A Government Dilemma

The current world-wide crisis left governments in the following

impossible situation:

No growth / Income decline

combined with

Need to increase services

With no means to increase income governments are tempted to increase debt while hoping for a quick return

to normality.

That’s how most governmentsreacts today.

Two problems with thischoice of action:

First:

This time the crisis is a systemic one, this means we do not know what the

next ‘normality’ will look like, nor how long it will take.

Second:

Increasing debt has only meaning if it’s invested for returns to allow repayment.

Thus debt cannot be used to increase daily expenditure.

So, how can governments get aroundthis dilemma?

How can they increase services fast without increasing expenditure?

They have to increase the efficiency of governments and services.

And that fast and cheap.

The resources and the time spent must be better used:

• More efficient work flows• Less time loss• Better use of knowledge• Better use of workforce

Increased efficiency cannot easily be found by using old methods: Retraining,

new managers, morality boost, etc. That will not yield the desired results.

Look elsewhere.

Last big contributor to economic growth and efficiency:

Process IT.

IT had a huge impact on industry but not on services.

This because industry has much simpler to model processes, people processes in governments and social services are

hard to model.

That is where the solution to the government dilemma lies;

process IT created for people.

But...

Governments need toboost the overall economy as well,

what about that?

A step back for something surprising...

Value creation in any organisation happens by process,

i.e. in sequential activities.

No process can exist without a framework, like water needs a pipeline

or a riverbed to be of use.

And the efficiency of the process is directly dependent on the quality of

the framework.

Globally such processes are oftwo kinds:

Easily Repeatable Processes are the kind we think of when we use the term “Business

Processes”:

Industrial processesLinear business processes

Enterprise Resource PlanningDistribution

LogisticsHuman capital management

Procurementetc.

For this kind; a pipeline type of framework works well.

So far well covered by process IT.

Such processes create about 30% of world wide value.

(based on world-wide annual GDP figures)

IT for such processes added approximately 0.5 percentage point to the annual GDP

growth for a long period.(based on 1995 - 2003 figures from typical developed economies)

Then we have Barely Repeatable Processes, mostly seen as “Business Practices”:

GovernmentEducation

HealthConsultingServicesSupport

R&DKnowledge workerAd hoc processes

Exceptionsetc.

This kind requires a riverbed type of framework.

These Barely Repeatable Processes arehardly covered by process based IT,

thus no IT induced efficiency gain norcontribution to GDP growth so far.

Such processes create about 64% of world wide value.

(based on world-wide annual GDP figures)

IT for such processes could add approximately 1 percentage point to the annual GDP growth for a long period.

(if used to same extent as for industrial type processes)

IT frameworks for such processes would not only translate to better and more

government using less resources,

it would also deliver a major boost to the economy as a whole.

Precisely what the doctor ordered.

But this type of Barely Repeatable Processes requires a completely

different IT architecture.

Luckily, things are afoot and the first of this kind of IT framework is emerging.

It just has to happen... and it will.