Innovation by putting purpose into practice

Megatrend or Metatrend in eGovernment?

Key words:

Regulatory policy, policy making and policy execution, policy management, eGovernment

innovation; sustainability of public services, knowledge worker productivity

Author: Thei Geurts

Wapenrustlaan 11-31

7321 DL Apeldoorn

The Netherlands

T.geurts@beinformed.com

T + 31 (0)55 - 368 14 20

M + 31 (0)6 - 11 62 40 04

Summary:

Policies expressed in legislation are the basis upon which public services are built. Therefore one

would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in eGovernment

initiatives. However, it almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel

universe of the eGovernment universe. eGovernment initiatives usually don’t make a direct

connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (operations and outcome). This affects

the overall ability of governments to execute policies and the sustainability of eGovernment

initiatives. We conclude that innovation by putting purpose into practice is a game changing

Megatrend, a trend that has already started, as research and case studies proof. The ‘alternative’ for

not engaging in this trend is unacceptable long cycle times, eroded agility, affected governance and

compliance, high costs which are multiplied by doing the same in multiple places, evitable

administrative burdens and red tape, decreased productivity gains of rare resources, and various

forms of sub-optimization.

Putting purpose into practice by synthesizing policy making and policy execution yields considerable

economic and social benefits, as initiatives in The Netherlands proof.

Introduction Concepts like megatrend and paradigm shift are frequently used in presentations and articles.

Especially megatrends seem to be very popular1. A real Megatrend is a game changer that affects

more than one domain and initiates cultural, societal, technical, product and market change.

Ubiquitous computing or the Silver society are examples of such Megatrends. These are trends that

will last and have a severe impact on their environment. Of course do these Megatrends also have an

impact on eGovernment. It is from this perspective that we started to look for fundamental game

changers in eGovernment. In this search we focused on potential proof, looking for the presence of

early indicators of a potential Megatrend.

In this quest we were not looking for the obvious. Therefore we did not focus on trends like Citizen

Centric Government, Empowerment of knowledge workers, Open innovation and Co-creation or

Cloud and Ubiquitous computing. All these trends are basically broader societal trends with an own

exponent in the domain of eGovernment. We were also not looking for obvious statements like

“Change is the new Normal”, which is in essence a revitalization of the ancient Greek concept “Panta

rhei”2 or “Change is the new Equilibrium” (Forum, 2007). Our intention was to discover whether

there is a hidden trend, below the surface, that has a game changing impact on (e)Government.

Based upon real life cases we may have found such a trend that either can be described as

Megatrend or as Metatrend. The readers are invited to follow our quest and to comment on the

findings.

eGovernment initiatives In this article we assume that the readers are familiar to the complex, uncertain and unpredictable

world in which public administrations try to meet new societal demands with reduced budgets. We

also assume that they know at least a variety of innovative eGovernment initiatives that have been

started, or are already in operation. These are all part of the multitude of projects and initiatives, all

over Europe, dealing with various aspects of eGovernment. They address technical and

infrastructural aspects, as well as aspects of public services and citizen interaction. The drivers

behind these initiatives are broadly accepted and supported principles like transparency,

inclusiveness, efficiency and effectiveness. In fact all the elements of the Good Governance definition

of the United Nations (Unescap, 2011) can be regarded as such principles. According to this

definition governments have to be: transparent, responsive, consensus oriented, equitable and

inclusive, effective and efficient, participatory, accountable and follow the rule of law. A good

example of initiatives that are based upon such principles can be found in The European

eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 (European Commission, 2010). The action plan focuses on user

empowerment, internal market (seamless services across Europe), efficiency and effectiveness and

preconditions. The subtitle of this action plan “Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable &

innovative Government” illustrates the goals that are to be achieved and the means that are to be

used.

One could be tempted to argue that these goals equal a trend for Government to transform from an

apparently not smart, not sustainable and not innovative state to a state of quasi enlightened

1 See e.fg: http://www.epractice.eu/en/journal/volume/13

2 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panta_rhei

Government. This would not do justice to the efforts, intentions, dedication and achieved results of

government employees during the last decades. There is however at least in this subtitle the

indication of a shift from a traditional way of working towards a new, and different, way of working.

This evokes the question whether we are dealing here with an indication of a game changing trend.

Let’s take a closer look at this indication of a shift. What could this shift be then? Is it an

organizational and cultural issue? A change from splendid isolation towards open collaboration? A

change from command and control management towards empowered self organizing knowledge

workers? A change from ad hoc learning towards continuous learning? A change from inside out

thinking towards outside in thinking and from push to pull? Certainly, it cannot be denied that these

aspects are playing a major role in the transformation organizations are going through to cope with

the demands of the increased complex society. In this sense they are, like the afore mentioned

trends, general trends and not specific for eGovernment. The same argumentation can be applied to

‘technical’ changes, like the transformation from a paper based process towards a digital process or

from local client facing silo-like public services towards the plug & play composite public services

provided by a Government in the Cloud. The desire to harness IT to cope in an innovative way with

every days challenges is quite common in government and business environments. All these trends

are certainly worth closer consideration and discussion, but they are not the goal of our quest.

Remember, we are not looking for the obvious.

Back to the roots

So the question is “What is specific for Government, and are there signs of a paradigm shift?” It all

boils down towards the reason to be for Government. The essence of Government, including other

manifestations of public administration, is power and the right to impose coercion on others

(Auberon, 1978). The rules of the game vary whether it is e.g. a Representative Government or an

Autocratic Government. In a Representative Government for instance is the government exercising

public legitimated powers. Constitutional rules determine the boundaries within its power can be

exercised.

A major instrument that is used by Government is legislation. Legislation specifies not only the role

and tasks of e.g. a government agency, it is also the form in which formulated policy intentions are

expressed and formalized. Legislation is at the heart of every public administration and every public

service. It is the reason to be for governments and for the services government agencies offer. It is

therefore the major discriminator between public and private organizations. Initiatives, like one stop

services to constituents, reducing red tape, enabling cross border services, supporting evidence

based policy, e.g. by involving citizens and businesses in decision making, are all based upon policy

making and legislative process. Therefore one could state that policies expressed in legislation are

the basis upon which public services are built. Policy making defines the intention and course of

action. The formalized results of this activity are e.g. laws, regulations and procedures. These results

are input for the process of policy execution. Policy execution takes care of fine tuning political

programs and bringing about their intended effects in everyday reality (Lenk, 1998). In other words:

policy execution is about putting purpose into practice. Public services and the therefore used

instruments are vehicles to make this possible.

Figure 1 From purpose to outcome (Geurts, 2011)

The whole system is characterized by an accountability and a scrutiny process. Both processes

contain several decision points. Every actor in the chain should be accountable. Public

administrations create procedures and proof for this based upon formal rules, and interpretations

thereof. In practice it is not uncommon that there are tensions between the factual application of

procedural rules and the their ‘paper base’. The scrutiny process deals with consultation, mediation,

arbitration, evaluation and auditing of policies and legislation, its application and outcome. The

political and juridical system are major actors in this process. Opposite values and beliefs make the

scrutiny process a very sensitive process.

There is an additional challenge, since both citizens and administrations face the complication that

policies do not exist in isolation. Policies are linked to other policies, thus creating a complex

interdependent legislative system which is implemented in and enforced by a complex government.

An increasingly complex society requires increasingly complex legislation, leading to more and more

complex applications and business processes to execute these laws (Rensen et al, 2010).

So, we may conclude that creating public services, that are based upon a constellation of continuous

changing and interwoven legislation, is not an easy endeavor. Keeping such public services

sustainable is a real challenge. The pace of change of legislation for instance is completely different

from the pace of change of processes or IT-systems. The dependency of various autonomous

organizations, the lack of standardization in legislation, multilingualism and unpredictability of

change are aspects that add to the challenge.

Therefore one would expect that legislation and innovative use of legislation is a key element in

eGovernment initiatives and that this innovation cover the whole process from policy making, to

execution, enforcement and evaluation.

Parallel universe If we take a look at the role of legislation in eGovernment initiatives we observe something

interesting. In many initiatives it seems to be almost non-existent or at least less relevant, even if

applications are developed that aim to smoothen the use of multi domain or multinational

legislation. The same applies to initiatives that aim to increase citizen involvement in the legislative

decision making process. It is taken for granted that legislation exists, that it somehow is maintained

and updated and that policies can cause a change. The connection between legislative rules and

norms and the way they are implemented or used in an application or service remains unclear. The

same applies to the change cycle of legislation and its impact on the application or initiative and its

sustainability thereof.

It would be tempting to argument that e.g. ICT-related programs and projects are aiming to achieve

another goal and therefore can be developed independent from the policy and legislation on which

their intended services are based. This could apply if the rules were managed separate from the

applications. The rules upon which the services are based and the rules of a service itself however,

are usually coded in some form in the IT-application. Changing these rules will cause IT-changes.

There are indeed initiatives in which the existence of legislation is recognized and addressed. For

instance as object of either innovation of a specific process step, like impact analysis (e.g. smart

regulation), or it is object of some form of codification3 in order to be used in e.g. a cross border

service. Legislation is seldom the subject of an initiative, and if so, then it is mainly in the field of

harmonization or providing access to fulfill transparency demands (e.g. Public Sector Information and

eParticipation).

It almost seems that policies and their expressions in legislation live in a parallel universe of the

eGovernment universe. At the same time are many eGovernment initiatives striving to provide

solutions for policy intentions and for the effects that are caused by a complex legal system. They do

this without looking at the root cause of the (perceived) problems and without making a direct

connection between purpose (intended effect) and practice (outcome). This affects the overall ability

of governments to execute policies.

In a research study on Canadian government policy execution effectiveness (Macmillan & Cain,

2008), public sector leaders were asked to share their views on the ability of governments across

Canada to successfully execute major policy agendas based on their unique understanding of how

government works. The research indicates that there is declining confidence in the ability of

government to execute on major policy initiatives. It is clear that government policy agendas have

become exceedingly intricate with the involvement of multiple levels of government and numerous

stakeholders. Added to the mix is the fact that governments must address issues of increasing

complexity and deal with the rising costs of program failures, all the while public servants are subject

to heightened levels of accountability and scrutiny. The biggest disconnect seems to be between

those who design policy and those who execute it. According to 61% of Canadian respondents,

policies are often designed with little or no input from the people expected to implement them. As

the gap between policy design and execution widens, program failures are only set to rise, putting

even greater pressure on all levels of government.

3 Codification in this context refers to the process of forming a policy (or legal) code by normalizing and formalizing rules and

principles into a structured system.

The survey4 indicates that effective policy execution is a critical component of good government and

a major potential contributor to Canada’s overall economic prosperity and quality of life. It also

concludes that as governments across Canada and around the world try to overcome those failures,

they will need to step outside their traditional comfort zones. To close the gap between design and

execution, public sector leaders must foster greater agility to execute.

One may wonder whether there are signs of such an approach. We are looking for approaches that

enable agility within the complex public administration domain and that empower its execution

capability. Approaches that embrace the complexity of legislation in a way that it is possible to build

sustainable, interconnected, public services that adhere to the frequent, unpredictable and possible

disruptive changes of policies and legislation. The answer to the above question is, Yes. Beneath we

briefly describe three examples of innovative public administrations that migrated from a traditional

execution approach towards a process and rule driven approach.

Examples of agile rule based organizations The first example is the Dutch IND (Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst)5. As the immigration and

naturalization service of the Netherlands, the IND implements immigration policy. The agency’s 3,500

employees focus on four major processes: asylum, naturalization, managed migration and court case

representation. Immigration law gives the IND decision-making authority on whether to allow a

person into the country. To do its job, IND must navigate thousands of process rules and internal

order rules, incorporating 50 major changes to the rules annually. At the same time, national

legislation and international treaties must be followed. Aside from having to deal with the sheer

magnitude of the rules, IND was under pressure to provide better customer service, increase

decision-making efficiency and respond more rapidly to policy and legislative changes. In the past it

could take nine months to implement legislative changes (McDonald & Aron, 2011). The IND started

an ambitious innovation program, called INDIGO, to create the conditions to become an agile, rule

and process driven organization. By the INDIGO program IND is now able to shorten the legislative

change cycle, if necessary, to only one day. If required, they can release a rule change on the day

policymakers decide upon it.

This transformation was achieved by placing the rules at the heart of the system6. By separating “the

Know from the Flow”, IND was able to store the legal and procedural rules of immigration and

naturalization in one part of the solution and the activities in another part. The know includes all

rules, laws and regulations. The flow encompasses activities required to process applications,

including data entry. The know and the flow are in constant dialogue. Together they support and

enable adaptive processes and the dynamic treatment of a case. When applicant data such as age,

nationality and date of application are entered, it goes into a dialogue with the knowledge

management system, which produces a decision-making plan that outlines the activities to perform,

the business services involved and the criteria to meet. There are no exceptions any more. Every case

gets its own treatment based upon the context of the requester and the request. By making the rules

operable and re-usable it is now possible to generate information, advice and transaction services

4 The survey is conducted by Deloitte over the summer of 2008, with support from the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX), Canadian Government Executive magazine and the Schulich School of Business. 5 See: http://english.ind.nl/ 6 See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5uQTKirRSA. Simone Dobbelaar of Dutch Immigration Service discusses the INDiGO project.

based upon the same rules. The INDiGO decision-making rules for an application, for example, are

the same as those used for enforcement, but in each case, the details specified lead to a different

course of action. A change of legislation needs only to be adopted once and will then be applied in all

services. The substantial automation of this solution lets staff focus less on process and more on

critical decision making.

IND has linked the rules directly to the legislation they are derived from. This enables them to assess

the impact of a policy or legislative change directly, even before the change is implemented.

IND has not only achieved a considerable agility and productivity benefits, it is now also able to share

its concepts, norms and rules with other entities in the government chain. Communities for instance,

can use the IND knowledgebase and act in compliance with the actual rules while servicing a client at

their desk. The INDIGO program has won the Price of the Dutch Architecture Forum for the digital

world7.

Another example is the realization of a single digital environmental permit service for the Ministry of

VROM (Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) in The Netherlands. Citizens and companies

can request permits online from this digital service. Local authorities can then process the requests

digitally. The permits concerned are in the areas of building, advertising, driveways, tree-felling,

demolition and the Occupancy Decree.

The target was to reduce administrative burden and improve the service quality in a setting of 52

different types of licenses, 1600 procedures, and 600 authorities. This is done by standardizing the

permit process in a few simple steps and by making the rules actionable in a context sensitive way.

Policy changes trigger a change of the rule base and the services that are based upon these rules.

The result is reduction of red tape, one single application and process and an operational cost

reduction of 96 million in year one. The service is into operation since October 20108. In the first 8

weeks the service handled 32.000 requests for a permit from companies and citizens. A process is

put into place to support the maintenance of changes in legislation.

Figure 2 The Flow : one model to support the entire process ©Be Informed 2011

Another example is The Dutch Central Administration Office9 that is responsible for benefits

payments for multiple healthcare acts. It concerns a complex legal environment and value chain. The

environment is highly regulated, has a high societal impact and is subject to numerous parliamentary

amendments. After being in the public limelight for errors and delays, CAK decided to establish a

7 See: http://www.automatiseringgids.nl/peopleware/itprofessional/2009/48/paul-teeuwen-en-ind-winnen-architectuurprijzen.aspx 8 See: https://www.omgevingsloket.nl/ 9 See: http://www.hetcak.nl/smartsite.dws?id=HETCAK_HOME

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Rule based Archive

case based and rule driven service environment. Now they have a high-performance transaction

processing service in place that serves approximately 1,000 users and 20 million transactions per

year. The legislative rules and tasks form now the direct basis for their operation.

The cost of making changes decreased with at least 50%, the Total Cost of Ownership are significant

lower and 98% of the transactions is handled by straight-through processing. The other 2% are

manually handled and infused thereafter again in the automatic process.

Other organizations like the Dutch Land Registry, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture

and Innovation, the Ministry of Security and Justice and the Dutch Emission Authority have started

projects to move in the same direction. Another example is the Manifestgroep, which is a

collaborative partnership between major government execution agencies, that want to combine

their services for specific interwoven products, based upon life events. Examples are ‘Emigrating to

another country’10 or ‘New to Holland’11 in which all relevant legislation of the separate domains is

interlinked and presented as one service. The same applies for services like earning an additional

income as a student12 or what to do if somebody deceases13. Checklists are presented based upon all

permits, grants and rules that apply in the context of the requester. The individual rules are

maintained by the individual partners and the overarching semantic mapping and rules collaborative

in a shared infrastructure, provided by a services center.

Common denominator The common denominator between these initiatives is that public administration organizations went

back to the roots of their existence: the rules that define their role and function and the legislation

that they have to create, execute or enforce. What they do is making these rules actionable, directly

executionable and multi applicable (e.g. across various channels). They do this in a way in which the

business itself (the domain experts) can manage and modify the rules, without involvement of the IT-

department. They are in essence creating a bridge between strategy, tactics and operation.

By standardizing the process, separating “the know from the flow” and switching towards flexible

and adaptive case management, eGovernment initiatives become not only more productive, efficient

and effective. They also become more transparent and compliant, because public administration

organizations can now precisely prove which decision is taken, based upon which legislative rule or

norm. Last, but certainly not least, do these organizations achieve the level and kind of agility that is

required to operate in a complex, continuous changing and high demanding environment.

By sharing their rules, concepts and norms they are able to enhance re-use within and across their

own organizational boundaries towards all parties and stakeholders in their field of operation. Public

administration organizations can even offer services to other participants which can be infused in

their services. In this way it is possible to create a composite service structure of plug & play services,

in which the root rules are maintained by autonomous organizations.

Using the same rules will also help to lessen the pressure on the juridical court system, because all

partners in the chain use the same basis and the risk of inconsistency is reduced.

10 See: http://vertreknaarhetbuitenland.overheid.nl/Vertrek/migreren/kennisbankmigreren/home?init=tru 11 See: http://www.newtoholland.nl/NewToHolland/app/en/home?init=true 12 See: http://onderwijsenbijverdienen.overheid.nl/Bijverdienen/Bijverdienen/Kennisbank-Bijverdienen/home?init=true 13 See: http://www.overlijden-overheid.nl/Overlijden/app/nl/about

This type of innovation is an enabler for realizing the ambitious vision contained in the Declaration

made at the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference (Malmö Declaration, 2009), stating that by

2015 European public administrations will be "recognized for being open, flexible and collaborative in

their relations with citizens and businesses. They use eGovernment to increase their efficiency and

effectiveness and to constantly improve public services in a way that caters for user's different needs

and maximizes public value, thus supporting the transition of Europe to a leading knowledge-based

economy."

The concept of putting purpose into practice synthesizes the policy making and policy execution

process (Geurts, 2011). It also can create a huge amplification effect on the use of legal norms,

concepts and rules in all steps of the policy lifecycle, including the establishment of a continuous

feedback loop.

Figure 3 Amplification effect by re-use of norms, concepts and rules (Geurts, 2011)

The afore mentioned initiatives use a model driven approach, in which the model is the application

and documentation. This implies that modeled legislation can be directed tested in an application

that uses the norms and rules of the legislation. The used technology is also event driven, goal

seeking, decision centric and service oriented. This provides a perfect combination for supporting

innovation initiatives and closing the gap between policy making and policy execution.

Putting purpose into practice seems also be the appropriate, and possible sole, answer to solve the

complexity of various national headache dossiers, like for instance the Harz IV dossier in Germany.

If we take a closer look at the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 bearing this potential

in mind, we have to conclude that the stated objectives would greatly benefit from an innovation

approach that synthesizes policy making and policy execution and makes policies directly

executionable. It would for instance enable to create sustainable cross border services that are

infused with national legislation of the participating countries, maintained by the participating

countries. It would also enhance user empowerment by enabling user involvement in the design and

production of services, creating greater transparency and enrich Public Sector Information. Offering

Plug & Play services and repositories of re-usable norms, concept and rules enhances the concept of

Open Data and can give a new meaning to the concept of eParticipation. It will be interesting to

analyze to which level project proposals will cover such aspects of innovation.

Metatrend or Megatrend? In our quest we discovered that closing the gap between policy making and policy execution seems

to be underrepresented in eGovernment initiatives. This is not a recent phenomenon or something

that specifically applies to Government. In the business world do we see also many innovation efforts

in optimizing the core process. Optimization starts after a strategy is formulated and the way to

execute the strategy is laid down. To a great extend is the link between purpose (strategy) and

practice loosely coupled by using instruments like the Balanced Score Card and strategy maps, or is

even non-existent. These instruments focus in fact on performance measurement and not on direct

executable policies. A survey by OnPoint Consulting on the strategy-execution gap discovered that

almost half of the leaders surveyed—49 percent—did perceive a gap between their organizations'

ability to develop and communicate sound strategies and their ability to implement those strategies.

Closing the gap between strategy and execution may be the most important thing you can do for the

future of your company, according to Richard Lepsinger, president of OnPoint Consulting (Lepsinger,

2006).

Both worlds (government and business) based their digitalization and infomatization efforts in the

past primarily upon the centuries old document and card catalogue paradigm. This paradigm does

not work in knowledge intensive services and activities, as for instance many failed IT-projects of

public administration sector proof.

At the other hand is it fair to say that the policy and strategy process in the past was perceived as too

volatile and unstructured to be supported by an intelligent infrastructure. This paradigm is starting to

change too; see e.g. a recent article of Thomas H. Davenport in the McKinsey Quarterly (Davenport,

2011). Davenport argues that: “We live in a world where knowledge-based work is expanding rapidly.

So is the application of technology to almost every business process and job. But to date, high-end

knowledge workers have largely remained free to use only the technology they personally find

useful. It’s time to think about how to make them more productive by imposing a bit more structure.

This combination of technology and structure, along with a bit of managerial discretion in applying

them to knowledge work, may well produce a revolution in the jobs that cost and matter the most to

contemporary organizations.” Also the Foresight 2020 report of the Economist Intelligence Unit

stated already in 2006 that improving the productivity of knowledge workers through technology,

training and organizational change will be the major boardroom challenge of the next 15 years

(Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006).

The afore described initiatives in The Netherlands illustrate that bridging the gap between a

formulated intention and an operational service is feasible and that the gap can be closed. They have

transformed their organization and externalized decisions with business rules, which results in

benefits like improved agility, improved alignment and managed risks. It is a fact that the afore

mentioned combination of technologies is less than ten years old. Increase in complexity and

increase in solution capability went almost hand in hand. This explains the relatively recent state of

the previous mentioned initiatives. At the other hand may we assume that administrative,

organizational and cultural reasons were – and still are - also strong drivers for prudence in

innovating the core process. The reason that the described organizations started with fundamental

innovation at their root base was the fact that they all, in some way or another, reached the limit of

the traditional approach. At closer consideration one could state that they were also very intensively

subject to societal trends and criticism. This led inevitable to the paradigm shift in how to organize

their services and how to serve clients. There is no reason to assume that they are the only in their

kind that will be driven the coming years to find a fundamental and yet flexible solution for their

complex environment.

According to an OECD study (OECD, 2009) governments want to become agile to respond swiftly and

dynamically on new political and economic challenges. If they are not able to adapt services to new

regulations or circumstances in short time, their agility will be hampered. If they are not able to

analyze the impact of legislation before it comes to force, it is possible that the intended policy

cannot be executed or only at high and unforeseen costs. If they do not have insight and oversight in

the complex interconnected system of legislation, they will not be able to avoid concurrency in

regulations and unforeseen outcomes. If they want to be citizen centric, provide one stop shopping

and want to be right the first time, they have to focus on the rules and how they are applied in the

specific situation of an individual. Therefore one can state that managing and mastering the

continuous changing legislative rules and norms and building services based upon these rules, is a

major source for agility in eGovernment. Mutatis mutandis is the same also valid for adhering to all

principles of Good Governance.

Conclusion

Therefore we conclude that innovation by putting purpose into practice is definitely a trend. A trend

that is evoked by other major societal (mega) trends which put pressure on government and

therefore also on eGovernment. A trend that requires an integrated approach of the policy lifecycle

from purpose to practice and vice versa. The ‘alternative’ is unacceptable long cycle times, eroded

agility, affected governance and compliance, high costs which are multiplied by doing the same in

multiple places, evitable administrative burdens and red tape, decreased productivity gains of rare

resources and various forms of sub-optimization.

The question however is, can we nominate this trend to be a Megatrend? It is definitely a game

changer that has a strong impact on services, organizations, culture and use of technology. It also is

specific for the Government sector, at least in the sense that legislation starts at the government

level and government institutions started first to respond quite drastic to the challenges they face.

Exactly opposite to earlier mentioned trends will this innovation in eGovernment affect innovation in

other sectors, including the business sector. We see this effect already in The Netherlands where

institutions from the finance sector are engaging in applying the same approach to close the gap

between policy/strategy and execution. So it has all the qualifications to be a Megatrend. We have

found proof and sufficient indications of its interconnectedness with other Megatrends. Innovation

by putting purpose into practice is in fact a long wave that has already started and will increase its

speed under the pressure of increasing societal demands and decreasing government resources.

This interconnectedness with other trends however poses the question whether innovation by

putting purpose into practice is not more a Metatrend than a Megatrend. A Metatrend is a trend that

is evoked by the simultaneous occurrence of a number of independent trends, like demographic,

economic and technologic trends and that is of a transformational nature. We will bring this not now

under discussion and leave it to the readers to contemplate on.

We were not looking for the obvious, but in the end we did find the obvious. Present and planned

eGovernment initiatives will remain isolated and turn out to be even not sustainable in the long run

whiteout a public services approach that is based upon infusing collaborative created policy

intelligence. Putting purpose into practice by synthesizing policy making and policy execution yields

considerable economic and social benefits, as initiatives in The Netherlands proof. In order to achieve

this will public administration organizations inevitable go back to their roots: the policies and the

legislation in which they are expressed. Governments will make processes and rules actionable,

directly executionable and multi applicable in a sustainable way. This trend is a ‘conditio sine qua

non’ for government in becoming agile and responding swiftly and dynamically to new political and

economic challenges.

Innovation by putting purpose into practice is a Megatrend of a game changing nature with a high

transformational impact.

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Davenport, T.H. Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach. McKinsey Quaterly, February 2011.

Economist Intelligence Unit. Foresight 2020. Economic, industry and corporate trends. Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006,

retrieved February 21, 2011 from http://graphics.eiu.com/files/ad_pdfs/eiuForesight2020_WP.pdf.

European Commission. The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable &

innovative Government. Brussels, 15 December 2010, COM(2010) 743, retrieved February 21, 2011 from

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