” he says. “They will help you look to create new capabilities; not only improving business capabilities but also IT delivery capabilities. It’s more than ticking off the boxes of how to do agile development – you need people focused on the organisation’s strategic goals.”

The most pressing tech resource issue: people

Lane believes a “wicked problem” encountered in many public sector tech transformation projects is the public service has been actively hollowed out.

“The APS has lost a lot of tech capacity and capability, along with a lot of corporate knowledge,” he says. “Instead of investing in public servants with those smarts, we’ve seen the smarts outsourced to commercial vendors. That knowledge doesn’t come back.” 

Bartone reiterates agencies need to find ways to re-engage experienced technologists, engineers and architects with that legacy knowledge.

“I can’t emphasise enough that successful technology transitions are about having the right people with deep experience,” he says. “Create a strategic resourcing plan to attract those resources to support the transition process: identify the skills and knowledge gaps, work out how you’re going to engage those people and the best ways to make use of their expertise.”

Another issue Lane has seen is executives making decisions about modernising front-line processes “almost lunar distances away” from experienced public service officers on the front line.

“Too often a vendor presents us with a big feature list for its ‘solution’ but it’s just a list of tools we could use – if we wanted to. The vendor should have started with conversations about business requirements, including with people on the front line.”

While he’s encouraged by the wider adoption of agile software development in the APS, Lane believes more executives and consultants alike need to “walk the floor” to learn the real service pain points and business problems. 

Lane points to the four core values of agile as a useful guide:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
• Working software over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• Responding to change over following a plan.

“There are some great APS executives who get it,” he says. “They ask straightforward questions when they walk the floor, like ‘what are your top 10 irritants in your job?’ to get insights on business requirements first. Then they work with their teams to decide which problems can genuinely be solved by technology.”

Read this playbook for guidance through the four steps of the IDEA approach that Microsoft has developed: Digital Transformation Playbook: Four Elements to a Successful Strategy.